"Fifteen Two, Fifteen Four, Fifteen Six..."

...those words spoken with great inflection and enthusiasm are the words of my Grandfather recorded nearly 40 years ago. You see, I attended boarding schools for six years--from high school to college--and during several of those years my dad and I exchanged cassette taped letters.

Recently I purchased a cassette player that allows me to convert those tapes to MP3 files. It has been a long time since I dusted off those old tapes and listened to them. I am sitting here on my bench listening to those wonderful voices on my iPod.

Sometimes my Dad would take the recorder to my Grandparent's home and let them talk or in the case of the tape quoted simply let it run during a heated game of Cribbage. My Grandmother can be heard in the background during the game declaring, "Tim doesn't want to hear you two playing Cribbage!"

Grandpa was a avid Cribbage player. When I was in Junior High School I used to drop by after school and Grandpa would teach me the fine points of Cribbage playing. How to combine the right cards, play your hand in the right order, and throw those cards down with a flourish!

How wrong you were Grandma. I treasure hearing those simple everyday voices. Voices that no longer can be heard on this earth. They are all gone now. I miss them.

Listen to the voices of the ones you love, while you can still hear them.

Tim