L'aura del Campo

My grandparents' wedding

The prompt: "If you could have personally witnessed one event in history, what would you want to have seen?"

Wars, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions... all a bit too much for me. Joyful events? Just as overwhelming, but at least no one died. Independence day in India? That would've been today, 65 years ago, August 15th, 1947.

Therefore...

My grandparents wedding. I never knew my grandmother and can't remember my grandfather. They were 35 and 25 ...ish when my father was born so it would've been in the 1910's. I have no idea where either... Dad was born in West Virginia and his folks were from Baltimore and the Jamestown, New York area. I suspect Jamestown or nearby Pennsylvania. Lots of family on my grandmother's side in that area.

Ah... the Olde Swedes! My poor grandfather... did they look him over for 5 years, wait to welcome him into the family? My Aunt Mandy would've been young and probably there. She was around 20 when my dad was born. Did she and her sister ...not to forget her older siblings, some born in Sweden, sit there and speak Swedish? Who knows....

It was another time and place. The automobile was still fairly uncommon and trains ran everywhere. Ethnic America (the immigrants from Poland, Italy, Ukraine) hadn't mixed in yet. People still thought that if you worked hard you could make it. Native Americans were forgotten on reservations; Negroes weren't considered first-class citizens. The culture was rife with taboos and women were just getting their voice.

The city I was born in, Buffalo, was one of the most important cities in America! It was the place to "shuffle off" to.

Ah, to be an invisible fly on the wall (invisible because I'm sure they had fly-swatters...).

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