Riverbank Legend
Most families have legends, tales they have nurtured and treasured through the years. One of mine is the legendary love story between my mother's parents. Their marriage lasted longer than fifty years, and it began in Louisville. My gramma always spoke the name with a kind of preferential reverence. This was "her" town, I thought... Although our family has always been very close, very much a communicative one, the story of her marriage and engagement is still a bit obscure. I ran across a treasure in the form of a diary or journal. There on the pages of a little pink corduroy journal, in my gramma's perfect up and down spikey script, are the words of her love story.
I have told this story before on my blogpost called "When a Man Loves a Woman," and I love it so much. Her visit with a sister in law to get in touch with gramma's brother in Camp Taylor. My son and I were there on the city streets where Camp Taylor once stood. I found a website that showed the types of barracks. On their visit, God had them get off the trolley at the wrong corner, where a young soldier, later to be called my Pawpaw volunteered to help the two lovely young women find the lost husband/brother. In Gramma's journal, she writes that my grandfather hung around until they finally had to ask him to come to dinner with them. Evidently they drove to the river, and there with the beauty of a new place, the exquisite expanse of nature, they fell in love...
Details about their later elopement have never surfaced, and they won't now... But it was always a goal of mine to visit this magical riverbank, this awestruck town, this little bit of my history.... This post, on the eve of Father's Day, is dedicated to the love of man and woman, the inspiration they have to create a new family where there was none... My grandparents, my parents... all of you with beautiful dads both here on earth and in Heaven.
Here are the beautiful bridges spanning that River here and there around Louisville, bordering the Indiana where my grandmother was born. We saw the top of a riverboat and heard its calliope music... I can see how a young couple could manage to fall in love with each other surrounded by such new excitement...
I have told this story before on my blogpost called "When a Man Loves a Woman," and I love it so much. Her visit with a sister in law to get in touch with gramma's brother in Camp Taylor. My son and I were there on the city streets where Camp Taylor once stood. I found a website that showed the types of barracks. On their visit, God had them get off the trolley at the wrong corner, where a young soldier, later to be called my Pawpaw volunteered to help the two lovely young women find the lost husband/brother. In Gramma's journal, she writes that my grandfather hung around until they finally had to ask him to come to dinner with them. Evidently they drove to the river, and there with the beauty of a new place, the exquisite expanse of nature, they fell in love...
Details about their later elopement have never surfaced, and they won't now... But it was always a goal of mine to visit this magical riverbank, this awestruck town, this little bit of my history.... This post, on the eve of Father's Day, is dedicated to the love of man and woman, the inspiration they have to create a new family where there was none... My grandparents, my parents... all of you with beautiful dads both here on earth and in Heaven.
Here are the beautiful bridges spanning that River here and there around Louisville, bordering the Indiana where my grandmother was born. We saw the top of a riverboat and heard its calliope music... I can see how a young couple could manage to fall in love with each other surrounded by such new excitement...
Comments
xo,
RJ