I realize that I failed my kids and I realize that most likely 99% of us fail our kids, because we were failed upon in the first place. That is the concepts that I am thinking this morning, as I sip a cup of coffee…
Just like swinging a hammer and pounding that steel on an anvil. It has to be taught and used and not allowed to fade away in the past. For basics are the foundation of survival and we have allowed that foundation to crumble…
Just like swinging a hammer and pounding that steel on an anvil. It has to be taught and used and not allowed to fade away in the past. For basics are the foundation of survival and we have allowed that foundation to crumble…This thought came about as I studied a building of the village we live in right now. The building was at one time a blacksmith shop. A shop that repaired metal items and shod horses, plus many other things…
I knew this because I was taught as a little tyke, to work in a shop, with an anvil and a forge. Grandpa, even at 80 years old, was trying to pass the basic of life to me, those basics as he saw them…
I use to pump the bellows and watch with fascination at how grandpa welded and shaped steel, to fix the tractor and to make tools to do work in the shop with. I realized then that my dad, had forsaken all this knowledge and my dad’s dad was a boilermaker from London. My dad had learned the tricks of the trade and hated it so much, that he ignored those facts and never looked back…
I did the same with my children and regret that decision to turn my back upon, the hands on trades of life and the skills needed to survive, when all else fails. I mean those skills to plant a garden, work metal from a fire, build a home, sew leather, trim trees and a thousand other things that takes many years to learn. Many years that we have lost time to do, for we are too busy trying to simply survive and make money…
I was taught to use an anvil, that usage was still needed as I was a kid, but that usage would disappear fast as I grew up. Grandpa came from a different world, a world that you had to build what you needed and to create what you could envision. The tractor sat idle, if you could not forge weld strap steel to rebuild parts for the continuation of the work. Part store may have been in the big cities, but in the middle of nowhere, parts where what you created from a pile of metal, from the old broken down tractor, in the corner of the shop…
I saw some interesting things appear from leaf springs of a car and a most perfect skinning knife, was created from a section of a Chevy car front coil spring. That is just s few cool things I helped to do as kid, mainly we repaired farm equipment to keep the crops on time…
Today, I realized that I failed to pass on all my knowledge to my kids, I failed to make sure that my kids could plant a garden, hot rivet a knife blade to its handle, cold roll steel and a thousand other things that really are necessary to survive in life. I realize that starting with my parents, that life had changed and we became domiciled, like cows…
So while I did instill in my kids a special seed to expound upon computers. I did push technology and it has paid well for the kids. I failed to teach them to survive. I was taught to survive, by family and my kids did not have grandparents to do or care about surviving. All their grandparents were, domiciled and could careless about how to plumb a house, or wire a new bedroom for electricity…
I was taught how to do just literally anything as I grew up. I was taught this because people who had lived through the great depression, did not have freebies handed to them as they do now, in all the welfare programs. The people had to build a life from the beginnings and ruins that surrounded them as they struggled…
Want to know a big reason why I respect and see Russia as a better place in the world?
Russians are way ahead of Americans when it comes to surviving…
I messed up and I realize it, I should have passed my knowledge’s on better than I did. I should have taught my kids to create from fire and to grow from the ground. All the knowledge was in my head, for it was passed on to me as a child, by people who knew that knowledge is not just from a university, but knowledge is from life and strife…
I always think of this song and as I look at the old blacksmith shop, that now houses four summer village dacha like places. I sang this song below…
“Cat’s In The Cradle”
My child arrived just the other day
He came to the world in the usual way
But there were planes to catch and bills to pay
He learned to walk while I was away
And he was talkin’ ‘fore I knew it, and as he grew
He’d say “I’m gonna be like you, Dad
You know I’m gonna be like you”
We should pass more knowledge on to our kids for one day maybe the stores will be empty and the fields barren of crops. For we have lost the ability to even plant a simple row of corn, by hand…
But: Russians are thick as thieves in the fields everywhere and growing food. The villages have huge sections of ground set aside and everyone has a garden, a huge garden, a garden of survival. They work hard at this and they know how to feed the families and not rely upon the grocery stores to do it…
Just like swinging a hammer and pounding that steel on an anvil. It has to be taught and used and not allowed to fade away in the past. For basics are the foundation of survival and we have allowed that foundation to crumble…
I am at fault and so are you…
Have a nice day, I am…
WtR