David Hockney, becoming, in his sunset years one of England's more famous artists. He has returned to his homeland, a place still filled with memories, after spending most of his life painting and photographing the light and colors of Southern California. His work, now selling at great prices punctuated by the swimming pools and bodies of the “beautiful people”. Memories of the past, he has exchanged the “jet-set” for the pastorals of homeland.
This writer becomes so depressed knowing that he is the only person on earth, from his own family, the community in which he was reared, who knows anything of their past. Most did not care, just thinking of today. Most think life 100, 150, 200 years ago, was the same as today, travel, commerce, communication. They think there were always paved roads, telephones, power lines, grocery stores. There were few roads, mostly paths in the country, each family was forced to be self-sufficient. I would talk about my family's community store, a barn-like structure, a few shelves for commodities available such as flour and sugar. The old cider mill, used by my great grandfather to produce vinegar. It should have been preserved, just as the old cotton gin building, put together with wooden pegs. So sturdy, I can still remember it's refusal to come down. You would grind your own coffee in a coffee mill, a spinning wheel for cloth. I remember the two surreys (horse-drawn two seat buggies) rotting with the arrival of vehicles.
In this day of plasticity, cheap transparent cellophane, some will not believe that glass was so expensive, expensive to have windows in your house. Glass in the front door, a sign of prosperity. Windows in barns and many homes were solid shutters, a sign of success was the pump organ, later the piano, and even later the Gramophone-Victrola in a home. I recently sold my collection of Edison cylinder recordings. Of course there were no canned goods, no cardboard boxes, glass canning jars, a real treasure.
I become even more depressed thinking of the antique furniture, thrown out or given away to bring in bright and shiny veneer. Chairs were valuable, people sat around the table on homemade benches. I recently sold a homemade fireplace chair and another homemade chair to a collector in Canada. Only a blind person can appreciate a chiming clock, and I do remember the large chiming clocks in the homes of my Grandparents, clocks which their decedents did not want, nor their furniture. They preferred to throw out the carefully made bed quilts for machine made blankets, iron skillets, real pottery for plasticized “dishes” which they had the audacity to call china.
I am disgusted to think that many relatives were much more interested in filling their bellies at family gatherings and other times than preserving the antiquarian collections and memories of those with whom they will never have further contact, much like a forgotten family cemetery, weeds and bushes, overturned tombstones.
Recently, I gave two ancient covered bowls, brought over from England with the arrival of my people on the New Jersey shores, founders of Morristown, to the heritage room of a local college, I did not get a thank you, faculty and students at this college think there has always been fast food restaurants.
In my ancestral church, I remember the cut glass pitcher, silver goblets in a time when many ”so-called” believing church members have never participated at the Lord's table. These like precious-expensive-photograophs of old saints, should have been preserved.
Christ told us to remember Him at His table, the Lord's table, not at Christmas, Easter, feast days, but at His table remembering His precious blood shed for all sin, past present, future. His body, stripes, all sickness-healing, past, present, future. (Isaiah 53) We show our love by this remembrance and if we love, we can hardly wait to remember him at His table. Don’t forget the pit from which you were dug. (Isaiah 51:1) No matter how humble, your home, your church, your school, and those who guided you, keep memories alive.
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