Memories

[billyjoe]

My nephew just brought me some record albums he borrowed about 20 years ago. He has sold the old farm house that my great grandfather bought 86 years ago . If I can get there in the next couple hours I can get a final tour of the old place.
---Don't think my great grandfather ever lived there but my grandparents did , so did my parents as newlyweds in the 1940's. I've still got an 1866 penny my mother found under a floor board.
----The old timers remember it as the house with the 1000 gallon wine barrel out front advertising the family winery. Some of the barrels were so large that a local man made little summer cottages from them and had a resort along Lake Erie called Cask Villa.
-----During prohibition grandpa sold hard cider for 25 cents a gallon. If anyone complained he'd say it was for medicinal purposes. From 1933 - 1958 he produced about 40 different varieties of wine. My father helped sell it from a counter in the barn. They also had sort of a drive through from the house. I've got one of the original cash registers. It goes up to $9.99.
-----It's funny what sticks in your memory from childhood. Running from a ram with it's head down and those curled horns. Grampa told me never to turn my back on one. He got knocked over a fence and broke his hip by a ram years ago. The sheep shearer used to come every year and work out of some wooden railcars my grandfather bought when the Lakeshore Electric Railroad went under in 1938.
-----My father would tell me about the blue racer snakes that would be hanging from the apple trees as he sprayed them from the tractor. I've got the 1934 O-12 orchard tractor in my garage now. Never did see one of those blue racer snakes.
-----We also never could find the hole in the farm house floor from when grampa blasted a rat with a 12 gauge shotgun. I still believe it happened.
-----That's about all I can remember. At least we've still got about 59 acres of the farm left to wander around on whenever we feel like it.
--------billyjoe

[IIC]

My nephew just brought me some record albums he borrowed about 20 years ago. He has sold the old farm house that my great grandfather bought 86 years ago . If I can get there in the next couple hours I can get a final tour of the old place.
---Don't think my great grandfather ever lived there but my grandparents did , so did my parents as newlyweds in the 1940's. I've still got an 1866 penny my mother found under a floor board.
----The old timers remember it as the house with the 1000 gallon wine barrel out front advertising the family winery. Some of the barrels were so large that a local man made little summer cottages from them and had a resort along Lake Erie called Cask Villa.
-----During prohibition grandpa sold hard cider for 25 cents a gallon. If anyone complained he'd say it was for medicinal purposes. From 1933 - 1958 he produced about 40 different varieties of wine. My father helped sell it from a counter in the barn. They also had sort of a drive through from the house. I've got one of the original cash registers. It goes up to $9.99.
-----It's funny what sticks in your memory from childhood. Running from a ram with it's head down and those curled horns. Grampa told me never to turn my back on one. He got knocked over a fence and broke his hip by a ram years ago. The sheep shearer used to come every year and work out of some wooden railcars my grandfather bought when the Lakeshore Electric Railroad went under in 1938.
-----My father would tell me about the blue racer snakes that would be hanging from the apple trees as he sprayed them from the tractor. I've got the 1934 O-12 orchard tractor in my garage now. Never did see one of those blue racer snakes.
-----We also never could find the hole in the farm house floor from when grampa blasted a rat with a 12 gauge shotgun. I still believe it happened.
-----That's about all I can remember. At least we've still got about 59 acres of the farm left to wander around on whenever we feel like it.
--------billyjoe

Pretty touching story Billy...But I gotta ???...How come your nephew ended up w/ the Farm House???

Actually...Your post does make me think back...How come I ended up with my Grandmother's old glassware and crystal collection? 'Ya know why?...Nothing Sinister...Nothing Bad...It is because when I was a little kid I was the only one who loved all of those things...I don't really know why I did...but I did...When I went over to Granny's House I always checked on all the stuff and I cleaned 'em if I thought it necessary...I didn't do it because I wanted them...I just did it because I liked to do it.

