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Sunday, October 23, 2005

SURVIVAL OF THE FITEST

These heirlooms were passed down to my mom by my great grandfather Charles, two War ration booklets from World War II and the foreign currency money for U.S. soldiers, from both Japan and Australia. Each item shows a time of struggle in my family and a time of need. During this time food and everything else that you could buy in stores was scarce. Everything was being made to be given to our troops fighting in W.W.2. Everything was regulated and controled that every U.S. citzen could buy so much of a certain kind of product.
I learned that my Great Grandfather, being a carpenter, had very many useful skills to help him out during this time. He had built many houses and knew that by using very little supplies and creating as less as waste product as he could he could have a higher profit. This means by recycling everything he could have a higher benfit towards survival of this time. Just by looking at the war ration booklets, I saw that barely any of the stamps were used. This means my great grandfather was very self reliant and my mother, Tifanny, said that he had an amazing graden to live of off just as my grandfather does now. By looking at the Foreign Currency money I learned that being in possesion of this if my grandfather had to escape he had money to spend else were in a neighboring country. By seeing the actions taken place and what my great grandfather did I relised that he used he skills to his need and survived in the best way he could.
These heirlooms mean a lot to my family and myself, not just because they are old an valuable. It is because they show everything my great grandfather has passed on. Looking at them i have relised that alot of the skills my family shares today were taught by him to his son, my grandfather, and then to my mother, and so on. Skills like carpentry, when somthing is broken we never call a repair man we always do it ourself, unless if its somthing complicated like our satlite going dead or electricty problems. Even by knowing how to fix the simplest thing is a benifit to me.  I’d rather know how to do it than not be able to fix it at all and by being able to do the simplest task is the best way to survive in the end.

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