As a little lad, I used to love it when my Dad and Uncle James started telling stories of their childhood. One of my favourite stories was about the skin of the rice pudding. This was back in the days when dinner was eaten at mid day and tea was the early evening meal. The treat on a Friday lunchtime was rice pudding and the family rule was that the first one at the table with their hands washed to Grandma’s satifaction could have the skin off the pudding. Dad and Uncle James would leave school and run down Chapel Street shouting “skin” at the top of their voice, Dad was the older and nearly always got the skin, something that Uncle James remembered for years after. There was one occasion when Dad ran inthrough the front gate and slammed it behind him, hitting Uncle James in the face and burst his lip. Dad didn’t get the skin that day! My dad was born in 1903, so I guess that this memory of their pre dates the first world war.
Anybody today who knows the village will find it hard to believe that two schoolage children would run down the middle of Chapel Street and cross Carr Road, one of the main road links between Leeds and the towns further up Airedale, a road that carries a constant flow of vehicles in both directions all day long and it is a reminder of how life has changed over the last hundred years. One of my regular tasks as a minister is to conduct funerals and during my time, I have encountered some fascinating people as their lives have come to an end and as I read their stories, I long to have met them when they were alive. I have sat drinking tea with some fascinating people and listened to their stories and I never tire of hearing people talk about the way life used to be.
I love a good story and throughout my life have read dozens of biographies and autobiographies and it seems to me that people are interested in the lives of famous people, how they grew up, when they got their breaks and some of the interesting people they have met along the way, but what fasicinates me even more are the stories of ordinary people like you and I, folk that will never be classed as “celebrities” and will never do the rounds of daytime television shows launching the book of our lives. I believe in the importance of story telling. It doesn’t matter whether you are religious or not, there are some thumping great stories in the Bible and I am indebted to those who took time to record them and I never tire of re reading them.
The thing that saddnes me is that as a life comes to an end, stories die with the person. The day will come when generations of children will never experience going out in bell bottom trousers, tank top jumpers, platform shoes, shell suits and all those hidious things that were essentials back in the day. Children will wonder at dial telephones, cassette tapes, the Hoover Junior vacuum cleaner and when Mini cars really were tiny. Dare I also add, a delicious rice pudding, cooked in a coal fired oven on a slow heat for hours with skin!
Spend time listening to old people “I include myself in that category these days” don’t let stories die, listen to them, repeat them, I deally write them down and share them. We are are living currently with the final generation who will remember the second world war, with first hand stories to tell, keep on sharing the story.
Prayer:
We thank you for the rich heritage of our family histories, for the people who have gone before us and the stories they tell. We thank you for the stories recorded in the Bible and their value for us today. We pray that in our lives we might live to make memories, not simply whittle our lives away. Amen