Family

My Paternal Line

Henry Skinner, 1822-unknown is pictured here. He is my great, great-grandfather on my all-father’s line. Born in England, he lived in Pilton, a suburb of Barnstaple on the Atlantic Coast of Devon. Presumably from a few miles north of there in the aptly named village of Muddiford, he packed up his family and booked passage for one and all to Canada on a sailing ship.

Every generation remakes their immediate world. Dress, slang, music and social norms all change. Those changes then ripple downstream and the next, next generation builds, or deconstructs and refabricates, on that. After half a century, the 60 years olds say they hardly recognize the world while the even older generations say nothing. The world has become an alien place to them.

This is a glass-cased version of why our Dad carried in a metal tube inside his coat pocket all the time. (Important detail: he’s a surgeon.)

Home for spring break, her “let’s go to the range” request coincided with the Tuesday evening Nighthawks so I said, “Yes, if you’ll shoot your first competition.”

The shirt is one of many memorabilia I’ve collected over the years of Bullseye shooting at various clubs sandwiched in with business travels. It’s from the Old Colony club in Massachusetts. I was pleased to support their club through the nominal cost of this keepsake and while the Xs I shot that evening are long gone from my senior-ifying memory, the shirt lives on.

So go the lyrics to a song from The Fantastics. I know because I sang them in a local production many years ago.

Ebby was cook on a river towboat. They ran barges on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers; the work was hard and they ate well. Supplies would be radioed in a couple of hours before passing and then transferred from pilot (supply) boat to towboat without slowing. When Ebby’s biscuits were done, all work stopped except the wheelhouse.