Daily Blog Report I
This is my blog report for August 2. Once again this blog came to my attention through the tag surfing feature that searches day and night for posts containing any of the ten tags I have set for it. I am going to have to expand that list because it really is doing a great job. The title of this post is Go Storybooking and it describes a woman’s search for details of her father’s adventure after the second world war. She reports that her father served with the British Royal Airforce during the war and decided to emigrate to South Africa in 1949 to be with his future wife. And this was the part that caught my eye. Because he caught a ride with a woman who had purchased a single engine plane and needed a navigator to fly it to Nairobi.
This, of course, is the kind of adventure that was a daily fact of life before, during and after the war. John Steinbeck wrote about depression era families that picked up what they had and journeyed west. Jack Kerouac wrote about his travels in On The Road in 1957. There are probably many more accounts that come to your mind. There was a courageous sense of adventure. But also in some cases there was the fact that some folks did not have much tying them down to any particular place. They were looking for love, opportunity or adventure. Some undoubtedly were seeking all three.
My father-in-law was nineteen when he became a bomber pilot in WW2. He grew up in Michigan and tried to enlist the first time when he was seventeen years old. His first assignment when he completed training was to take his crew and fly a new B-26 bomber to South America and then across the Atlantic to Madagascar where it was to be delivered to the French. At that point his orders were to somehow get himself to France. So he hitched rides from one place to another until he eventually ended up where he was supposed to be. He told me that if he had wanted to avoid combat he could have taken his time or just stopped somewhere and waited out the war. But he was in a hurry and soon was flying bombing missions over Germany.
I get nervous taking domestic flights out of RIC so all of this is pretty much beyond comprehension to me. Anyway, this lady has like myself just started blogging. And we both have health issues. She reports recent treatment for cancer. But her focus is on this business venture called storybooking. It is similar to blogging in the sense of taking a template with lots of admirable drag and drop features to create a story. But once this is done the result is published in book form and becomes something a family can keep and cherish forever. She tells a touching story about a young woman who puts together a storybook for her adopted daughter to read one day.
It was a fascinating blogging effort for me to read as I began this day. And it can be found at
http://gostorybooking.wordpress.com/
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2 responses so far
Great start on your Blog! Thanks for checking out my blog. I was excited to find your blog tonight and notice that you had visited my blog.
I am glad the story of my father in-law after WWII resonates with a story from your fathers experience.
What adventures they had in those days. WWII required young men to accept such adventures on a daily basis.
I hope you will share more of your fathers’ adventures they are worth keeping alive!
Try a storybook sometime!
Thanks. I am looking forward to reading more about your father’s adventure after the war. Hitching a ride like that has got to be a real adventure.