Make sure your children get a chance to learn history from someone who experienced it first hand, if you are lucky enough to know someone who lived through important times in our countries past. Unfortunately, the elderly are starting to die off before it can be recorded for posterity.
Remember all you learned from all the older people who helped to create our country? Have you let your children get a chance to learn from these people while they are still able to share their knowledge? History told to you by someone who lived it themselves is much more valuable than we will realize until all the elderly have passed away.
With all the killings that have been going on recently, apparently no one ever explained to these young people, that violence normally does not solve anything. It just creates more violence. Young should not be taught to use weapons until they are old enough to fully deal with the consequences violence causes.
One of the most memorable assignments I received in grade school was to interview someone who lived during the Great Depression and find out what their lives were really like back then. I interviewed a woman my grandpa referred to as Granny Teat. She told me about dating habits back then. Apparently they went out in groups to help save on gas and automobile wear and tear. She never went out with the man she would end up marrying. Apparently that was taboo back then.
I had met Granny Teat many times over at my grandpa's home, so she knew me and spoke to me the way my grandpa used to, never hiding the truth. Because he knew I would eventually find out the truth anyway.
The woman I was named after owned the local funeral home. It became a family joke that she was big Jeanette. She was the size I would grow up to be. Nobody knew that at the time. I learned a lot from big Jeanette and my grandpa about funerals. Grandpa was the grounds keeper at the local cemetery where I grew up. I helped him take care of the cemetery, whenever I had the chance. When big Jeanette ended up in the local nursing home grandpa and I would go visit her and let her know that the cemetery was still being looked after.
Kids today do not get the chance to meet with the people who helped make this country what it is today. They do not get a chance to visit factories where the products we consume are manufactured. They are learning to kill before they have really experienced life for themselves.
How can the children dream up new products if they don't get to see how existing ones are made? Who knows who the next Henry Ford will be?
Grandpa taught me to build my first truck from the ground up. We started using a junked truck frame from the local dump. It was the frame of a 73 Chevy pick-up truck. Most of the parts that went into the truck came from the local dump as well. I learned to drive on the farm when I was around 12 years old. I started building my truck shortly after that. I was driving around the farm regularly at 13 years old with blocks on the brakes do I could reach them.
Today's vehicles can not be repaired by normal person's garage. I miss my old truck. All the work I put into it under the watchful eyes of my grandpa. Unfortunately, he passed away. My brothers ruined the truck we built while I was away at college.
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