Page News & Courier
Heritage and Heraldry
Pass down those nostalgic tales to future generations
Article of December 3, 1998
My last column was about the necessity of keeping fact and fiction apart from one another when it comes to family stories. If you are dealing with an issue that needs positive back-up documentation in order for the story to be "certified" historic fact, then the rule still holds true. However, what of those good old nostalgic tales passed down over so many years? The stories that entertain and are told with a gleam in the eye and a warm spot in the heart. Just because you cannot document them, don't leave them by the wayside to disappear forever. They hold an important value of a different kind, and somewhere between the lines, there may be an iota of fact that leaves you to wonder.
Yes, there are the far fetched tales from old Appalachia that stir the blood of every warm blooded soul to hail from the hills. But there are also those tales that are of a day that is slowly fading from memory. How many are fortunate enough to recall (or still experience) the rain drops on a tin roof, the chill of the air during fall butchering, the warm gas stove in the kitchen that use to warm the kettle AND the house? These are all important stories to recollect and retain for your children and your children's children.
Defined in The American Heritage Dictionary (sorry - I don't have a Webster's handy), nostalgia is the "bittersweet longing for things, persons or situations of the past." Sound like I'm on a tangent again? Well, as the summer months come to a close and chill of the fall air sets in back there in the Shenandoah Valley, many remember several things of the past that have long since faded away. Oddly, it seemed like yesterday that my parents and grandparents reminisced on different things they had grown up experiencing. While a teenager, I stored these memories away, but still savored the nostalgia of their stories.
Now, in reflection, and several hundred miles from the Page Valley, I can still see the Blue Ridge or the Massanutten as it appeared in its fall brilliance to me in my youth. There are memories of bright colored leaves, the smell of burning leaves, family dinners on Sunday afternoons, that ever burning desire to draw pictures on a misty window. These are the things that memories are made of . . . . and oddly they were no more than 25 years ago. It seems hard to imagine that a quarter of a century passes so quickly.
So now as the summer draws to a close and the autumn chimes in with all of its glory, families that didn't quite make it home during the spring and summer, take that journey to the Valley to spend a weekend or more of the various holiday dates before the winter snow sets in. With the weekend of the Heritage Festival on the horizon, the opportunity to conjure some of those old memories is at hand. To me, the season is best opened by taking that trek back to Page, walking around the buildings and exhibits and smelling the wood from the fires that heat those large cauldrons of apple butter. Maybe, just maybe, there will actually be a chill in the air to boot. By the way - if you have the chance, tell the kids one of those stories of growing up in the Valley again would ya?
Return to the Page News & Courier sponsored directory for
Heritage & Heraldry articles.