I have to be honest…I am “crashing” trying to do my digital story and my unit. In searching for material, I came across many letters that my father wrote to me. He died in 2005 at the age of 88. This will get me no points, but I think (I’m biased) it is lovely. For a bit of background, my father was a radio/t.v. broadcaster for the Cincinnati Reds in the 60’s and 70’s. He then went on to be a bank president. All he ever wanted to do was write. I’d like him to be published via this Blog. I hope you’ll indulge me with grace.
This is from his journal (this written shortly before he died):
During the past twenty-four hours I have been thinking about what the formula might be for achieving old age.
There isn’t any.
Only by the Grace of God does one become an octogenarian. I didn’t have one thing to say about it. I have lasted no longer, nor will I live a second longer, than pleases the Almighty. Sometimes, far more than occasionally, it seems that a long life is not a gift of Grace. The trip becomes more difficult and more painful by the moment. I could not have determined otherwise. Good people who led exemplary lives are no longer with us. Cowards, criminals, dissipaters, rascals, rogues, and tyrants have lived longer than seemed possible or even fair. I may be proof that, “The good die young”.
Reminiscing is part of the baggage with which we hit those about us over the head. It is not to be helped. There’s only one way to look: “back”; there’s not even a path up ahead.
Reminiscing is fun because it is very selective in distilling out only those things which we choose to recall because they constituted “the good old’ days”. Don’t knock it. If you live long enough, these will be the good old days.
What is so unbelievable about those days is that they were so shockingly different. This is true for each succeeding generation. It’s not so much what we did in comparison to today; it’s what we didn’t do. Couldn’t do.
Anyone under fifty cannot even imagine a life without television, computers, jet planes, automobiles, moon landing, and laser surgery. Let me tell you some of those words hadn’t even been coined yet and those that had been were used by kooks and comic book writers. Buck Rogers, Dick Tracy and wireless communication had as much credibility as Snow White or Little Red Riding Hood. They were mind games in the world of the impossible. I know for sure that my kids are not interested in nor impressed by the real facts that I, an upper middle class kid by material standards, lived in a home with no radio, no telephone, no automobile (there were only three in town). We had electricity, but we didn’t rely on it. In every room, we had gas mantles which we had to turn to too often. What was a refrigerator? A zipper? Cellophane? Nylon? Basketballs and footballs which you don’t have to blow up by mouth and then lace by hand? You mean you live on a street that isn’t a dirt road? Let me tell you, kids, some things you don’t want to hear about those “Good Ol’ Days”. You mean you never heard of ink wells? Button hooks? Panty waists and BVD’s?
Oh yes, things are different! But are they better? You betcha! But I don’t believe that all the things we have now were invented by increasingly brilliant people. They simply uncovered them. They were just waiting to make your “Good Ol’ Days” something to talk about tomorrow.
That is what the man said…..
Respectfully submitted on behalf of Edward John Kennedy Jr.
…now he’s published : )
8kennedy 
