Blanche Bingham is my dads mother, my grandmother. I share this story with you and it points out a couple of important things. 1- Even a short story left for posterity has value. 2- This article is now linked to Family Search Family Tree for anyone to find. Until now it has been in a file my mother left to me, not to be seen unless you had the file.Other information is in the same hidden state. Blanche is the daughter of Lorenzo, she is my grandmother. He has 2 grandchildren still living. I copy it exactly and have not corrected any grammatical errors. My father was a very kind man. He always could find time to help a neighbor. After working from 10 to 14 hours a day. There was no union at the time and there was street cars and horses and carriages. So most of the time they could ride as far as the street car went and then walk. My father was a lovely tenor singer. When we children were little he would sind, or read to us and and one or the other ofus would keep him busy getting drinks of water. It didn't matter how tired the poor dear was he would wait on us and I know he wasn't so thirsty as we enjoyed him to wait on us. He always fixed our shoes by half soling them. When we had company mother was getting dinner he would tell that what a good dumpling she could make. He liked to tease my mother. She would tell him after company was gone that she would like to see and taste his dumplings. He would just laugh, put the smallest child on his knee and sing funny songs to them. He loved the church but never went very often but always upheld the principles of the church. I think on account of his smoking his pipe that kept him from going to church; and maybe his work. Most of the time he worked as a laborer. He cut annd put up ince for the summer. That was the only way at that time to have ice in thie summer. My father said that that when he was a young man that there wasn't money for everything so they would all take soemthing they had grown such as squash or a pples or potatoes or onions to pay ones that furnished music to dance by. The dances were always church dances and they would dance all night or until 4 o'clock in the morning every one turned out --old and young-- they would bring their babies, put them to bed in the windows or in corners on chairs. single ones came on horses with a sack of whatever he had and the families came in wagon and buggies wrapped up in quilts and hot rocks and straw. My father said next morning Grandpa would call them to get up to do the chores and he owuld say he was so sleepy and grandpay would say, "those that danced had to pay the fiddler", for his to get up. Father was a man of love for every one and he had charity. It's a shame that he hadn't worked on genealogy for as soon as he talked to anyone he'd ask them who their parents were. He would laugh and tell them he knew them very well and then he would have a long talk about some of the fun things they had done. He always enjoyed living over his childhood days.
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