Dug out some old photos of my father and mother, and some of me as a kid. Old photos really have a story to tell. I found a couple of photos of my grandfather and his brother on horseback when they were out in Argentina. They look a couple of rough characters, ready to beat the shit out of you just for a laugh.
When we visited my Aunt Marjorie she told of some of their exploits in South America. It sounded a bit like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, busting out of jail and fleeing the country back to Scotland. I don't know if any of it was true, since they were stories passed on from my grandfather to his children. Everyone wants to make their history more exciting tan it really is. But then again history itself can make your life more exciting than you would ever want it to be.
It has been said that for any Scotsman to succeed then he has to leave Scotland. That was what was drumed into me by my father, who felt trapped in the village, condemed to a life of unemployment. Get educated and get out.
Education was the key to open doors. If you had no education then all that was on offer was a life down the mines, and you could see too many old miners standing on the corners coughing their lungs up, due to the amount of coal dust they had swallowed in a lifetime. Mining ruined your health. Education made you healthy.
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