Hey Ho

Funny how you can forget things
Tonight we met up with my sister's , brother in law's and sister in law for a very nice supper.
My sisters recalled one christmas in the very early 1970s when my father let a tramp set up home in our garage.
...and try as I may, I could not recall the event at all.......
How odd is that?
But what a nice thing for him to have done

26 comments:

  1. He was following a great tradition. Samuel Johnson used to do that, and Alan Bennet did the same thing in his London garden. I'm sure your dad was as lovely as them.

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    1. My father was a great sentimentalist , especially in later life.
      He cried very easily

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  2. That was very nice. You come by your goodness honestly.

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  3. Did you ever read the story by David Sedaris, "Dinah, The Christmas Whore?"
    Oh wait. Maybe you didn't mean THAT kind of tramp.
    Anyhoo...it's a great story.

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    1. I have not read it, but I have heard Sidaris himself reading snippets of it....wonderful stuff

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  4. This is why we have family to help remember the good and the not so good things that others and 'we' have done.

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  5. That does seem memorable.

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  6. Same thing happened with me and my sisters. Two of us were reminiscing about how one morning some of the kitchen cabinets caught fire from the toaster (6 kids = lots of toast and lots of heat). The third sister had no recollection of the event. You would have thought a fire in the kitchen would have been memorable, but apparently only two out of three people remember such an event.

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    1. the amount of images that poor dog has seen sure as hell would of gone blind by now! ha ha

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    2. That's why I always feel sorry for single children

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  7. Anonymous2:07 am

    I understand. I have a bad memory.

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  8. Anonymous2:12 am

    It is funny that you can't remember it......maybe now that you are thinking about it some things will come back to you.

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  9. My older sisters get angry with me because I can't remember things that happened before I was born. I'm always in trouble.

    Love,
    Janie

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  10. I have that happen all the time (Forgetting things).
    Sounds like a lovely thing for your father to do.

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  11. Some very distant relations found a tramp living in the shed of a half-derelict house they'd just bought.They allowed him to stay on, and in time he became a member of their family; even calling him Uncle X.

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  12. You were very young and just took it in your stride. We used to have an old barn on the farm alongside the old London trunk road and tramps used to use it like a tramps motel and sleep in the straw. They only ever stayed one night. Your dad sounds like a kind man. He probably gave him a plate of Christmas dinner.x

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    1. Are there any real tramps anymore?
      Ones that circle the countryside?

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    2. I was thinking about that after I left the comment. The old tramps that used to move from town to town around here have all disappeared. The modern day homeless have drug and alcohol problems and there is a night shelter in the city for them although some as I know still sleep rough in shop doorways. The shop doorway has taken over from the cow barn.

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  13. Anonymous6:48 am

    Memory is a bastard. Not least because it's selective. One and the same event makes an impression on one, only to be relegated to cobwebs by another. Years later you will argue over detail ...

    I think the tramp in your father's garage quite quite wonderful. Reminds me (I must have been about ten or eleven) when we lived in the middle of nowhere. Early winter - freezing, snow starting to set in. And somewhere in the distance there was a shepherd and his flock. My mother filled a flask with whiskey, wrapped up freshly baked Christmas biscuits, probably something for the dog too, and told me to go up that hill and give the basket to the shepherd. It was one of those romantic moments of my life. The shepherd didn't say much (shepherds don't) but was clearly moved by my mother's gesture. The next day he was gone.

    U

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    1. Ok adore little acts of kindness.
      My twin sister , janet remembers taking the tramp tea in the garage....apparantly on Christmas day he left Janet and I some chocolate

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  14. Siblings always seem to have different memories don't they?
    There used to be a 'gentleman of the road' traversing the same little piece of dual carriageway on a monthly basis for years not far from here...when he died he was greatly missed by lots of people and flowers appeared at his little woodland hide......and as mad as this makes me sound I salute it and think of him each week when I drive past .

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  15. Aww that was a nice thing to do.

    It's nice when family get togethers fill in the holes in family history.

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  16. Not quite on that level, but my dad rented an extra allotment plot one year so the vixen living in there could raise her cubs undisturbed.

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  17. When I gave a tramp some cake and hot water and a pair of socks once. My husband noticed a mark on our wall which he said was to tell other tramps that they would get a friendly reception at our house. I was a little worried for a while imagining a queue of Gentlemen of the road at the gate waiting to be fed. But we only got occasional visits and in the last couple of years none at all.
    My sister and I often remind each other of our childhood and as we get older it becomes more interesting!

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