Thatched Roofs and Imminent Death

My mother had never been to Europe, and so for her birthday/Christmas/Mother's Day, I decided we should go.

We planned two weeks, one in England and one in France.

We decided to drive instead of depending on public transportation, so we could see more. We knew that in the UK they drive on the other side of the car and the road, but in true Barber Women fashion, we thought, "How bad can it be?"

We arrived in the morning and picked up our rental car at Heathrow on a Sunday morning.  The plan was to drive to Salisbury for our first night at a bed and breakfast/tavern, and take in Stonehenge if we weren't too tired.

We loaded our luggage and climbed into the car. Mom decided to drive, which wasn't surprising since she drives everywhere all the time anyway and is also better versed in manual transmissions. And by better versed I mean that she's actually driven them. Within in seconds of pulling out of the lot, she hit a curb. It went downhill from there.

When we were on the highway, it was fine, but the UK LOVES traffic circles.

Traffic Circles in the UK rotate counter clockwise and despite having multiple travel lanes, they actually have no lines marking where said lanes are located.

The overall result of our drive out of London consisted of moments on the highways where we felt reasonably safe,  two lanes roads where we felt like fish out of water but reasonably okay, and then traffic circles, which we dreaded as they approached, and where we simply prayed to survive until we were on the two lane road again.

Then we discovered another kind of road in the UK. The one lane road with no shoulder.  These were the ones I, as the passenger, feared the most.  You know, those lovely English hedges are a lot less romantically lovely when you're barreling toward them at  30 MPH sitting on the side of the car THAT YOU ARE SURE SHOULD HAVE A STEERING WHEEL.

The strained, fear filled silence of the sedan's interior was occasionally pierced by one of two sounds. Either the beat my foot hitting the part of the floor that should have had a brake pedal, or my mothers right hand knuckles striking the window of the car as she reached for the gear shift with the wrong hand. In retrospect, one of us should have turned on the radio, but neither of us felt we had a free hand available for such a frivolous exercise.

Oh and did I mention it was raining?

Needless to say, when we spotted Stonehenge in the distance, we both agreed that would be a great place to stop, and upon pulling into the parking lot, we marveled at our own ability to survive such adverse conditions.  We dragged our feet getting back into the car.

We found our tiny tavern B&B in an even tinier town full of structures bearing construction dates from the mid 1600s. Even I had to duck into a few of the ancient doorways of the tavern, as the tall, blustery English tavern keeper led us to our second floor room.

The warmth of the room combined with the fading light and pouring rain put us to sleep.

We woke up to sunshine and an English breakfast served in the tavern downstairs.  Closer inspection of the town's buildings revealed that they were all thatched roofs. Our host was energetic and talkative, explaining the benefits and issues of associated with thatched roofs and the history of the town. We were also treated to a first hand account of exactly what the average UK citizen thought of everything from the Royal Family to national healthcare to illegal immigration.  In the end he invited us back anytime and even waved as we drove away.

We hoped that he wouldn't watch us drive off, lest mom take out a parked car.

My Grandpa is Dead

It's amazing to me how with one simple act, a person moves from a reality to a memory.

My Papa was born in 1917, and from that day until his last, he had the kind of memory that makes genealogists and historians go weak in the knees. I think he must have remembered every day of his life.

He saw Babe Ruth play in Tiger's Stadium with his dad in the 1920s.  We didn't know about that until shortly before he died.  In the middle of an uninteresting conversation about baseball, he said it like it was something everyone had done, like he wasn't sitting in room full of people who knew of The Babe only from faded photographs and scratchy video.  He said simply, "I saw him play in Detroit, with my dad."  Like it happened everyday.

A similar experience had happened a few years earlier, when my mom and I stopped in to visit on our way home from the movies.  He asked what we'd seen and my mom said, "We saw Seabiscuit, about this horse in the 1930s."  My Papa muttered, "Seabiscuit, that little horse from California?"  My mother responded, "Yes,"  And Papa, as if he was telling you that he'd had a banana for breakfast that day, said "I saw that little horse run 39."

