My Roots Run Deep

 

Stories From My Family History

Little ONe by Pond

Canoeing

As a kid one of our favorite things to do was go on canoe trips with family and friends. My parents had several spots we could put in and several we could take out. How long the trip was to take determined the in and out spots on the river.  We usually had at least...

Trespassers

One of my favorite places to go and walk through nature is some property we own by the river.  There used to be a bridge that my children had named the Dangerous Bridge, it was old with holes working their way though the floor so that you could look down as you...

Fixing a Car (Not so conventional)

Watching a neighbor work with a backhoe in our field trying to find an old well (that's a completely different story), I was talking to one of my dad's friends about my dad. All the things I know about fixing cars comes from my dad.... though none of it is...

Meal (the one that shaped me most?)

I have the Becoming journal and have slowly been working on it. I was just faced with the question about the most memorable meal. Of course over time I've had lots of family meals that meant a lot to me, and I can remember getting together with friends and family....

Memories from the Table

After moving we stored things we couldn't use in a shed until we could figure out what to do. One of those things was an antique Duncan Phyfe dining room table from my aunt Kate - my Grandmother's sister. My aunt Kate had been married twice and couldn't have children....

Too Much or Not Enough

Every so often I wonder if I did enough or too much for my kids and I think back to how much my parents did when I was growing up. I frequently think about what my parents didn't do.... but there are things my parents did. When I was in school one of my desires was to...

The Honey Bear

Our families first deer, Bambi, came from a man in Danville who had collected animals. He had a wild array of animals and had decided to get rid of them. I still remember going to his house and waiting in the house seeing his monkey and others while my dad went out to...

Buffalo Escape… Why have Buffalo? (Others escaped too)

Buffalo who have escaped in the next county have been all over the news this week. A family that farms has been raising them for meat and a herd broke the fence. The school bus was driving their route and happened to come upon a herd of buffalo and alerted everyone....

Building on a Shoestring

We are getting ready to move home.  The plan had been to build in another year and a half, but we are looking at going ahead and moving a year early.   I had been looking at what we wanted to do for a while, pricing houses and looking at options.  To retire, we want...

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Sledding

Time to go sledding!  It finally snowed here! Time to go sledding.  Growing up we had a lot more snow than we have here in Kentucky.  I remember playing on snow mobiles, riding on the river, going on trips through the woods from house to house.  Friends would show up...

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The Illk Family

  The house I grew up in after 2nd grade was built by Abraham Illk.  Abraham Illk was born in Württemberg, Germany in 1834 and married Catherine Voth and had 8 children. He passed away on 1916 in Vermilion, Illinois, USA.  The stories I've heard tell that Catherine...

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Mice, fire, syrup and the past

The holidays are always a time to get together and tell stories about the past. Syrup My oldest drove in from VT (bringing syrup for everyone) and that spurred stories about my mother making syrup from our trees - in our yard - in Illinois.  She would collect the sap...

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In the Pond

Some of the first things we really noticed about my father as he developed dementia was his lapses in judgement. With a farm this resulted in more broken equipment... A wagon accidently pushed into a pond. The oil pan cover on a bulldozer being forgotten. We even...

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