868-7294

by Arthur George Ware

Click HERE to return to Arthur's homepage

All this talk of the past as verifiable: names, dates distances covered and things said or left untold. this website is and should be about adding flesh to the bones of the raw dates and names of our family tree. We can usually gather with some certainty the names of our ancestors. The dates of their births and the time and place of their deaths can be found. But the question remains: WHO WERE THEY? Let's all enjoy the mix of fact and fiction that comes with the telling and retelling of our family story.

For me, growing up in Connecticut, the past was ever present in the wood behind our house. You can walk in the woods in Connecticut and stumble upon a broken and overgrown stone wall deep in what a young mind might think is primordial forest. You did not think much about the reclaimed farmland, or the economic shift of food production from the small family farms of New England to the farm industry of the mid west. But you did know that the forest was haunted. You did know that the stone walls were there to assist you when you were hiding out or having a sword fight with your friends.

The past now seems further away, and of course the details are long gone. Did Michael really light a mattress on fire under the stone shack at the Gunnery that required the fire department to come? Did Haden actually put a hammer in my pillow that nearly knocked out a tooth because he saw it on a woody woodpecker cartoon? Could it be true that I still to this day remember the telephone number to the house that I grew up in and left 25 years ago? Why did we have such bad luck with our pets? (Atlas died crushed beneath a water dish, Almond Joy was taken out by Laura Eanes’s cat Blackie, Sadie drank antifreeze, Buffy was hit by a car, and how many of mom’s young ducklings met a raccoon late at night?)

Arthur with Almond Joy

Camp ducklings

ED- the Easter Duck

Almond Joy with Sadie

Arthur with Buffy

It has always been amusing to look back on the bits and pieces of the past that have stayed with us, and amazing to me to think of what small pieces of the present might stay with my sons. What might Timothy remember from school in Sao Paulo or Nicholas take from having Portuguese as his first language? Only time may tell but one thing is for sure, when they are writing stories for www.weavetheweb.net in 30 years, they will have a rich tapestry of family lore to draw from and they may not have to rely on their fantastic imaginations to reconstruct the past the way their parents and grandparents do!