I had the opportunity to interview a ninety year old lady today. She still live on her own and drives a convertible.
Her life has been remarkable. Her family was in this country before the American Revolution and some of the stories she told me gave me goosebumps.
Her phone rang in the other room and she left me to go answer it. I spent the time looking at her pictures, and knick-knacks.
When she returned, I asked her about a few and each one had a story that left me shaking my head.
There was one picture of her as a very young woman with an older man. She told me that was her and her father on her sixteenth birthday. She then reached for a photograph of a dog tied to a bumper of a car.
"This is what my father gave me for my birthday," she said. I said "that's a beautiful dog."
"Not the dog," she said. As I looked more closely I realized that the car was a Rolls-Royce convertible.
"I loved that car," she said, "but I fell in love shortly after that picture was made, so I sold it without my father's permission, and used the money run off and get married." She went on to say that she sold the car to the British Military who was scouring America looking for Bentleys and Rolls-Royce's." It seems they were they only car built sturdy enough to support armor plating and the British were about to enter World War II with Germany. They were refitting the cars and shipping them to Africa for the war effort.
I was at her house for over three hours and I could have stayed all day.
I'll be writing the story over the next few days for publication in a local paper. After it runs, I'll post it here.
Merry Christmas (I just wanted to be the first to say that).
Happy New Year to you, too! (Always have to come up one...) :) What a fascinating time you must have had. I look forward to reading the story. My dad was like that--lots of interesting stories of life as a cowboy in Arizona. I miss him.
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It was a delightful morning. I'll have the story by Monday (the deadline) but I'm not sure when it will be published.
ReplyDeleteYou should write down all the stories you remember that he told you.
That was so great that you could interview the lady. Her life is a book. Imagine the books that get published! Her life is a book!
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