Building Ponds; Sharing Memories

I was enjoying a visit from my son Douglas and daughter-in-law Shelly for Mother's Day yesterday when the subject of our earliest memories came up. I said I thought photos helped our memories - that whether we really remembered something from our childhood or not, seeing a picture from our early ages helped create a memory of that time.

Doug remarked that he had two distinct memories from around age three and no photos of those memories existed. They both occurred when we lived west of Brooks at the old Odell place.

I found an online photo to illustrate one of Doug's memories from that time and place. He recalled 'sneaking' away from the house and going back through the timber to watch the landowner building a new pond.

What I find interesting about this is that one of my earliest memories was of 'sneaking' through the orchard, behind the cedar tree windbreak in order to watch the building of the pond at 'the other place'. (How we referred to the set of farm buildings up the road from our main buildings.)
I had to sneak because I had been told to stay at the house because they would be using dynamite. Only when I related this memory to my older brother did I learn I had confused/combined two of my memories. The dynamite had been used by the county to blast out a row of maple trees when they were grading and widening our road before graveling it. No dynamite was used in the pond building which was in the same area but at a different time.

A photo of Ron, Betty, Laddie and me from the time the road was graded (1950) - equipment in background.

Doug and I have another interesting shared memory from our childhoods - remarkably the first 'dirty' story he remembers hearing was the same first 'dirty' story I heard as a child - and no, I wasn't the one telling him.

What's that saying about history repeating itself? Apparently memories do too.