In June my husband, John and I, will celebrate 50 years of marriage. That should give you a rough idea of my age. I was alive when we had no television, no quadrophonic sound systems, no space stations or satelites. I matriculated in a two-room schoolhouse back when people knew what that term meant.

I remember the first TV I encountered. It was a six-inch box sitting on top of the meat case in our little country store. That would have been in the late 40s. There, to the amazement of that little girl in pigtails, was a snowy, black and white picture of moving people! It was as though a photgraph had come to life, with sound, even! A few years later my father bought our first TV so he could watch the Indy 500. The year was 1950 and all I can recall is a blizzard, out of which every so often a shadow would roar across the screen. After enough people got television in their home, they quit broadcasting the race in our area so we would buy tickets to see it in person. – come to think of it, that’s why my husband bought a satallite dish; so he could watch the Indy 500 on a distant channel!! Talk about history repeating itself!

I remember getting the news that Kennedy had been shot. (my grandmother, Minnie, was four when Lincoln was shot and remembered hearing about it.) I remember bomb shelters and drills in schools about how to duck under desks in case an atom bom was dropped in the area. – and believing that would save us.

I remember when there were no speed limits and my dad would drive 80 and 90 miles an hour down two lane highways with no thought of danger in his latest Lincoln. I remember when my twin brother would drive that fast because we were late for high school – again – in an old ford that shouldn’t have been on the road, let alone going at break neck speed with a screaming teenager in the back seat.

I remember white buck shoes and felt skirts with poodles on them, and sock hops and all kinds of things that are now called antique and nostalgic. Shucks, the stuff we bought when we took up housekeeping is now classified as antique! Someone commented on a chest of drawers we’d bought with our ‘matching’ bedroom suite. “These antique drawer pulls are hard to find now. How long have you had this?”

Now, I’m white-headed and lumpy and classified as a senior citizen. But my mind disagrees with the assessment. Well, the senior citizen part at least. Wonder of wonders, us old folks don’t think we’re old. Just our bodies give that impression. Unless we’ve settled into a state of calcification – which by the way, can happen at a very early age for some – our minds are as spry as ever and ready to keep right on producing and experimenting.

So now I’m on a crusade to get some of the books I’ve written turned into eBooks in a market that had never been dreamed of when I was a child. Living in a house I designed, filled with art I created because I couldn’t afford to buy any, with a husband who has been faithful and devoted for 50 years, I am the Mindsinger; writer of books, carver of horses, poet, mother, grandmother and child of God. Hello, world, history lives!