Saturday, November 23, 2002

 
Carol is my bride and joy of forty years.
Her great grandfater was a Russian Sea Captain who sailed out of Finland.
He shipwrecked in the Florida Keys before there were navigational aids.
(Key West was the wealthiest per capita city in the nation then because of all the salvaging.)
Somehow he and his family ended up setteling at Punta Rassa, where the first news of the war between the states was chronicled by telegraph.
As the result of a hurricane they moved across the bay to St. James Island where they were the first non-native people to take up permanent residence.
Edison, Firestone, Ford and others would put a little Ford car on a boat and travel downstream from their winter residences in Fort Myers to "get away from it all," something we never understood since Fort Myers was a very small town at the time.
They would tie up at the dock where Cap'n Smith (his Americanized name) had the general store and Post Office.
There they would unload the car.
There were no bridges at that time and marine travel was the only way on or off the island.
All this background is to explain a very nice thing that happened this week.
We have had in our posession for may years some of the postal boxes from the old Post Office.
They would not fit into the museum and it seemed, no one wanted them.
A friend took the cabinet with all the boxes to his barn, removed the doors, made individual boxes, installed the doors and some coin slots after de-coding the combinations, and Carol wote a little about the history and loaned them a photograph (so they could make copies,) of the latest incarnation of the building, which years ago deteriorated away.
They will be given as gifts for Christmas and the history will be kept alive!
Hopefully, next year, we will do the same for our children and grandchildren.

Those buildings are gone now, and the people have all died.
The following quote from Martin Luther makes a lot of sense when one is reminiscing about things no longer alive.

"The Bible is alive, it speaks to me;
it has feet, it runs after me;
it has hands, it lays hold of me."

Shalom, Y'all.
Worship corporately tomorrow.

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