Not to brag, but in my youth, my family spent many summers in a gated community. Well, it wasn’t truly a gate. It was more like a chain with a padlock across a dirt road. And it wasn’t really a community so much as a camp at the end of a cornfield.

When I was four years old, my family moved from a tiny house in Centenary, Indiana, with no indoor plumbing to a less tiny house with that modern convenience. The water that came out of our faucets and flushed our toilet in Summit Grove came from a well under the back porch.

Did you see the news that Columbia House will be closing its doors for good this month?  If this sounds like old news to you, you are not alone. I didn’t know it still had doors to close. Appropriately, the CNN headline read:

On a recent trip back to my home state of Indiana, I paid a visit to the Vermillion County Courthouse to see the County Assessor’s office. While it’s not on any top ten lists of places to visit, it was a must-see for me because my dad served as the County Assessor for 12 years.  

Recently, my husband Walt and I made a trip to my hometown of Clinton, Indiana, to visit some extended family and go to the Clinton Public Library to search through microfilm of issues of The Daily Clintonian that are not available online. We were both more excited about this research opportunity than most normal people would be. We might watch a few too many true crime shows.

I read this week that the West Virginia county I live in is implementing a bus-tracking system so parents and teachers can see the school bus’s location in real time along its route. Like everything these days, it’s an app for your smartphone or iPad. Parents and schools can track the bus and even see its location on a map.

Having a family as large as ours meant that every other year a Carty was in the kindergarten class at Ernie Pyle Elementary School, located a straight shot four miles west of Summit Grove. The school was named for Ernie Pyle, an American journalist and World War II correspondent who was born in nearby Dana, Indiana.

Researching my family for my memoir has been a labor of love.  I joined Ancestry.com and Newspapers.com. I have sent many emails to entities like the Clinton Public Library, the Vermillion County Clerk, and the Indiana Health Department. I Googled a lot. And I interviewed my family members, including my mom, siblings, cousins, and my aunt.

Since I started working on my memoir, I have realized how beneficial it would have been to have jotted down some words in a diary throughout my life. Plus, if I’m ever murdered, a diary might help solve my case. At least it does on Dateline.

One thing I have learned while working on my memoir is that I can’t count on my memory. To make the stories I write as accurate as possible, I am researching my memories. That process has brought me both satisfaction and disappointment.

I’m amazed that when I mention my family was involved in the Daisy BB Gun National Championships (aka BB gun shoots), very few people have even heard of them.

The group text came early in the morning before my 65th birthday, while I was in Cancun celebrating my eligibility for Medicare.

For over a year now, I have been working on a memoir of my childhood, which was admittedly a long time ago and quite a number of years before the internet. Even so, you can find some really long-ago facts on this internet thing. And even more long-ago untruths.