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Sunday, May 1, 2016

MAY -- BE

It be May for sure. In many places around the world this is May Day and is celebrated in a variety of ways.  Growing up, I can not remember any celebration connected to this day -- that doesn't mean that there was none -- I just do not recall any.

Currently in our part of California, today will be the warmest day of this week and to mark that we do have the a/c on. It is a beautiful sunny and bright day. The colors are brilliant and the yard plants full.

Inside there are many colors as well. And as we look outside we see a lot of green leaves and a lot of seedlings blowing around as it is very windy. This probably is a favorite time except for those other times as well.


This time of the year -- for some reason -- is associated with cleaning and reorganizing and the like. I remember growing up that Saturday was THE day for cleaning around our house and once I left home I failed to embrace Saturday as a day of cleaning.

This week though, I actually felt that yesterday, Saturday, would be a good day to clean and to organize, I failed to complete that mission, but got a good start at it. I made a promise to myself that I would not start searching in the family tree until I completed at least some of the cleaning that I envisioned.

While I have a "lot more" to do, I feel good about what I did get done prior to any searching. There is once again a "sense of order" when I do finally sit down to search.

Thinking back to the beginning days of my family searching, I remember that there was one picture in particular (and a comment by my father) that motivated me to continue:


The above photo was one of the first family related public photos that I obtained. I first saw it when
a very helpful worker at the Salt Lake City Family History Center randomly pulled a book from the shelf connected to Wisconsin Counties and opened it up -- there was a picture of my Grandfather, Lloyd Hampton Hiles Sr., in a group school photo.

Lloyd can be seen in the top right and was probably one of the older and taller students. What I did not realize at first was that there were a lot of relatives of ours in that photo -- I have underlined the many Gillett kids that are pictured and I'm sure there are others that I have missed.

In my excitement, the next day I called my father and mother who were living in Florida at the time and I related to my dad that I saw a picture of his dad when he was in school and how neat that was to see and that I was anxious to see what else I could discover as I searched.

My father's response was  " . . . why on earth would you want to do that?"  That pretty much sealed the deal for me, I was off looking for "stuff".

Speaking of Lloyd Sr., I have accumulated many photos of him and his family, here are favorites:


The bottom photo is when Lloyd was 17 years old and a telegraph operator. I love the details of the office that he is working in and can imagine the activities taking place. I suppose that he is just a year or so older than the school photo.

Top left, a dapper picture probably taken in his thirties and top right a dapper look from a photo taken at my sister's wedding in 1958 when he would have been about 75 years old. Lloyd lived to be 82 and passed away 50 years ago last month.



Tonight is the Season Finale of "Who Do You Think You Are". This season went by so fast. They are going to have a double play tonight featuring two folks and their stories:



Two folks that I do not know very much about -- but their stories I'm sure will be fascinating. So that means tonight there will be about 84 minutes of pure genealogical fun. If the shows aired without commercials, it would be close to 120 minutes . . .

This season I have to say that I have learned quite a bit about the searching methods of the teams that do the work AND gained a lot of insight into other folks' family histories.




And later today we'll be watching the third game in the Giants/Mets series. I actually thought that it was the "season finale" for the Giants in the first game with the Mets when the Mets scored 12 runs in one inning . . . embarrassing.

Maybe today they will recover -- they almost recovered yesterday but lost that game as well. This is an "even" year and is supposed to be a "Giant" year . . .

Lastly:



I'm not quite sure how to interpret the quote, but I'm sure it will come to me in time.

Enjoy May!  It is Sunday, it will be "dogs & chips" while watching the game. See you all "in a few"!








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