Great great granpaw Simpson died at Valley Forge. The death certificate list frostbite as cause of death. Great great granpaw Shaw fought with Jean Lafitte against the British. Up until that saving grace moment he was a pirate and smuggler. Big daddy Ingram, my great grandfather, fought in the civil war against Northern Agression. The first memories I have of him were of a red eyed old man drooling tobacco in a rocking chair. The photo's I have of his younger days are amazing. He never paid a penny of income tax, and his 1851 colt navy was always within reach. I still have that gun.

Paw Paw Ingram was born in the year of our Lord 1899, the youngest of twelve children born to Big Daddy and his full blood Cherokee wife, who had taken the Christian name of Rachel. Waxahachie Texas was a cotton town, consisting of a gin and a general store. Big Daddy made his miserly living as a sharecropper, living hand to mouth until the flu plauge of 1917 took his wife and three of his children.

Prohabition came along and Big Daddy soon realized there was lots more money in moonshining than sharecroping. Meanwhile back in east Texas Great Granpa Kuykendall was cattle ranching on a Spanish land grant which had already been in the family for nearly 100 years.

Paw Paw son tired of the life of a moonshine runner and taking two of the family mules and the wagon, migrated to Carthage Texas. A not inconsiderable journey by mule power. Here he met and married Ida May Harrison, great neice of President Harrison. That is President of the United States. He sired three daughters and a son before the big war broke out, having riden out the depression sharecropping cotton for doc Wynne. At the age of 42 he enlisted in the marines and set forth for the Pacific theater to fight the Japanese. He fought in all the big ones, Iwo Jima, Guam, Guadacanal.

After the war the ex bootlegger-exmarine retuned to the States with a devout belief in God. To his dying day he would swear only the intervention of God had saved his life in numerous battles. He went to work for the State of Texas as a heavy equipment operator building the state highway network, and became a baptist minister over a small East Texas country church. To my grandfather God and Country were all. In that order.

I was born in 1957, I'm a classic. Graduated in 76, the bicentenial year. Paw Paw made sure we had a Christian upbringing in his church, and that we had a firm moral compass upon which to build our lives. I have never yet met a better man, and have no doubt that I never will. the hardships he endured as a young man and as an adult make our life seem like a bed of roses, yet he never uttered even a single sentence of complaint.

We have the root stock bred into us to handle whatever Y2K can deliver, and I have faith we will.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), December 18, 1999

Answers

Sounds like the "right stuff" to me.

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), December 18, 1999.

Good post, Nik. Pionts out the oft forgotten DUTY we have to HONOR the sacrafices of our ancestors, so that we could be here today. And that we have the same DUTY to our children; to be prepared for anything, so they may carry the legacy forward into the future

Godspeed,

-- Pinkrock (aphotonboy@aol.com), December 18, 1999.

Thanks, Nik. You have just described the "nobility" of the American experiment.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), December 18, 1999.

Krushev,

Thanks for the post. Did you serve?

Best Regards,

-- Tom McDowell (bullriver@montana.com), December 18, 1999.

No Tom, I tried but I was born with a gimp leg and couldn't pass the Physical. The Air Force offered me a ROTC scholarship based on my academic and ASVAB scores, and it was a sad day for me indeed when I found out I wouldn't be wearing those wings. I did pull a three months in the Texas State Guard, but quit when I figured out all they did was eat doughnuts and drink coffee at the local armory. :-)

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), December 19, 1999.