Sunday, June 29, 2003

post://105710667692544882/

I got going a little later then I expected, today... but got my oil changed, went to go pick up my Dad, and we were on our way.

I actually got him talking a little bit, few snippets here and there. We would feed off of external stimulus to find topics of discussion - a car that I'd see, would maybe lead to a story that he had. At one point I even asked him what he had to do in his younger days - "well, just hang out with my friends - go swimming, that was about it" (always ending with "that was about it"! I hate that, it cuts it short when I -know- there's more) I prodded a little more "well, most of the guys would just drink beer and race cars... but I really didn't drink all that much back then, I didn't like the taste"
All I was looking forward to was a good story about his wild days, when he did stupid shit too... I'm not going to go do it, he's not going to corrupt me, but he holds back like that. I never get to hear the good stuff until I hear him around old buddies or telling a story to a friend. Apparently I'm still not an adult, or at least that's the feeling I get from him.

It took about two hours to get there, not a bad drive really.
We saw his old farmhouse; they had a lot of land, it went up and down the road, both sides for miles.
We saw the rubble of the old mill that my father had fallen through the floor of. He was about 4 or 5, wandering in the old mill - the roof had rotten by then, the floors were just about. He fell through the floor up to his armpits before his brother pulled him out. It would have been a good 3 story drop into cold water, metal, and stone. All that remained in the rubble was the main arch, the overflow area, and the trench where the wheel once stood.
We saw my grandparents first house 3 bedroom, couple stories, lots of land... it cost them $700 in 1940.
He also showed me the road named after my great grandfather, my middle-name sake: Hanley. He was the Lt. Governor of NY -- in fact my grandfather and grandmother came to NY from Iowa because he (my great grandfather on my grandmother's side) got in to politics, and my father even got a few rides to school in his limousine out of it.

So I did learn a lot, we had gone there when I was much younger and because I had forgotten a lot of what he told me, I figured this would be a good time to go, when we could get some pictures and I could hear the stories again, but this time just him and I.
posted @ 01:44

-x-

(0) comments | Post a Comment

Twitter Updates

">

Movies

Music

I had to put all the links here so they could still be robot'd since I was having issues with the whole dual click nature of the modern browsers. music recommendations links discuss (no longer in service) ...mysterious pictures mobile archive