Memories

Writing about the Lunar Moth in my last blog reminded me of my hobby of collecting beetles. Since we had no radio, TV or computers, not even a telephone, we developed various ways of amusing ourselves. My older brother collected butterflies and moths, and I still remember seeing the poor things struggling to get free of the pin with which they were pinned to the display board. I suppose my beetles suffered in the same manner. My younger brother collected Indian arrow heads and had quite an extensive collection. Since we lived in what had once been Indian territory, the Indian arrow heads were all over, just waiting to be collected. They were made of flint and were very skillfully fashioned.
We didn't really appreciate the fact that our grandparents and parents were part of history. We knew that our Great-Grandma had hidden the Indian chief in her cellar when the whites were hunting for him, and that at that time there was a bounty on dead Indians but we simply accepted it as a fact of life. Things had calmed down by the time we came along, and the Indians were confined to a reservation some miles from the little town where we went to High School. There was still a lot of prejudice against the Indians, and when one of the town girls married a man who was of mixed blood, she was scorned and ostracized beyond all reason. The fact that he bacame a successful business man and provided for her very handsomely made no difference to most of the residents of that little town.
There is still a certain amount of prejudice even in this day and age and there are still reservations where Indian tribes live. Why these reservations are still inhabited I cannot say - surely the people would be better off being absorbed into the mainstream of the population. Except for those who own the casinos, of course.
Well, no great words of wisdom came to me tonight, just to be thankful that there is a warm fire in the wood stove and the cat and dog are in their beds and I will shortly be in mine. Good-night.