Only time can determine our tales

Sometimes I wonder what stories our children and grandchildren will tell to their own progeny. Will rap music be played on the golden oldies station? Will they all need hearing aids? Will they wax poetic about cat videos? Will they miss spending hours on end playing video games as a way to relax and unwind? Will they miss Fox news as much as I miss the reliability of Walter Cronkite?

There is no answer to that. Neither you nor I can predict the future. Every time I think the country as a whole is going to Hades in a hand basket, something else will remind me that most people are good if given a chance.

One thing I hope our children will remember is that it is never appropriate to ridicule others. Let me repeat that. It is never appropriate to ridicule anyone for any reason. It accomplishes nothing other than to indicate that the person doing so has no empathy and their moral compass is not only broken but shattered.

I wish I could say that at some time in the near future the twin evils of war and poverty will be solved. Unfortunately, we humans are a contrary bunch. We get all upset over injustice, both real and perceived, then we join the fray to bring the infidels to justice. If food and supplies meant for the poor never get delivered to the intended recipient, well, that’s just the way things are.

When I was small, we lived on a 56-acre family farm. I still remember the softness of a newborn calf’s coat and the fire in its mother’s eyes if I dared to touch her baby. I remember fields, Twin Creek, wild raspberries and a woods full of morel mushrooms.

If there was conflict in the house, there was peace outdoors. The air was clean and clear. There were clouds of pink, white and blue butterflies. There was no end of places to explore and flowers to pick. It was a wonderful place to grow up.

There were still drug addicts, but they remained out of sight and out of mind. The idea of “fake news” didn’t exist. As always, there was a war going on. Our generation’s motto of make love not war wasn’t enough to keep us out of Vietnam or any of the other conflicts since then.

My grandmother told of walking behind the plow and breaking the clods with her bare feet. She told of hitching the horses to the buggy so her father could ride to the neighbor’s house to borrow their phone to call the doctor. She talked of washing clothes on a washboard.

I tell stories of riding on the tractor fender and being convinced that one of the tires was going to cut off my fingers. I have never hitched a horse to a buggy or anything else, I have had a phone in every place I’ve lived. I have never washed clothes on a washboard. I much prefer a washing machine to a washboard.

So much has changed in my lifetime. Some of it has been good and others, not so much. In this land of free speech there are certain words that are best left unspoken and things that are better left undone.

My grandkids might tell of going fishing and hunting with their parents and grandfather. They have a nearby creek to explore. I am positive they will see and experience things I have never thought of.

We are born with a world full of possibilities. Only time will tell how it all turns out.