A persons word is their bond

[HudsonHawk]

I'm sorry to hear that.

Eh. She was who she was. Everyone thought she was mean, but she's family, what are you going to do? She ate five (not four, not six) vanilla wafers for breakfast every day, but only the kind that came in a cellophane bag. She refused to eat them out of a box. She dipped Navy brand snuff, and always kept a spit jar in one dress pocket (she always wore these cotton sun dresses with two big pockets in the front) and a jar of "salve" in the other. Salve and Jack Daniel's were the only remedies she ever thought useful. They were like her medicinal duct tape. I never remember her laughing or smiling. I would guess she had a hard life, being born in 1893 and raising six children as a sharecropper's wife, but no one else seemed to be that ornery.

 

[emigran]

Our family ALWAYS played some kind of card/dice/board game for penny ante after Sunday dinners and Holidays...
Hy ya gotta be in it to win it...!

 

[tonyb]

I am reminded, two days removed from Fathers Day, that parents/grandparents/great grandparents, etc. are different things to different people.

I was raised by a lying, cheating, philandering, violent stepfather who could also be quite charming and generous and entertaining. As I heard and read fond reminiscences of him this past Sunday (he croaked last August), I found myself thinking (but not saying), oh, if you only knew.

Those pleasant recollections of him are no less reliable than mine, or those of the people whose faces turn sour at the mere mention of his name. (I've had people who were burned by him in one manner or another light into me, as though I were responsible for his shifty ways. I just put up my hands and say, "You aren't telling me anything I don't already know. If you got a couple of hours to kill, pull up a chair and let me regale you with some other tales of my dear old man.")

 

[tonyb]

I have an uncle who, in recent decades, has become quite the friend and confidant. I wasn't all that taken with him when I was a kid, but after his wife (my mom's sister) died, in 1989, he and I discovered genuine commonality. We are superficially quite different, but we have harmonious visions of the world and how it might be made better.

He had a section of his colon removed last week. Stage 1 cancer. The surgeons are thinking they got it all. He calls it "a bump in the road." I'm very relieved.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Here's a photo of my Dad taken in 1931 at age 26....


1905-1984

We were very close throughout his life. A very kind, loving, practical very manly man but hardcore if he or his family were treated unfairly. Super intelligent ( over my head ). Aircraft designer during WW2 and mechanical engineer/artist the rest of his life. He and his father always stressed that 'Your word IS your bond'. That was instilled in me and relevant to this day, even if others cannot be counted upon to return the favor.
Dad & my Mother divorced when I was two but I came to live with him and my Grandmother when I was twelve. I now miss them both dearly.
HD

 

[Paisley]

I used to think "word is your bond" was the rule in the small town I grew up in, but I had my thinking corrected pretty fast when I took over the bookkeeping for the family gas station when I was 15. When I got a look at the "accounts receivable" drawer, the first thing I saw was hundreds of unpaid bills dating back to the late 1940s, many of them incurred by Prominent People In Town, including a number of wealthy summer complaints, several selectmen, a couple of town managers, and the principal of my high school.

The conclusion I had to draw from this was that "word is your bond" worked only if you were willing to be an SOB about collecting from those who could afford to pay but didn't want to bother. Unfortunately, my grandfather was not an SOB.

Reminds me of Scarlett O'Hara (an SOB) putting a sign in her shop that read, "The war is over. Don't ask for credit."