When I was a kid running through my Granddaddy’s yards playing I sometimes sat on the porch and listened to the old timer’s talk about how it was in the old days. Most people today don’t realize if you’re as old as I am that our grand parents surely our great grand parents stared out in a different world. No cars, Electricity and all that electricity brings but they thought they were living in modern times with having metal to work with. That is not that long ago in time. In school I read how the Indians lived for maybe millions of years before white men came and I tried to get that worked out in my mind. especially when I heard some one say that white men took there good life away from them with white people ways. I didn’t understand that with them using rocks for tools wearing clothes made from what they could find to weave are animals skins. Was it really that good of a life? Makes me appreciate just how hard they had to work just to live. When I found Arrowheads back on the farm I would take them to my granddaddy and ask him what he knew about them because anything people find today they call an arrowhead. He would say no this has never been on anything they could shoot. This probably was used some what like a knife. I was always looking for a spearheads. He would laugh and say spearheads were used more than bows an arrows and spearheads heads were more valuable than arrowheads but if they needed sharping they got smaller are if broke now they had something to make two more of something with and they used them up. Harder to find. If you think it’s easy to make a bow and arrow try going in the wood only using a stone tool to make a bow then the real game changer comes trying finding something in the woods are natural world to make a bow string. I found this out as a kid that even with modern materials a bow strings have to be very very strong. In building our logs house on a lake where Pam and I raised our kid, digging the foundation I found a little stone knife. I can only dream who made it or used it. Was it once a spear head worked down as needed to a little 2 inch tray angle to be used as a cutting tool. I do have a spearhead now. I’m sure was made the same way they were made through out time but when it was make I can only guess. I bought it off a street vendor in Antigua, Guatemala made from obsidian you can find around volcanoes. We put this and some other stuff like a sun dial watch and a sexton for navigation on display in the library out in Kansas but most people never even seemed to look at it. We did do a presentation later at the Heritage Club about it. How is this important here in Guatemala living on our boat. If you think making a hunting tool was hard think about farming. It’s well know that Indians farmed and taught the first farmer their ways when they came from Europe. Here there are a lot of people that still don’t have electric are running water and some still farm using the old ways. Hear at the marina the new owners had the workers to clear some of what was just jungle a short time ago. The guard here planted a garden with out a plow or even a shovel just plant it in the leaves.
The garden here at marina
It takes time for grass to grow and over take every so no need to tend to it. In the old days they would use a stone to knock the bark of a tree and using what they could they would peal the bark off all the way around the tree and it would die. I have seen this done with maybe a foot of bark removed. Done in the fall in the spring with the dead trees standing rake the leaves back just enough to plant a seed and go on only removing enough leaves to put one seed in at a time and no need to tent to it. When your garden spot has grass growing in it or the land becomes poor just go kill more trees and move. Think about that today. The good life before modern times. I knew some old hippies that called this “time before deodorant.” I like to think about it as being a time before having a frying pan. Priorities I guess. Spending your whole life without ever having anything fried. As I’m writing this Pam is frying bacon in the galley for breakfast. We will have grits we made this week also. The adventure goes on.
grinding corn for grits.
One of our friends that visits us every day.
schoonerpamelaann 