5 Generations, 1 Song

I fell in love with Waiting On A Train circa 1980 on Duane Allman's An Anthology Vol. 2. Boz Scaggs did the vocals. I sang it (and still sing it) to myself all the time. I was working with Paw Paw one day circa 1990 and he was singing...Waiting On A Train. It was very familiar. Not just because I knew the song, but because I knew I'd heard him sing it before, something I hadn't remembered until then. I told how much I loved that song. He said that it had been one of his favorites since Jimmie Rodgers first released it (1928) when Paw Paw was a boy and that it had also been a favorite of his grandfather, Fleming Monroe Calvit, who sang it frequently. F. M. Calvit was born at the end of the Civil War. A love of this song spans five generations of our family. You can listen to, and even watch, Jimmie Rodgers sing it online any time you want. Waiting On A Train. Enjoy.

Apple Core, Baltimore

This is a game PawPaw used to play when he was a kid in the 1920s and early 1930s:

Person A has eaten an apple down to the core, while persons B and C look on.

A: "Apple core!"

B: "Baltimore!"

A: "Who's your friend?"

B: "Uh...Person C!"

A throws the gnawed apple core at C.

C: "Ow!"

March 15, 1945

Sixty-six years ago today Paw Paw was severely wounded on Iwo Jima by Japanese machine gun fire while directing tank fire against an enemy pill box, a buried concrete defensive position. To do that he had to stand up in clear view of the Japanese who had been tearing apart his company all day, talk on telephone attached to the tank, and fire tracer rounds into the pillbox. For his actions he was awarded the Silver Star and a Purple Heart, his fourth. He had been in combat on Iwo Jima for twenty-five days and nights and was within "a baseball throw" he said, of Kitano Point, the northern limit of the island. Iwo Jima would be declared "secured" the next day while he lay half-dead in a battalion aid station on the beach.

Happy Birthday (plus one)

It was Paw Paw's Birthday yesterday. He would've been 89....89 and tough.