[ansel12]

Your grandfather was alive when Geronimo was, and in his mid 20s when Wyatt Earp died, and there you were watching John Travolta movies in LA where Madonna lives, and talking to that man.

That kind of thing makes me feel so alive, in my sense of history, Hernán Cortés was conquering the Aztec empire, only five Bob Hopes ago.

[Windflier]

Your grandfather was alive when Geronimo was, and in his mid 20s when Wyatt Earp died, and there you were watching John Travolta movies in LA where Madonna lives, and talking to that man.

I was very fortunate to have spent enough quality time with my granddad to have heard some the most interesting stories of his life. And there were many.

He loved technology, and was what we call today, a 'first adopter'. He was always the first person I knew to have any groundbreaking gadget. He was a contractor, and owned every modern tool of the building trades, but he also owned (and had used) all of the old manual tools in his day.

I believe my uncle still has all of his old carpentry tools from the 30s and 40s. Granddad taught my brothers and I how to use them all when we were kids.

He didn't have a lot of fond remembrances of his youth. Those were hardscrabble years that tested his ability to survive. He left home at 12, and rode the rails with the hobos until he got old enough to get steady work. He bootstrapped his way up in the building trades, eventually becoming a licensed contractor in California, but in the interim, he lived a whole lot of life on the edge, including a stint on a chain gang in Nevada, from which he escaped.

The man lived an amazing life, and thankfully, my dad has put most of it down in a biography that he plans on publishing.

[PJ-Comix]

That kind of thing makes me feel so alive, in my sense of history, Hernán Cortés was conquering the Aztec empire, only five Bob Hopes ago.

And one Bing Crosby before that, Columbus discovered the New World.