The Thoughts of Floyd Brandt

In wanting to share an image today of a man with his mule/mules and plow, I went over to Google.  The best image I found, which figuratively leapt off the screen at me and grabbed my attention, came from a blog that I would have never otherwise discovered.

www.LettersfromaPilgrim.com - the memoirs and ramblings of Floyd Brandt - has captured my heart and my attention.   He shares his memories of our country going way, way back - it seems he is recording them for his children and grandchildren, and really - for all of us. 

Floyd talks about the harvest season.  He talks about coal-and-wood-burning stoves.  Floyd shares memories the days of segregation - and the process of de-segregation.



lunch counter - Smithsonian

 "On that day in 1960, the students first bought some school supplies to prove that the store would sell to them and then sat down at the Woolworth lunch counter and tried to order a hamburger which was against the law. If they bought a hamburger to eat in the store, they were required to stand in the back of the store to eat it. That day Stan, you were not quite eleven months old and Mary, you were just 35 months old, We were living in Arlington Heights, Massachusetts busy completing a doctoral dissertation and four years at Harvard and preparing to depart in four months for a stint on the faculty of Northwestern University. What follows is a mix of a little history and some family memoirs which normally produces both second rate history and family memoirs."   (from LETTERS FROM A PILGRIM, a blog by Floyd Brandt)


And another excerpt from LETTERS FROM A PILGRIM:

"Dear Gail,

My memories of holidays and summers at the farm encompass about eight or ten years from approximately 1934 to 1944, the ages five to fifteen for me and nine to nineteen for Fred ending when he enlisted in the Air Force during WW II. But before I begin describing the holidays, a few words about how we traveled to “the farm.”


I hope you will pay a visit to Mr. Brandt's site.   I am bookmarking him today, and hope to visit him regularly from now on.   Thank you, Floyd, for your memories, your thoughts, and for the gift of prose that you share with us all via this site. 

I wish we were family ...--  Davielle

keep plodding along ...

Sometimes it is all we can manage to do ... to just keep plodding along.

"Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are.  Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before depart.  Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow.  Let me hold you while I mayu, for it may not always be so.  One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return."

-- Mary Jean Iron

God bless this - and every single - day.

-- Davielle