I just recently drove to Albuquerque New Mexico to celebrate my mother turning eighty years old. It was great to see the family and old friends and catch up on new family additions and reminisce about the good ole days. I drove around the city passing by my old elementary schools, and middle schools and I was even as adventurous to hike to the Sandia Man Caves that I remembered so fondly from my childhood. Like most cities, Albuquerque is no different with the passing of time. Those brand new neighborhoods of yesterday have fallen into decay and crime as white flight and capitalism have the newer generations sprawling outside the city to new enclaves. I drove down Texas Street where I lived seven youthful years. The city plunge, once an Olympic size pool where I swam as a young boy with my friends was gone; the entire block was covered up by something new. As I drove closer to my old house I could tell the neighborhood was not the same. Paint was peeling, roof shingles were falling off or missing and some homes now have bars over the windows. I think there was only one green lawn left on the entire block. After all those good years where my father and I kept up with the neighbors to have the best looking front yards with manicured landscaping, had now been replaced with families that are too busy to enjoy their home. I was positive that when I got to my old house it would still look as beautiful as I once remembered. My hopes sank as I journeyed ever closer. I could see that there were no trees; I mean none. Not in the back yard, the side yard, the next door neighbors yard or the front yard. The huge 100 year old cottonwood tree that I had climbed as a boy and appeared on the channel 4 TV show, Eyewitness News had been cut down. The entire front yards of the homes had been covered up by concrete with cars parked everywhere. Gone were the juniper bushes that framed the front entrance to my home. Gone was the gas lamp that kept watch over our landscaped front yard day and night. Gone were the tulips and the crocus that burst from the snow covered ground ever spring. The current generation was showing to me that they cared little about preservation of my past. I have only my memories and some 1970's photos to keep and preserve.
As I work on recording the genealogy of my family and travel back in time 200, 300, or even 400 years in one night, I realize that nothing lasts forever. If you put cold cream on your face at night, or sun screen during the day. Eat organic food, exercise or get plenty of rest. What does that get us? A better sex life one could hope. Preservation of our family history collection needs more work than just some cold cream. As we get older we want to pass on our memory to the future generations, but again, nothing lasts forever. In my globe trotting I have seen some horrible preservation of ancestors in Peru that should really be classified as ruins, to some truly ornate mausoleums in Europe which have been spared through many wars, that reach the status of shrine. In my research of the Lecka's, Pritchard's, Watson's, Starnes' and Chandlers of Tennessee I have read many a story online where cemeteries have been moved or family plots even covered up by a Walmart as there are no kin left who remember. From the family grave plot on the forty acre farm to the wooden crosses left to mark the graves of our fallen soldiers, they have all gone back to the earth as nature intended.
We as the human race are driven to remember our ancestors and preserve the past. From the pyramids of Egypt, to sixteenth-century Mona Lisa in France, to the Indian petroglyphs in Albuquerque; we want to be remembered. So how do we accomplish this task? I find that churches have done the best job, as they tend to stand the tests of time. Some of the best records I have found for source documentation have been kept by churches in Canada, England and Scotland.
So I have taken on the daunting task as a historian and genealogist. Burden with newspaper clippings and manuscripts of once famous authors in my family. Photos fading, and newspapers decaying from their own acids. I asked librarians and museum staff what do I do? I turned to the internet where I found two interesting articles on the preservation of old documents and here are the links.
The Library of Congress.
Ancestry.com
So I will see what I can do about getting some of these keepsakes preserved for future generations so they in turn can do the same, and so on, and so on. But for now, I am also still going to trust a Church. See, I am addicted to Ancestry.com for help in my genealogical research and have a feeling that what ever names, dates or photos that I store to their website using today's current technology will be left to future generations to figure out how they want to preserve our past.
