ancestors, cont'd

Now that you've met my great-grandfather, meet my grandfather. Known to the family as "Pa," he travelled Kentucky in a mule-drawn wagon selling home products made by the Raleigh Company to farm families. This was before the days of the mail-order catalog, and the business was good enough to let him support a family with five children. He died before I was born but I've met little old ladies from Kentucky who remembered him as the "Raleigh Man."

Pa was also known in his small town as an expert on horses. They had a farmer's market in town on Saturdays, and if a buyer questioned the age of a horse they'd call him in. He could tell the age of a horse by looking at its teeth and, as the saying goes, his word was law on that subject.

He was also a loving family man, and a teetotaler. While I was getting this photo ready to post I spilled some red wine on my keyboard. It doesn't seem to have fried the keyboard but I hope that wasn't Pa's way of telling me he disapproved of my drinking.

I'm not suddenly into ancestor worship, here. I'm just amazed to have learned within the past couple of days that this photo and the one below exist, and that I was able to get digital copies over the Internet just by asking. Cool!