Monday Memories

Last Friday my elementary and high school classmates, Sylvia and Dave, were in Columbus to attend a cousin's wedding, so we got together at their hotel. We had just seen each other at our class reunion in July.



I have fond memories of their parents and remember their contributions to our little community. Sylvia's parents lived on a farm when we were very young and she attended a rural school. We attended the same church and her cousin JoElla and I both lived in Forreston when I was in elementary school and later roomed together in college. Later her parents and my parents were neighbors on Lincoln Street. Sylvia had recently had the opportunity to take a look at the home in Forreston (of JoElla's parents) where we all played when we were about 7 or 8. I hadn't thought about that house for years, but in my mind's eye was able to do a walk through and see the kitchen (which still had a hand pump in the 1940s) and where grandma was sitting when we'd come in from school, and the big porch.

I remember Sylvia's parents as both being talented writers, her dad having a column in the town newspaper, and her mom writing a number of small historical booklets concerning the area. Her mother, Ada, must have invented the modern hobby of "scrapbooking." I remember when I was maybe 11 years old being amazed at the artistic chronicle of Sylvia's life her mother had kept--in our family, photographs were thrown into a box. I finally assembled them into several albums in the early 1980s.

Dave's parents followed his school sports closely, which means they also included the rest of us with rides to the games and home parties. His mother had a wonderful sense of humor and I never met anyone who didn't like her. Our parents had known each other either from high school, college or work before we were born. They are all gone now, but not forgotten.