In The Beginning

How DOES one begin a blog. Perhaps with just a simple description of what I'm going to put here.

I remember looking at my Grandmother after she died. She was 103 years old, but her face, calm and peaceful after the pain and discomfort of her last weeks in hospital, seemed so much younger. She'd had an unusual life, a life full of little adventures and trials. As I grew up I heard about what had gone on before, sometimes from her and sometimes from her daughter, my dearly loved Aunt Ella, known forever in the family as Auntie Lala because a baby, me, couldn't pronounce "Ella".

I heard stories, family legends in fact, about my Grandfather, Edward Valentine 'Val' Moody, and about Ella's childhood in Santa Cruz, California, a childhood full of sun and water and pranks and adventures. They were all vivid in her mind, as clear as if they'd happened only yesterday.

But looking down at my Grandmother I suddenly found myself wishing I could have just another week, another day, with her so that I could ask her about all the stories, her stories and family stories, that were lost now forever. They were a rich heritage and I wished then, and have wished often since then, that I'd paid more attention when I first heard some of them; that I'd written them down.

I realized that now I'm the repository of family legends, the tale teller. Those stories, and some of my own, grand events or trivial, are my children's and my grandchildren's heritage, and if I don't record them somehow, they'll disappear with my passing and be gone forever, and that would be a waste and a tragedy.

So I'll begin recording some of them here and there. Some of them will be stories about the fore-bearers, the people who, in some often mysterious way, made me who I am, and made my children who they are too. We owe them a lot. Other stories will just be tales from my own history, some funny, some sad. They'll be mostly the truth, at least as much as I can remember. Others may have just a little artistic license applied; after all, I AM partly Irish by extraction.  I'll welcome any comments. And I'll be eager to hear some stories and legends from other families. They're important too, the kind of glue that binds not only a family but a whole community together, and heaven knows we need that glue now.

So here we go ........

Captain Findley's Dirty Trick

Captain Findley, my great grandfather, was an unusual man. I don't know how he got the 'captain' attached to his name, but he was always referred to in the family legends as "Captain" Findley. He guide wagon trains across A the plains from St. Louis to northern California and 

 Oregon during the 1840s and 1850s, around the time of the gold rush and the great western movement in America. He had a reputation, even after he eventually settled around Wheatland, California, for being a very tough customer.

Family legend has it that on one of his expeditions as a wagon train 'Captain' he was guiding a bunch of tenderfeet when the train came to a river somewhere on the prairie. The river was in flood and when his train got there there was already a train of immigrants waiting for the river to subside so they could get across and continue their journey west.

"No problem!" Captain Findley told the two wagon trains. And he proceeded to show them how you could take the wheels of the big, wooden Conestoga wagons and turn them into miniature rafts. Captain Findley then, at great risk to life and limb, swam his horse across the swollen, rushing river pulling a rope. When he was on the other side he fastened the rope to a sturdy tree and one by one ferried his trains wagons across, using the rope as a guide and, I guess, a second rope to pull them over.

When his train was safely across and all hitched up and ready to proceed he looked back at the second train waiting on the other side and without a moments hesitation cut the rope and left the inexperienced settlers to figure out how to get across themselves. Members of his own train were shocked and upset at this callous act. "Why? Why did you do that?" they asked.

"Well," Captain Findley replied, "There's only enough grass between here and the mountains for one wagon train." There were no further questions.

They bred 'em tough in the 1840s.