Stories are pictures of life using words in place of brush strokes and colors. Short stories are to literature what pencil and shading are to paintings. Pencil work can convey  warm feelings in a powerful way but don't have all the detail you will find in multi-colored art with the nuances of color and shading. Short stories may convery a single emotion or vignette of an experience. 

 

My favorite short story is by O'Henry and entitled the "Gift of the Magi". I challenge you to find more simple or powerful expression of love in any literature. 

 

The purpose of this website is to encourage each of us to share our stories. Stories that we believe are important to our families and our communities. Stories that most importantly encourage each of us to be better people, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, parents and friends.



The reason I came up with this idea of creating a place for collecting and sharing short stories is becuase I have much I want my children to know about themselves and the people they came from.  My goal with this site is to build a safe haven for other parents to do the same.  I will help you.

 

The idea of telling stories came to me on the occasion of having dinner in an "authentic" Mexican resturant. A picture on the wall intended to create  atmosphere for the resturant was of a young women stepping off a train during the Mexican revolution. The time is around 1917. The determination and courage in the expression on her face is evidence of a cause greater than herself. This young women was a rialera or rail rider.

 

The rialeras road the rails with their soldier husbands or boyfriends serving as cooks, nurses, weapon carriers and serving as informal support troops. This paticular young women in the picture, to me, looked a bit like my daughter Aurora soon to be married, The picture was certainly of the time of my grandparents. Aurora's great grandparents. It made me wonder if my daugher understood where she came from. Not so much the place but of the people she came  from.

 

Clearly my daughter lives in the lap of luxury not having to want for much in this great country. I felt it important that she know her seed came from a very far place carried by the most magnificent of people often on rails and certainly in the face of great adversity.

 

As I thought about her getting married and starting off on her own life I wanted her to know that whatever the future held for her and her husband that she came from a people and family with great character. I wanted her to know, through her very core, that her legacy  from us, her family, is the strength to overcome any adversity that will undoubtably come her way. The  people that came before  point the way and that this message makes a fantastic story.