...ever since I was a young child in the late 50's and early 60's I was fascinated with my father's collection of old scientific and academic books as well as objects long obsolete yet sturdy and functional and quite intricate. The old books dated to about 1880+/- and in some cases the late1700's as passed down to him from our ancestor Charles Carroll of Carrollton, signer of The Declaration of Independence. There were these grand design fountain pens, ink wells, sealing waxes, slide rules, manual typewriters, letter openers, precision drafting tools, early film cameras, the are vintage fly fishing rods and tackle as well as hand tied dry flies made out of pheasant feathers from game that he shot and dressed in the basement as I look on as he told me countless stories about where this fly reel was bought or where his shotgun was made in Italy. My father, still lives to this day and approaches 90 years of age although a series of stokes and the onset of dementia has left his mind devoid of his memories which I now carry around for him and for my son and those of his generation who may be interested in hearing them before they are lost as a result of my own loss of intellect which by all accounts never matched that of my father's to begin with even further compounded by an epic amount of braincell killing decades of substance abuse more common in my generation that his.
There were these volumes of leather bound books of poetry, literature, essays, science and sport with browned pages. some hand bound with twine and there were leather binders containing the sum of my father's career as a research chemist containing over 200 US Patents he was granted during his career. As I sat one day at my storage unit going through the many boxes of these items that he gave me prior to his loss of faculties it dawned upon me that these needed to be displayed somewhere and shared with the next generation which sadly enough will for the most part never know how to use a scientific slide rule nor ever know the art of tying a dry fly on a tiny #20 fish hook but rather rely on the modern PC for scientific calculations, read the classics on a Kindle and buy fishing lures at the mall or online and I wish to be a bridge between the two vastly separated generations at either end of my personal and relational gene pools.
In my professional career I have formed and led successful business entities at both coastlines of the continent and had many successes and failures, raised a son and a few step children, and plan on spending the majority of my remaining days writing the stories told to me by may father and other people that were ahead of me that so graciously shared their experiences and respective realities with me along the way and this business will be the the fuel to sustain my ability to document the many life's memories I've collected.
More on the how's, what's and where's after I complete the business plan that's formed on my head and I get it down on paper but I assure any potential potential customer or investor in this new venture of mine that I see it, very clearly and it's viable. Furthermore, it will result in the passing of the collective knowledge, wisdom and skills of a generation now nearly extinct on down to a generation just barely growing it's wings and still in infancy and in that light my being the vessel of said knowledge will fulfill a greater purpose in my own life than anything I've yet to do in my professional career.
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| February 5, 2011 |
