SUCCESSFUL LINKS: SPECIAL DELIVERY by Gordon Rampy <grampy@citizen.infi.net> It's a characteristic of those of us who immerse ourselves in the fascinating pursuit of our personal pasts that we expect others to feel at least some of the thrill we experience when we uncover a tidbit of memorabilia. But it's just not so. And we begin to get the picture when we're cornered by a fellow genealogist who bores us to yawns with the same sort of ecstatic spiel we love to proclaim. What follows is, I'm afraid, a good illustration of the phenomenon. My father was born and reared at the turn of the century on a sharecropper farm near Salado, Texas. He hoped, as we all do, that someday, after he was gone, there would be those who were interested in his life story. Thank the Lord! He put it all down in a book titled CHOICE AND CHANCE, and now we know him better than we did before his death in 1976. One of the memories he recorded was of his first train travel. He was 12 years old and the year was 1910. He said goodbye to his mother while a horde of envious brothers and sisters watched him get into the buggy with his father. The trip from Salado to the railroad station in Belton took about an hour and then he climbed alone onto the train with all the excitement any boy would feel at such a time. His destination was Aunt Sally's home in Benoit, Runnels County, Texas, 150 miles away. My father's writing gives no more details of the adventure, so it remained for his reader just one of the rather ordinary incidents he recorded. But then, nearly 80 years after it happened, I received a tangible link to that event, which, for me, gave it a brand new perspective. One of my relatives sent me a postcard that had surfaced in a central Texas antique store. It was addressed to "Mrs. T. J. Rampy, Salado, Texas," and was dated August 19, 1910. It bore a one cent stamp and the postmark, Benoit, Texas. In a child's barely legible scrawl was the message, "Hello, Mamma How are you I am all right I have just got off the train and am at Aunt Sallie's now. I didn't have any trouble. Randall" On the front, nestled in a pretty floral design were the words, "To One I Love." To me, that scruffy postcard is priceless, though there is not another soul on the face of the earth who would offer a dime for it. The pursuit of the past brings unsharable rewards. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Previously published by Julia M. Case and Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG, Missing Links: RootsWeb's Genealogy Journal, Vol. 4, No. 35, 25 August 1999. RootsWeb: <http://www.rootsweb.com/>