How The Old Folks Are At Home

We have visitors in from Montana this week.  They have come to visit my grandmother on my dad's side.  She's from Montana and is the aunt to the three girls who've come to visit.  This picture is of Mill Iron where they all came from.  As you can see, it's still a land of dirt roads, prairie, and cattle ranches.  

They asked me to record my grammie for them telling the stories she remembers of different family members and places they'd like more information on.  My Grammie is the last of a large family.  All her brothers and sisters have died off and so if they want to know anything about that era, they have to find out from her.

I found the stories interesting, not because I knew many of the people she spoke about, because really, I don't know many people from this side of the family - they lived so far away.  It was because she talked about a way of life that's foreign to me and even to them even though life where they live is almost just as foreign to me.  Riding horses to get to school, one room schools with all the grades in one class, and just living on a ranch milking goats and hunting and all that stuff.  It's just so different than my life in the city.

I'm finding the older I get the more I enjoy hearing about these times from so long ago.  One thing I heard the other day at work was the phrase, "Come back when you ain't borrowing fire", which apparently is a phrase many people back in the woods still say.  It comes from a time when people used coal to heat their house and their wasn't matches, so they'd go next door to borrow fire when they let their fire go out at home.  So, they had to hurry home before the coals went out of course and couldn't stay long to talk.

I suggest everyone go talk to an old person this week.  Do it!