As I prepare for this autobiography, it's 1994 (and we are now into 1995!). I'm 60 years old (and rapidly approaching 61) and we live in Pfafftown, North Carolina. Pfafftown is about 10 miles north of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. We have lived in this area since 1972. We really like it. We’ll probably die here. I'm retired and Betts and I are enjoying life. Whether this project will ever be finished is doubtful. I can already tell that it is a much bigger project than I thought. We will, however, proceed and I shall remain hopeful that it is completed. If it is not, I suppose it will be no big deal.
About the time I retired from Piedmont Airlines in 1988, I became interested in doing some research on my ancestry. It was frustrating. The records were few and far between. Several people had already done a very good job of locating some information so I never did get into any real research efforts. I just used what they had already found. Thus, any material contained here has been borrowed from others and I, therefore, can not confirm of verify its accuracy. I do know it comes from reliable sources so I suspect it is fairly accurate.
Since some other people had done all of the work, I just ended up rearranging the material that they had put together. As I would look at the names, their birth dates and where they were born, I had this burning desire to know more about them. Just knowing, for example, that my grandfather, Kelly Shanks, was born in Tennessee on a certain date didn't tell me a heckuva lot about my granddad. I wanted to know more! What was he like? How did he think? What kind of a life did he live? Did he suffer from many illnesses? And, the questions went on and on and on. Questions that would never be answered.
When you research your ancestry, about all you find are names, dates and locations. There is generally nothing there to tell you about the person and it was the person I wanted to know about.
I would often say, "I'd give anything to be able to sit down and talk with one of my Grandparents - especially those that lived in the late 1800s". I just can't imagine the hardships they must have suffered. How often I have wished that they had taken a pen or pencil in hand and wrote about themselves.
I don't want to make that mistake.
I want my grandchildren 50 years from now, and hopefully my great-great-grandchildren 100 years from now to be able to have something they can read and, at least, get a little impression of what kind of a person I was. I doubt if they will be too impressed, but, at least they will know a little about me.
My point, quite simply, is that I don't want my grandchildren, my great grandchildren, my great-great grandchildren, my great-great-great-grand- children (and on and on and on!) to have to wonder about me. I want them to know who I was, what I did, and what I think about certain things. This will be my legacy to my granddaughters and grandsons for many generations to come.
There is always the possibility that my writings will be lost with time. That happens. I have no way of controlling that. I just hope that my descendants will keep the material and pass it on to their children who will pass it on to their children, and so forth.
I need to make it pretty clear in the beginning that I am not a writer. While I enjoy writing and I look forward to this effort, I am confident it will leave much to be desired as a literary accomplishment. Yes, there will be many misspelled words (Does "misspelled" have one "s" or two? I don't know and I don't necessarily care about taking a lot of time to look it up!). And, there will be a host of grammatical goofs. Grammar was not one of my strong suits. So, my dear friends, I ask you to look beyond the many errors you will find in this dissertation and look at me, the man. Hopefully, there you will find a man that loved life and loved people. A man that wasn't afraid to say "I love you" to his family and many friends.
You need to know, too, that I have no outline for this autobiography. While that is obviously the way it should be done, you need to know that I am not a well-disciplined person (there are many who will disagree with that). For me to spend hours and hours developing an outline of my life would be boring. I much prefer to dig right in and get started. Of course, that will bring about a very disjointed discourse that will ramble from subject to subject and have very little continuity.
And that, my dear relatives and descendants, already tells you a little about this old boy! On some matters, of which we will talk about later, I am thorough, patient, disciplined, and well organized, but, on other things, I am impatient, undisciplined and disorganized. It simply depends on the interest I have in whatever I am doing at the time.
I need to make it clear, too, that this is not a tell-all or kiss and tell type of narrative. That would be too embarrassing, too humiliating and too stupid! There are some things you do in life; things done while separated from the brain and common sense, that simply must never be told and, therefore, I suppose, taken to the grave. While most (about 99.9 percent) of my life can be told, I must admit that there are moments that I must forever keep to myself. Isn't that true of most of us? I really don't consider myself much different than most people that have traveled through this life. A pretty average guy!
Please remember that my efforts are not necessarily meant to entertain as much as they are to be considered for historical purposes, that is, (and, I'm now repeating myself!) meant for my children and grandchildren, and so on, to have some information to remember me by. That's all!
On the other hand, if you find it entertaining, that would be great.
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