Memory Lane Meanderings Continued - High School in TA

 I wanted to wrap up my reminisces of Terra Alta and my high school years, and we'll start by first talking about how we got there.

I mentioned that Mom had been a live-in caretaker for an 88-year-old man named Webby in the community of Mannheim, just across the Cheat from Rowlesburg, beginning around March of 1986.  Webby was ailing and in steep decline, and would pass away only a couple of months later - it was a shame because he was a nice man and I saw first-hand how he suffered then and it was heartbreaking to see.  Any rate, Webby's son-in-law who lived just up the street, Earl, had a mother who at that time was around 93 years old named Myrtle, and he needed a caretaker for her too and thought Mom would be perfect for that.  So, a couple of weeks after Webby's passing, Mom went up to Myrtle's first - Myrtle lived a few miles north of town on Salt Lick Road, closer to the community of Terra Alta than to Rowlesburg, and being I had to finish out a school year I decided to stay at Earl and his wife Dot's house in Mannheim until I finished school.  When my freshman year finished, I moved up with Mom to Myrtle's house on Salt Lick, and at first it was not a good experience, but in time I would settle in and it would lead to three of the best years of my life.  

The first impression of our new place up there on Salt Lick was how remote it really was.  While only a few miles from Terra Alta, it seemed like a world away.  The house was situated on about 10 acres of farmland that Earl owned, but Myrtle's POA was Earl's younger sister Opal, who lived closer.  Opal would come down about once a week to take Mom and Myrtle to the store, and that outing proved to be a highlight during those summer months.  I did have a little break in the monotony then as that summer we had both a VBS at the Baptist church I was part of in Rowlesburg, and later in the summer I was given a week at a church summer camp in the central part of the state near the town of Cowan.  However, the isolation of our new house initially was a bit rough for me to get used to, and I was wondering how I would survive the summer months there.  Thankfully all of that would soon change, as starting school at East Preston that September for my sophomore year turned out to be a good thing.  Once I started school there, I got involved in the high school band, in the German club, as well as also keeping myself busy with church as I launched into activities with my new Baptist church in Terra Alta - within a short time, I was also teaching a Sunday School class and would also come to be involved in leadership.  Church and school band were my social life essentially then, but a lot of other important things would begin to happen as well. 

The school year of 1986-1987 went off without a hitch, and I really found my place and was able to fit in well.  The following summer there - 1987 - was much better as I was able to really explore a lot of things.  What I remembered most about the summer then was how I could get out of the house, explore the surrounding area, and I got back into wildcrafting again as well as beginning to experiment with cooking.  That, and my musical tastes as well evolved somewhat as I began to really get into Stravinsky, Copland, and some other serious music along with my big band hobby, and I also forayed into gospel music as well - Black Gospel particularly.  Summer 1987 was good, in other words.  However, my junior year of high school - 1987-1988 - would also be an important year then as I was also introduced to the Armenians and Assyrians, as well as developing a very strong interest in Byzantine and Russian history.  Much of what would shape me as an adult would happen during the three years I lived on Salt Lick, and also Myrtle grew on me as well.  "Myrt" as we called her became a sort of new grandmother to me, and I really bonded closely with her during those years and that could be a whole other story in itself.  Summarily though, my high school years were good.

When I got to the summer of 1988, then I was able for the first time in about 10 years to go visit Dad - he got me a plane ticket and I was able to go to Georgia with him for two weeks.  I had my first summer job there too, as I was helping Dad with his business - he was in home construction, and I learned how to install drywall and a few other practical skills while earning a few bucks in the process.  It was also my first trip to Silver Springs in Florida, and little did I know that just four years from that point I would actually be living there, as my future mother-in-law had a home there.  However, at this point I was still in high school, getting ready for college, and all that was on my mind was the future I planned to have.  A part of me misses some of that great optimism and excitement I had then, and I even envy high school seniors today who have that same feeling - you feel like the world is yours and that you want to grab any opportunity out there.  Of course, when reality sets in later, it can be sobering, but the optimism and hope are nice feelings.  Let me reflect on that a bit as it has a lot to do with this period in my life.

I often miss a lot about my younger days, especially when I look at how much older I truly am now.  Many of the people who were part of my life then are now long gone - they passed away in increasing numbers over the past 25 years or so.  I've lost many friends, family, teachers, and even a few classmates from those days, and it is at times a sober reminder that I am not immortal either, at least in this body.  I remember so many good things about those years - one perhaps was the excitement of getting a lot of mail then.  While I had limited funds to actually order and pay for things, I did have a pen, a good knack for writing, and eventually I even found an old beat-up typewriter I put to use.  At that time I was into my newfound Christian faith, and was determined to become "super-Baptist."  So, I was writing practically every Baptist denomination I could think of, and ended up with a banker's box full of literature.  I think I was probably one of the first kids in my high school to actually do a Social Studies fair project on American Baptists, and I placed.  I almost placed a few years earlier when I was a freshman in Rowlesburg, as I made quite the impression on the judges with my work on American big bands I did.  Had I not contracted the flu then and missed the finalist display I placed in, I could have probably won that - but I still placed, so that is what mattered.  My Baptist project did well too, as I ended up with I believe a second-place in that, so I didn't complain.  The Social Studies fairs then were a way to basically put into a focused project your personal interests, and in doing so it meant you were also applying knowledge you gained.  In college, I would do this more, as a stack of term papers, portfolios, and a dissertation all bound in volumes behind where I am sitting now testify.  This provides a good point for a segue way, so let's chase that momentarily.

