Random thoughts

Valda & I went to Appomattox Court House, VA yesterday and toured the small town where Generals Lee and Grant signed the document that ended 4 years of the American Civil War. Nothing fancy, just two men who sat down and agreed to quit fighting each other. After all that had transpired, it was rather anti-climatic.

When I was standing in the actual room that this took place, I was struck by the significance of the event and the fact that I was standing in the same room 142 years later. It just seemed a little unreal to me. I got to thinking about history and how insignificant it can make you feel. I've seen the actual beds where 4 presidents have died, stood 5 feet from where FDR died while having his picture painted. Saw the gun that shot Lincoln and his blood on the pillow where he died. I actually touched Gus Grissom's Mercury capsule (I wasn't supposed to, but I did), the one that spent 40 years or so on the ocean floor. I was in the World Trade Center and walked on the roof of the South Tower just 5 months before it was destroyed. I drove over that collapsed bridge in Minneapolis last September. And, Valda & I spent a couple of hours on the aircraft carrier Lexington in Corpus Christi, TX in January of this year (there was a fire on board the Lex this past week, but the news of it got lost in the bridge story).

Thinking back to these places I've been and knowing what happened either before or after I was there is rather sobering. Two men met in a parlor of an old farmhouse in Appomattox, VA and spent a few minutes making small talk about their shared experience in the Mexican War, then sat down and ended a war that sometimes doesn't want to end. I stood there all those many years later and witnessed that event. How small I felt.