I also ended up with my Great Grand Father's Gold Watch that he got when he retired from the Pennsylvania Railroad(he wasn't that old...He died in the 1940's) in 1910...'Ya know why my Grandmother left it to me?...I do...Because she knew I would NEVER sell it...IIC

[billyjoe]

Doug,
You are right. I'll never sell the family stuff. Just hope someone else is interested before I die.
The rest of the story. After my parents moved from the farm house and built their own in 1954 (mother still lives there) , the house was rented to the same people for 45 years. It really deteriorated until my older brother put on a new roof , electrical , plumbing , furnace , walls , and more . His eldest son bought it cheaply and we were glad to have it back in the family. I owned 1/4 interest in it plus 1/4 interest in the rest of the farm which I still have.
Some of my other treasures from the other side of the family include a large silver coin that may have been issued when Geo.Washington died. Never have seen one like it in any book , a Harrison for president medal 1884 from grandfather who was born in 1883. Also have his father's large silver key wind pocket watch. He died in 1898. I love this old stuff. Another neat thing, in the old cash register I mentioned under the drawer were a couple of 1909 Lincoln pennies that must have been thrown under there when they first came out. They still have some original shine on them. I think they came from the great grandfather's old grocery and provision store.

---------billyjoe

[mrmarket]

Billyjoe...that's great stuff. Having American ancestors is really terrific because you can actually go back and touch your own history. My parents were immigrants, so I don't have that same opportunity.

[Websman]

My Grandpa had a 100 acre farm in Salem Virginia, but it was sold when my Grandma died. I'd love to have that farm back...

[Websman]

Billyjoe...that's great stuff. Having American ancestors is really terrific because you can actually go back and touch your own history. My parents were immigrants, so I don't have that same opportunity.

You should go back to the old homeland and look up your relatives. I've thought about going to Austria to try to find mine. My Great grandfather immigrated from Austria. It would probably be tough to find any of them though.

[rrrhumba]

Memories and Investing?

One of the great stories handed down in my family is that my grandfather, an immigrant from Germany in the early 1900's, bodily threw a salesman out the door and down the stairs during the depression for trying to sell him shares in some start up company. Some little outfit called Ford Motor Co.
Sometimes I wonder if I have my grandfather's investment acumen.
rrrhumba

[billyjoe]

History is sure interesting and usually a little mysterious. Distant relatives back in Germany were working on their geneology and came across a picture of relatives in Ohio in the 1800's. They couldn't identify them but wrote to us and eventually came to a family reunion over here. They can't speak English and brought an interpreter. It was strange that the relative then in his 70's had fought for Germany in WW2 and my father was in WW2 on our side. This guy and his brother were captured and spent years in a Russian POW camp . The brother died there. A few years later my brother went to Germany to visit and they introduced him to other relatives who stayed in the old country. One woman was a little girl in the early 40's whose parents were divorced and she lived in a different part of the country than her father who was mayor of a small town. Hitler was coming to town and the relative thought his daughter should meet her. She was maybe 6 years old at the time and scared to death of Hitler. They met and Hitler asked her where she was from. He thought she had a strange accent. She still remembers being afraid that Hitler was going to kill her on the spot. She's in her 70's now and still hates that old nazi. My brother got it all on tape . They really don't like talking about the war. I think many were forced to do things they didn't really want to in order to survive. We never identified the German Ohioans although they've got the same name as us.
-------billyjoe

[skiracer]

My dad flew blimps in the Navy for almost 21 years. Most of the guys that he started out with were just average Joes with not to much academic schooling and they were just trying to get by. I can remember when I was around 6 money was always tight,and my mom and dad were having a terrible arguement which was nothing new as it was over money. There was a land deal that one of the officers in my dad's squadron was trying to put together and he was trying to get everyone into it. I don't remember how much each guy had to put up but my dad wanted to get in on it and my mom was dead set against it. They didn't have much an my mom wasn't about to waste what they had saved on some land deal. I remember they almost split up over it but as time went by the bad feelings smoothed over and the deal was forgotten about. My dad never mentioned it again. That was about 1949 or 50. My dad retired from the Navy around 1962 and the guy that put the land deal together was also retired and still friends with my dad an our family although he went on to become very wealthy. As it turned out my dad went out and borrowed a few thousand from a number of friends just so that he could get into that land deal and never said a word about it to my mom or any of us. It was in the mid 70's, I was living in Colombia, South America at the time, when my dad came home one night an told my mom the secret that he had been keeping all those years. 12 guys had put up about 4 thousand apiece and bought some acreage on the outskirts of Las Vegas. My dad's end was over $200,000. I wasn't there at the time and got the story second hand much later on but my mom took the proceeds from my dad and bought AT&T and GM stock with it and let the dividends and the stock splits ride. They never touched the stock or a nickel of the dividends except to turn them back into the stock. They still own those shares except that now it has become a pretty large pile.