Over the years, I have often been accused of being a packrat or a hoarder as I keep anything and everything of significance.  Had water damage and some other things not happened in Kirby, I would have probably saved a lot more than I did too.  I save every letter, every card, every calendar, every journal, every school project, etc., and I have them all organized into binders in bins either in my closet here now or under my bed.  The cumulative amount of that I have saved currently fills about 15  8-gallon bins, and additionally I have taken to publishing bound volumes of school projects I have done over the years as well as even these blogs.  While it does sound a bit hoarder-like, in reality it isn't as I only preserve those things of significance - there is a lot of rich memory in old cards and letters, and more technical information in tax, school, employment, and medical documentation I have hung onto as well. While living here in Baltimore, I don't have the access to the bins as conveniently as I used to have, as it is a bit of work dragging them out and adding stuff to them, so any recent documentation over the past couple of years I am organizing in a file box to put into the designated binders later.  I have also inherited a lot of Mom's and Dad's records as well since they passed on, and have those organized also.  All of those bound record volumes will be placed in a large cabinet once I am settled in a more permanent housing location, and they will stay there for a long time to come.  At this point, I wanted to explain how a file system works for me.

I am a big believer in having a sort of personal archive of any and all documentation, and my go-to choice of housing is a large, fire-proof metal cabinet.  A fire-proof, weather-proof cabinet serves as a sort of informal vault, and when I was in Hagerstown I had two of them for just this purpose, as well as two others for my music collection.  The unfortunate circumstance of our move necessitated leaving them behind, which was a tragic loss in all honesty, but I had little choice.  In the future, there are stipulations for a cabinet system like this I will implement.  For one, the cabinets must be on wheels and readily mobile - if I have to rent a house for much longer, this is a wise idea because it will eliminate a lot of logistic headaches.  I am also planning on at least two of these in the future - one will be for the record binders I have tax histories, employment and medical records, etc., stored in, as well as placing my small safe in it too.  The second cabinet will be strictly for photo albums and journal books, as there are many more of those.  Being I am now the unofficial custodian of all of Mom's and Dad's old pictures, as well as a growing collection of my own, they need to be housed properly.  I want to eventually created digitalized records as well, as I would love to scan everything onto flash drives to store safely in case I need them.  As I begin to transition from blogging and journaling to working on the life story project, I am also planning on eventually creating content sheets for each of my binders and really organizing them properly.  This will be a monumental project in itself, but it needs to be done.  I also want a section in one of the cabinets for all my family and local history books too, as right now they are on a bookshelf but they deserve to be kept separate as they are deeply personal.  My family and local history books, my blogs, and my own published work currently occupies 80% of a four-tier small shelf behind me, and while I am not anticipating many more volumes to be added to that, they still deserve their own space though.  Those local and family history books are integral to writing my own story, which is why they deserve premium housing.  I want to eventually do a tutorial article here about how to organize a file system based on my method, and I think that would be a good resource especially for those who are interested in their own family histories.   I divulged a lot of my personal planning here, and if you are reading this and are wondering where the hell I am going with all that, it does connect to the memory lane strolls too - those "strolls" would not be possible without meticulous record-keeping, in all honesty.  One's memory - even for the best of us - can only go so far and you need to access work that directly relates to the topic, and in constructing background information for what I share with you here, it is reliant upon many local sources of which I may do a historiography on later to give an idea of how to research local history as I have.  And, that leads to some further thoughts.

When other people publish work, it can be a valuable resource for providing a background to your own, and your work in turn may fill in some gaps for someone else.  I rely on a pretty extensive shelf of family histories, local histories, and books on topics of local interest to supplement my own thoughts, as it does help.  There are some things, for instance, I may have been too young to recall details on, so works like that help tremendously.  Also, the availability of online resources is good too, and I have greatly utilized those.  If an online source has some significance, I tend to also print it out and GBC it as its own book as a good fingertip reference if necessary, and I have amassed a few volumes of those as well.  Given I am the type of person who wishes to capture everything about a topic, I do research extensively, but admittedly at times I do cut corners where I maybe shouldn't.  I am now thinking as I write this that perhaps a good guide would be in order to provide some tips on what I do to preserve research and such.  Others have done this with a degree of success, and perhaps maybe it is time I think about a more technical and practical resource as well.   I will explore that again at some point.  

At any rate, I suppose this wraps up both a memory lane meandering as well as a few insights as to how I organize information, so I feel this is a good place to conclude.  Thank you for allowing me to ramble, and we will see you again soon.