Should you pass cool stuff onto the next generation?

Site of the Mountain Top Hotel and Springs, Afton, Virginia.

 On my father's side of the family, one William Leake was allowed to be kidnapped by a evil second wife step mother from Nottingham, England in ~ 1685 and sent to Rocky Spring, Virginia, which in now a country suburb of Richmond. http://genforum.genealogy.com/leake/messages/974.html Eventually there was a nice red brick estate there, which as a child, my father pointed out from the road as we sat in what at least to a twelve year old appeared to be his Super Fly pimp-mobile. Considering the turmoil and financial difficulties that my family was going through at the time, I kinda wondered what happened.

As the late 1600's moved on to the late 1700's, and on to mid 1800's, a branch of the family moved on to Albemarle County, where another, albeit more modest  wooden farmhouse with acres counted in the hundreds, was built, and I am guessing by others than Walter Leake, since he was a man who in his will left things like " land, negroes and cattle " to his wife (folks, I have read this will online). I also have been to the graveyard where Mask Leake and his offspring are buried and the remains of the mountain farmhouse still can be found in the brush, guarded by wild beasts like these:

Due to the tenacity of my father,  the Veteran's Department finally issued  new marble  Revolutionary and Confederate War  headstones to replace the original field stone markers. He also successfully badgered the Governor of Virginia for several years to recast the above highway marker. My father also insists that Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, et al. never paid the tavern bill during the Rockfish Gap Meeting and with interest, the state of Virginia owes us ~20 million dollars.

Which leads me to  www.floydfest.com .  My brother, his girlfriend, my two sons  camped in a pasture in a collection of tents, shaggin wagins and rented rv's and had an absolute blast. As I contemplate selling my own house (sorry kids!) to finance living in a metal box with wheels in the mountains of New Mexico, I also contemplate why over the generations... since 1665 mind you, farms were sold, a popular tavern burned to the ground, at least one fortune was  given away to build a hospital, suburban houses were lost in divorce, a 1924 river house was lost to cousins, tony fan district row houses were put on ye ole auction block. On my mother's side, a house in the garden district of that perennially cool city New Orleans changed hands, a house on a island in the back bays of Virginia vamoosed, and the list goes on to 2013 and is about to include me. It seems my people got old, sold their shit to survive old age, then died...and the next generation started over from scratch. Why was this? Was there no way to preserve some kind of home base, some kind of family anchor after all this time? Was it some message about the ephemeral nature of our time here on the rock?

As I lay at Floyd Fest in my tent at 3000 feet, totally happy, with cool, like minded people all around, I thought of something I had stolen somewhere on line (maybe http://waynewirs.com/ ?)

"Impermanence is a central concept to Buddhism and says simply, “Nothing you see or experience is permanent. Everything is temporary. Nothing lasts.” Sounds depressing as hell, but accepting this truth can be surprisingly freeing. Once you accept this idea as a fact of life, you quickly realize the futility of clinging to things you crave and love – and shunning the things you hate and despise. You start accepting the present moment as a gift – a very fleeting gift – and you learn to appreciate and love anything and anyone that is sharing this moment with you."