How often we go through what seems at the time a disagreeable experience, only to have it turn into a happy memory. Often our most vivid and enduring remembrances are apparently simple, even trivial things. As I have compiled this family history I have asked many friends and relatives to reach back into their childhoods and tell me what they recall with greatest clarity. Almost always they mentioned experiences or incidents of no great importance. Not crises or traumas or triumphs, but things which are altogether small in themselves carry sharp sensations of warmth and joy, or sometimes of pain.
Nothing is trivial.
If only we could relish each day as we lived it, rather than finding pleasure in the sad afterglow of reverie. If only we could learn to overlook the petty annoyances, the needless fears that obstruct our enjoyment of the moment, and recognize the true value of now before it is gone forever. Perhaps someday these things will be a pleasure to recall. River Falls was out of the mainstream and modernization did not arrive in this area until about the end of WWII in 1945. This was the town I knew when I was growing up.