The Mysterious Soldier...Who Is It?

   For some reason, although I see this picture every day, the scene at the top of this blog is for me a picture of my life and my ramblings. A familiar path toward the ocean, located not many miles from our home, one I have walked many times, but when you get to the beach, there is no telling what you might find.

   I take paths like this, mental paths that lead me from one place to another, many times without a purposeful end, just rambling into "I wonder why", or "how did that happen?", or "how does this relate to anything?".

   Most times when I write, I want to leave a nugget or a haunting question for anyone who happens by and reads, something that God has shown from His Word, or from a picture, or something else that I have read. But sometimes it is just rabbit trails, beginning from some thought and then letting it meander out onto the beach to spend some time thinking and wondering, percolating if you will, in the sun.

   I think about people and their lives. People that live in my world, or folks who have lived in the past, ones that I know their names and something about them, and others whose lives are hidden from my view, and the only thing that I see is an old snapshot, and I wonder.

   I wondered this morning about that lady that my daughter encountered in a Mexican restaurant the other day, the one I wrote about. I mulled the situation around in my mind again and hoped that they might meet again and share stories and lives in that Arkansas town.

   Then, as I looked back at a site that I had bookmarked yesterday, I read a story of a man's search for the answers to a story contained in an old photograph on a sign in Massachusetts. His site is full of items like that. Here, if you have time to wonder, and wander, with me:

http://www.morningsonmaplestreet.com/index.html

   I remembered an old picture that we have been moving from house to house over the past years. We cannot remember where it came from, whose it was before, who it portrays, when it was done, or any other of the details. We just have it sitting on our bookshelf.

   When I take a shot of it and zero in on the face, he looks like he belongs to us. I can see the profile of my own father's face in the shot, and I have to wonder, who is it?

   It is a metal picture, with just a few scraps of newsprint on the back, possibly an obituary posting, but not enough of it to identify anyone. He appears to be in a army uniform, possibly WWI or maybe Spanish American War vintage. But who is he? My dad was not in the army, so that projection is out.

   I suspect he is in training at a post in the south. Note the pine trees in the background.

   Chattanooga lies just north of the old army training grounds at Fort Oglethorpe, established by the army in 1902, where soldiers were inducted and processed during both WWI and WWII. Could that be a clue?

   Someone served, some family had this metal picture, some people cared. Lives were lived, events were cherished, joys and heartaches were there, they were important to someone, they had a story, a part in the tapestry of life. They left a legacy of some kind.

   I guess there is no purpose in my wanderings and wonderings. Maybe the pursuit of a retired mind, but interesting to me.

   And I still want to know: Who is he, and what was his life?