Putting Chalk to Cement

Our grand daughters and one of their friends spent Sunday with us. We had fun. I wish for that energy level.



A Vermont Volunteer



During a lull in food and running, we broke out the sidewalk chalk and let them have at it. They are pretty young so the drawings were a bit cave-man like but no one cared. Watching the older ones (5 & 6 yrs) delight in hopscotch seemed very innocent and I can remember that on a side walk half a century (or so) ago.  Double that and my grand mother was perhaps supplying chalk to my dad. Double that again and my great great grandfather was applying chalk to paper in the Civil War for the Vermont Volunteers,

probably heading on the road to Gettysburg where in just over a month from now and 150 years back the Vermont 2nd stood in the way of Pickett and his charge.

Family lore has it that many of the sketches - chalk and pen - rest in the Vermont archives. I'd rather not know as the story of it is better than the perhaps reality.  He did fight in the civil war supposedly enlisting at the onset, leaving family and the safety of Beebe Plain, Vermont. His son, Hod Emerson was born in the late 1850s according to the family bible just 3 when he enlisted, and Hod had a daughter, Mary who was my


The Vermont 2nd

 grandmother. She remembered the medals and the sketches.

Supposedly he lived to the turn of the century and went to the "reunions". My Grandmother claimed to have had his uniform, passed down from Hod as they kept it, according to her telling, in an special white oak box to be trotted out every so often.  All of that was lost a century ago.

So this is Memorial Day or Decoration Day and sprung from that Civil War, Gettysburg being a focal point of remembrance. We don't need parades and hoopla. A simple flag at a grave site will do nicely.