I am working on the American Wars book now, and I have to report that it is not going very well. It is the most difficult project I have ever attempted. The commentaries are as purely military as I can make them. There is little, if any, political discussion. It would seem an almost impossible task. In writing about the Vietnam War, for example, I have to say that certain political constraints were put into place. The military aspect to be discussed is the move away from logical. Linear war concepts to a system wherein the enemy is granted freedom of both strategic and tactical freedom of maneuver.

About a year ago, I wrote a 6,000-word piece on the first Gulf war. The piece belongs in this book. When I pulled it up on the computer, I discovered that it was terrible. I tried to do too much in too short a space. I have to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. That will require a good week’s work.

Then I reviewed the section on World War II. It’s okay, but I became interested in adding a chapter to it about the Versailles Treaty and how the lack of adherence to the treaty paved the way to the war. That led to a consideration of treaties in general and how we treat treaties today. In olden days, treaties were made by kings. Violation of a treaty could mean war. That is not the way it is now in our time. Treaties are statements of principles, but have no enforcement capability. Diplomacy produces treaties, such as they are, but the only real enforcement is more diplomacy, which produces yet more treaties that cannot be enforced. Suddenly, I find myself deep into a swamp. The subject deserves its own book.

That is the problem with trying to write non-fiction. It is easier to find the truth in fiction.

I feel that it is time to drop back in time and write about family history. When my mother passed away, one of the documents she kept in a box was something called a wedding book. I do not know much about wedding books. It has been quite a few years since I was in a wedding. This particular book was from the wedding of her parents, my grandparents. The wedding took place in 1909 in a small rural community in Illinois. The town was called Onarga. It is in Iroquois County. As far as I know, the town still exists. I have not been there for maybe fifty years.

The wedding was held at the Methodist Church, and I would guess the reception was also held at the church. There were logistical considerations at that time. There were people from the town who were invited, and they could easily walk to the church. Most of the people gathered together for the event came from farms five miles out from the town and maybe even more. They came riding in buggies drawn by horses. I am sure that it was a big wedding, and parking must have been a problem.

The bride was Iva Eisenhower. The groom was Ed Compton. They were young, not much more than in their twenties. Iva had four sisters. Ed had two brothers and one sister. I never knew my great-grandparents on the Compton side of the house. They were gone before I was born. I knew the Eisenhowers. Iva’s father, George Eisenhower was a very successful farmer.

My mother told me two interesting tales about George and his wife, Julia. George’s father was named James, and he was a Civil War veteran, though I do not believe he was in any of the great battles. He must have returned to his farm in Illinois before the end of the war because George was born in 1865. When George was nineteen, he got the itch to go west. That would have been in 1884. George got to Nebraska where he worked as a teamster hauling freight in a wagon pulled by a team of horses. There were no dangers at that time, though I would guess that the Custer matter was still a topic of conversation. After six months, he came to his senses and returned to Illinois and began his successful life as a farmer.

Some time passed, and George and Julia got married and had five daughters before they finally had a son. It was just after the birth of the son that they moved some sixty miles south to a new farm. George and the farm equipment, cattle, and horses, all come down on the train. Julia, with the new-born son and five little girls, came by horse and buggy.  I would give a lot to know more about that trip. My mother did not think it very remarkable. She said Julia was always very good with horses. I wonder sometimes how young people today and tomorrow are ever going to understand the earlier times.

So, Ed and Iva got married. Technically, Ed was unemployed. Somehow, he had been able to rent a farm. I am sure the two fathers played a part in that business. After the wedding day, the newly-weds would take a horse and buggy to their new home.

Here is where the wedding book comes into play. The gifts from the people at the wedding are listed. George and Julia, parents of the bride, gave the couple a team of horses and a wagon. Ed’s parents gave them two cows. There was a gift of a plow and a planter. The list also included a couple of dozen chickens. Another gift was a sow and a boar. Those are hogs. I would presume the livestock was to be delivered at the farm. The preacher at the church would not appreciate having the livestock present at the wedding.

There were a great many gifts. There were the usual kitchen utensils and bedding. Much of the bedding was probably home-made, and most of the gifts were used equipment. These were a people who wasted nothing.

A year after the wedding, my mother made her appearance in this world. As it turned out, she was to be an only child. She was very proud of the fact that by the time she was ten, she could turn a team at the end of the field and come back in a straight line. Being good with horses was very important to my mother.

She went to the field when she was three. She rode up on the seat at the front of the wagon. A team of horses pulled the wagon ahead very slowly. My grandfather, Ed, and my grandmother, Iva walked on opposite sides of the wagon. Ed could pull the ears from two rows, and Iva from one row. When an ear of corn was pulled from the stalk, it was shucked off the dried leaves and tossed up into the wagon. I am not sure, but I believe the way they planted corn in those days, there must have been about ten thousand stalks to an acre. They usually had about 100 acres in corn.

They were a dour people. It is easy to make fun of them, and there are those in television comedy shows who do that. I do not laugh. I think of my grandmother walking those long rows of corn. Pulling the ears and taking off the shucks does not do much for hands. I never knew this woman. She died of cancer when I was four. I think it curious that I can remember a person so well, but whom I never met.

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