Family Traditions

Family Traditions. Family traditions that go back a long ways play a part in most of our lives. For example, my great Grandfather fought in the Civil War. In fact, my father's father's side fought as a captain for the north and my father's mothers side fought for the south and was related to General Bullard.

After the civil war my great grandfather settled in Kansas and started a Drug store and at that time got most of his herbal medicines from local Indian medicine men and all these herbal remedies were gathered by indians he hired to gather them from the reservations. As time went one things changed but my Great Grandfather's drugstore ran under his supervision until the 1920's when he sold it and retired.

My grandfather was one of about 5 kids and was a baseball player who was nicknamed "Pinky" because of his red hair. He was a very tall, wirey, very strong and intense person, who as my father would say could "fight off about 10 men if they rubbed him the wrong way". In other words my grandfather was one of these "Never say die" kind of people that you either made friends with, left them alone, or ran. There really wasn't another option. His favorite hobbies were: Bear hunting, elk hunting, deer hunting and being alone in the wilderness for a winter at a time running a trap line. The wilderness was his religion and he tended to look upon people who went to church as mental and emotional weaklings. I think he was born about 1880. He passed away when I was about 22 in 1970. He had a mining claim in Idaho and a home where his wife lived in Seattle and spent 6 months a year in Idaho(spring, summer and early fall until the first snows) in Idaho on his 2000 acre mining claim that he had for 40 years. When the forest rangers tried to take away his claim when the laws changed around 1960 he shot one of their hats off with a 30 odd 6 rifle(basically a bolt action M1). They left him alone after that because they knew he was functioning according to the old cowboy value of the pre-1920s of "might makes right" of the old west. He died when a wheel bearing froze on his panel truck(now called a used Forest Service Van that he had purchased).

By the time my father grew up he had had enough mental, emotional and physical abuse so he decided to join a church to try something else. He was also mad at his dad because he wouldn't let him go to college even though he was a straight A student and in Junior high had gotten the highest grades in math and penmanship in the state of Washington. I remember being psychologically tortured by my father until I cried at about 8 or 9 years of age because I did not inherit my father's penmanship skills. I wasn't an artist( mostly because I had been left handed and forced to become right handed). The end result was that I am mostly ambidextrous now even though I continue to write with my right hand. However, my father had learned from his experience to never discipline me physically, only my mother was allowed to do that. This resulted in a very strange experience for me in that I am much more upset by what people say to me than I am if they actually hit me. I have found this tricky to deal with in my life.

What I most love about the family traditions that I was given and inherited is a very deep love of nature. Like my Grandfather my religion is the wilderness. I think it is because nature is real and I find most people in religions to be mostly self deluded like drug addicts tend to be. Therefore, when I deal with churchgoing people I'm as skeptical of them automatically as I am of obvious homeless alcoholics and drug addicts. Only the churchgoing people tend to be much worse because they tend to be so extremely self deluded that often they are a danger to both themselves and to society without knowing it. So I find them the scariest single segment of society for this. Ministers that molest women and children of all religions are just symptomatic regarding the truth of what I'm saying.

Relatives recently sent me a large box of photos that date back as far as 1900. Though many of the people and the meanings and relationship have since vanished, still I can recognize grandfather, grandmother, aunts and uncles and all their kids from birth on to the present. Since many of these photos I hadn't seen since I was about 4 years old with my father's mother(grandma) I saw them all in a completely new light since I am not 4 anymore but almost 60.