DO EARLY MEMORIES MEAN MORE?My wife wonders, "Why?"
Why do I care so much for this old house, in front of which my father took this group shot of our family. That's me, by the way... the little guy, standing beside my older brother, Kent, and my older sister, Marcia. Mom and Dad stand behind us. I wonder if Dad had any idea of how important that picture would turn out to be?
Until recently*, I thought this house was built specifically for Randolph Stewart McKinnon (1871-1935). He was my dad's father, my Grandfather, and a beloved member of the Randolph community. Click on this link to see my memorial to him on FindAGrave.com:
Randolph Stewart McKinnon memorial
Does an old house, which obviously 'has seen better days', deserve to be cared about and memorialized? My wife cannot understand my passion for my Old Randolph Home, and I can hardly blame her. She, after all, didn't spend the first 4-years of her life there. She didn't make trips with her parents 'back to Randolph' two or three times a year, to visit relatives, to pull fixtures from the old house, to go fishing in Big Creek or Little Creek, or just,... to visit, like I did.
My childhood is a vague memory, of course. I don't really remember the moment depicted in the picture above, as cameras meant nothing to me way back then.
Obviously, not all my memories of my youth are good ones, and not all of them were spent in Randolph at the old home, but somehow, all the good times now revolve around in my head, spinning slowly around each other, and always in the background, like it is in the picture above, is My Old Home in Randolph!
Somehow, the old house has taken on new meaning,... it has become a symbol of all the good times, and I hate to see it "perish". If I cannot save it from crumbling, which is likely, as I've had little luck so far in even contacting the present owners,... then, I hope, at least, to preserve it in pictures on this blog.
I'd love to do more. I would like very much to build a physical memorial, perhaps at the very spot on which I stand in the picture above. If I were rich, I'd do it myself, but life hasn't been that good to me. Perhaps, if you think this a worthy cause, perhaps you might consider a donation? Perhaps I'll create a fund, into which visitors to this blog might place a few dollars, to build that memorial one brick at a time.
I hope that, at least, the old house might be preserved as long as possible. Then, when it does eventually fall, or is 'taken down', I hope that the bricks might be saved. Perhaps they could be used to build the memorial I'm hoping for, so something of it will remain to educate my children about their heritage!
