Sunday, November 11, 2012

Armistice Day


When I was growing up this was Armistice Day, in memory of the 1918 ending  of the nightmare of World War I -- on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, at eleven a.m. 
In school (this was in the '30s and we must have been in school that day?) I remember the bells in the hall all clanging at 11, and we stood beside our desks for a minute of silence.   But I also remember once being out on a sidewalk 
when church bells started ringing and factory whistles blared.  A trolley car stopped in the middle of the street, everything went silent, men took off their hats and held them to their hearts for a full minute, then everything started up again.

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  1. Edith LankNovember 16, 2012 at 10:01 AM

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  2. Edith LankNovember 16, 2012 at 10:14 AM

    As a PS: Years ago I was visiting my kids in Port Moody, outside Vancouver, and -- can it be so far back that one of my granddaughters was marching with the Brownie Scouts? -- not sure. At any rate, the remembrance ceremonies were extremely moving. It was raining and people stood silently under a sea of umbrellas under a flyby of World War One planes!

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