Music of our live's

Last night on Randy Seavers Genea-Musings blog http://www.geneamusings.com/2009/09/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-your-all.html#links he did his Saturday night genealogy fun post.It was basically name your all time favorite song. It was great fun to read everyone's posts but I chickened out on participating. However it got me thinking about my mothers memorial service and the music c.d. I made for it. My mom Marie Francis Byers, b. 4-10-1927 died June 4,2006.She was cremated and we did a simple memorial at my brothers house.My brother and I talked about doing some music for the memorial.I sat down at my computer and strangely enough songs came flooding back to me.Songs I had not heard in 40 years,song titles my parents had said but I had never really heard the song. With the wonders of the internet I was able to make a c.d. of the songs our mother sang to us as children,like,"How much is that doggie in the window?"and "Que Sera Sera".I was able to hear for the first time a song my mother said was one of her favorites,one that she would hear at dances she attended before she married my father,"Cherry Pink and Apple-blossom White".Songs my parents played when we were kids like,"Make the World Go Away" and "Help me make it through The Night". It is amazing how much music can trigger memories,like scents,songs seem to capture moments in time in our lives and just hearing a few notes from a song can take us back to times,places and people who are no longer with us. I sometimes wonder about how much music was a part of my ancestors lives,what they listened to and played.I know one branch of my Castro family were very musically inclined and I believe there is a photo on my mothers side with my grandpa holding a guitar. I wonder, have others written down what music their parents liked?Your grandparents?These are the things that make these people real and alive and not just names and dates on a paper.It's never to soon the write our favorite songs down as well,thanks Randy!But I think I am going to have to go with my top ten-or twenty!

Truck Driver

My dad drove a truck.For most of my growing up years until he retired Vernon Ruse drove for the Anderson Cartage Co. out of Stockton CA.He tried long haul before I was born and for a bit when I was a baby but most of his life was spent driving up and down the valley on the then main road highway 99.In the years my dad drove a truck you loaded and unloaded it pretty much yourself.No air shocks or plush seats.It was a hard,physical job.But not as hard as the job it helped him escape from,working in the fields or cannery's.Cutting grapes or chopping cotton.Driving a tractor or laying irrigation pipe.It was a way out,and up.A union job.when that really meant something.Medical,a retirement,decent wages,and a turkey every Christmas.My parents often told me about when the truckers union went on strike for 6 months when I was very small,maybe a year or so old.My mom and dad cut grapes to make ends meet.They told me they set me in a high chair in the shade at the end of the row while they worked.We bathed in the river and slept in the car.All this is probably child abuse today but then it was survival,and the norm for farm workers children.My father and mother made sure it was temporary for us.My dad worked long hours and many days,he did not get to see much of us kids growing up,that was normal for family's in those days to.He did not have hobbies,he worked.The places he would talk about read like a litany of small town California-Merced,Madera,Colinga,Oakdale,Patterson,Vacaville,Dinuba and Kerman.Small towns that needed goods delivered in the days before Wal Marts and Superstores.I remember him talking about delivering appliances for the new housing subdivisions going in around Sacramento and Stockton.Delivering to the Army Depot.And a winter night around 1967-68 he came home from work late at night with two toes crushed by a 50 gallon drum.The company he worked for got a special order to do a emergency delivery to Travis Air base of inbalming fluid.They were loading it on planes for Vietnam because they were running out there.A drum had rolled off the hand truck during unloading and rolled over dad's foot.He never got the feeling back in those toes.
It remains my most vivid memory of the Vietnam war.