Perspective

Painting Water Tower, originally uploaded by Kristianna.

I've been scanning a few photos Paul's dad brought over to share. They're a lot of fun, many of when Russell was young, or before he was born.

Here is one from The Depression. Paul's grandpa was the youngest child in his family, and at age 16 his father told him he could not afford to feed him and he would have to go. Back then 16 was not as young as it is now, in a sense -- Grandpa H was a high school graduate, and his older siblings had families with young children and could not as easily be put out off the farm.

Paul's grandpa did pretty well all in all. He realized he could always get work doing 'the things no one else likes to do' -- the dangerous or dirty jobs. So he found work traveling around and painting water towers. He also was a wicked left-handed pitcher, and in those days there were semi professional baseball games where people played as mercenaries -- no team affiliation, but would make a cool $200 on a Sunday afternoon. That was a LOT of money then, especially then.

Anyway, that's a hard scrabble existence. We lack perspective in so many ways, when we think about it.