In November 1983 we taped my grandfather reminiscing about his childhood. My mother (his daughter) asked him the following question: Did you like to read a lot when you were young?
He answered:
Well, I, yes. In this one room school they had a library there. The whole library was in one bookcase. And as far as I knew that was all the books there were. And so I resolved that I was going to read all the books that there were. There was just the one bookcase full there. I thought if I did one a year I could get through it. (laughter from assembled family) I was amazed to find that there were a lot more books than that so I had to give up that idea. I was fairly good in arithmetic and I was fascinated by numbers and fascinated by how numbers kept on building. And I didn't yet get the concept that there was an unlimited number of numbers. And so these numbers, I knew that they kept on going, so I didn't quite know how far they went, so I thought 'well now, I'm going to write them all down and find out how many there are,' (laughter) I know. This was when I was in grade school. I never got that question resolved.Leo Tanghe (1909-1998)
2 comments:
You're so lucky to have this!
Yes - and my great-uncle once made everyone write their autobiography - we have great life stories of people who are gone - my great-grandmother wrote hers only about six months before she died.
Post a Comment