I've only been collecting 3-4 years. Yes, I wish I had started collecting 30 years ago but did not appreciate the history then like I do now. They say youth is wasted on the young and it is true I think. Growing up in NWA, I always thougt you had to go off to the far away battlefields if you wanted to see history. Never occurred to me that if I'd take 10 minutes to educate myself about it I was standing IN the middle of history. The thing I just can't get over is how it is almost like it never happened. These people lived their lives, worked, struggled, raise their kids, loved their wife, tried/wanted to provide a better life for their kids than they had themselves - everything we today want for our kids, our families and in our lives - yet if you don't look for it, you would never know it was even happened. How can this be?

Just down the road where I live, an old house was torn down last summer. This spring the grass has grown up where the old foundation was and you can't even tell a house was ever there. Kids used to play in that yard. I can only imagine the hopes, dreams and struggles of the people who used to sit on the porch enjoying the cool evening breeze. Yet you can't even tell it was ever there. How can this be! And what is to become of us? One day, what is to show I was ever here?