SD, a teaspoon of vinegar will cure those hiccoughs!:-)

I know what you mean about collecting oral histories and feeling wimpy. I have had to keep my mouth shut, and as you do, focus on the positive. Most of the people I am talking about are extremely old and pretty set in their ways; I don't think much I'd say would change their outlook, but I still consider their knowledge of "the way it was" as priceless and worthy of my time and taping. Most of what they share is so interesting and full of the little things whihc made up daily life, so different from what we know nowadays.

Even from the time my kids were growing up. I was talking to my neice the other day about her 3 yr old watching movies on the vcr. I think it was my defining moment as an "old-timer". I mentioned that of course we didn't have vcr's when she and her cousins were kids. She was silent for a moment and then exclaimed, "Oh, yeah! Wow, I hadn't thought of that!" We then had a lovely little conversation about life before video on demand.

My grandmother was a little girl when her family moved from Kansas to Colorado in a covered wagon. She became a schoolteacher and fortunately wrote her memoirs when in her 70's and convalescing. I am still amzed to think she went from the wagon to the first telephone and cars to climbing down into a submarine in her early 70's and taking her first plane ride about the same time. Similarly my mother, wihtout the wagon, but still the early cars, party lines all the way to email.

I am sorry for rambling. There is just such history out there and everyday when I see the obituaries and read of another 90something who came to Wyoming as a kid and went to some rural ranch shool, started a feed store or whatever, I mourn the loss of their voice and memories, and those of their counterparts elsewhere.

My friend calls them "the salt of the earth". I remember that when one of them gets a bit closed-minded or on a subject which bothers me. Salt can rub a wound and burn like hell, but it can also cleanse and heal or add seasoning to life.

So....here's to all the Salts of the Earth!

katlaughing