This House, This Room, 95 Years Ago

"Louis, this is the house where you were born; 2nd place we lived. Room marked where you arrived May 6, 1917." I don't know when my Grandmother Bessie gave this post card to my father Louis, but that is what she wrote on the back of it. Dad was born 95 years ago today.
I discovered this while looking through the old Adams County Free Press on line: "A daughter was born to Mr. & Mrs. George Lynam, south of Corning, Sunday, May 6." It was printed in the Wednesday, May 9, 1917, paper. I didn't find any correction. I wonder if they received any pink booties?
Dad was born on the Roach Brothers Farm about two and a half miles south and west of Corning. This house burned down in the late '40's (I think). The farm was owned by Ralph Readhead when I was growing up. Vernon (Pete) and Lois Stewart lived there with their children, Verna and Earl, in the house that replaced this one. Verna was a year behind me in school at Jasper # 2.

I wanted to use the picture of Dad as a baby in his christening gown for this blog, but I couldn't find it this morning so I'm re-showing this picture from 1945 with Dad holding baby Betty. Whenever I think about what I'm going to write about, in this case Dad's birth 95 years ago, I start thinking about what was going on around that time or what is going on now that might have also been happening then.

There was a full moon last night. When was the moon full in May, 1917? It was the day after Dad was born, May 7. I doubt it was a perigee moon like the one we had last night. Chances are it was just a regular full moon like the one I took this picture of over the Atlantic Ocean when we were on Nags Head in 2008.

The 138th Kentucky Derby was run yesterday. I was excited about it because the Iowa-owned, chestnut colored horse, Dullahan, was running. Dullahan was the second horse in three years owned by Iowa's Donegal Racing consortium to make it into the Derby. Dullahan, Donegal and Lynam are all Irish names.
What horse won the 43rd Kentucky Derby in 1917? It was another chestnut, the British born, Omar Khayyam, named for the famous Persian mathematician. It was the first time a foreign bred horse won the Kentucky Derby. (Pictured above.)

Omar Khayyam was a poet as well as a mathematician. Englishman Edward Fitzgerald translated those poems which were published as the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. And that is how I got to my idea for yesterday's blog.

My mind seems to work like a pebble thrown into a pond - it makes a circle and the circles keep going out and out and out. I get an idea and it leads on and on and on. To me, all things are connected.