Memories of Youth

I just sat down at the computer and looked out the window behind me. There are big FAT snowflakes falling from the sky in wet, white clumps. Anyone looked at a calender lately? It's almost April. We should be gearing up for pool season! I am so not made for winter.

Last week the weather was beautiful...60s and 70s, even after the sun went down the boys were still outside playing. With all their boyness, they helped Papa chop up a tree and haul the logs back to the wood pile. The payoff was sweet: rides around the yard in the wheelbarrow.





As I watched them cruising around I recalled moments just like this with my own grandpa. I will bet you a batch of those brownies from a couple posts back that the inventor of the wheelbarrow had no idea he was creating a prop for childhood memories. He just thought he was making it easier to haul stuff.

I just paused my post-writing to do some wheelbarrow research. It was invented in ancient Greece around 400 BC and was called a hyperteria monokyklou (translated as "one body for a one-wheeler"). It was adopted by the Romans and later appeared in medieval Europe sometime between 1170 and 1250. It filtered on down from there. It's a pretty cool invention really, though I can't imagine the little Greek and Roman kids ever got rides around the yard.