Just like that, he mentions this legendary horse and his brush with history, and that he'd just driven across the country.  My mother looked at him incredulously.

"Dad, you were in California in the 1930s? Why?"
"I drove your Aunt Crystal out there and stopped at the race track on the way back."
"You drove to California in the 1930s?"
"Yes, what's the hullaballo? She had to go and I drove her."

Never mind that the trip, before highways, probably took more than a week.  Never mind that it would have been an unbelievably historic trip to have made during the Great Depression. He drove to California. He saw Seabiscuit run... what's the big deal?

He was like that about every event in his life. No matter how big or how small, it happened, he lived it, and that was it. He served as a Supply Sargent in World War II in what he always called "The Forgotten Theater" of China, Burma, and India. He didn't see a lot of action, but he did trades with the British.  As he said it, the British liked our military issue sunglasses, and the Americans were jealous of the British issued shorts, which they wore instead of long pants.  So my Papa would trade the American sunglasses for the British shorts.  He was always a businessman.

He came back from the war, worked in a Papermill for awhile and then started his own small boats and motors business.  He also had six kids.  Like most grandparents, mine also functioned as babysitters when the grandkids started to arrive.  Papa would be at the store next door to his house, and we'd wander over there after lunch to visit when my grandma started watching her "shows"-- the dull soap operas that filled afternoon TV.

 He would tell us to "pick out a boat" in the showroom, and when we did, he'd lift us into it so we could play inside. It was a way to keep us out of trouble, but for me, it was the best playroom imaginable. My brothers and I would catch fish, storm castles, and kill dinosaurs all from the confines of a 12' bass fishing boat parked on a trailer in a showroom.  When we got to play in the pontoon boats, that was a real treat indeed, those weren't usually in the showroom.  Often, my cousin Rachel would be there too, and to this day she's more of a sister.  We grew up together, in my Papa's store.

When he died last week, a little piece of my childhood disappeared forever. I could not imagine a world in which Papa didn't exist, and yet he was gone.

Gone with all the answers to all the questions I never thought to ask.

So I bought a black dress I'll never wear again, and flew home to say goodbye one last time. To him, to the laugh and the mischievous smile, to the twisted sense of humor I loved so much (and many say I inherited), to the smell of his house, the papery feel of his skin when I kissed his cheek.

And if I sit quietly, I can hear him say one last time the thing he always said when I was leaving, "You're a good kid Tracy, I love you."

I love you too, Papa.

Genealogists can Set the Record Straight

In 1906, an earthquake shook San Francisco. It came to be known as the Great Quake and nearly leveled the city. Afterward, a fire raged, turning whatever was left to ash.
When the shaking and burning stopped, there were, officially, 478 dead-- a number that seems ridiculously low when viewing the images of the disaster.


Subsequent counts estimated the number of dead closer to 700, but in the last decade there has been extensive research, created in part by genealogists searching for data to fill their family trees.


Gladys Hanson, San Francisco's City Historian, started counting the dead when genealogists in the 1970s began contacting her about death records. By cross referencing cemetery records, death records, and other genealogical data, she now estimates the death toll closer to 5,000--- and she isn't done.

Many people said that the official death count could never be accurate because so many people fled San Francisco after the quake and just never returned. While this is true, there are just as many family histories claiming relatives died in San Francisco-- after the quake relatives outside the city never heard from their loved ones ever again. It stands to reason that if you lived in the city and survived this horrendous disaster, you'd communicate to your family back east that you were okay, right?

Genealogy does go hand in hand with history. I can't even begin to recall the number of times I've lost ancestors inexplicably and needed to see what was happening in the area historically to find them again. I can't imagine how difficult a large scale disaster like the 1906 Quake would make it to find ancestors. Especially if they were just never heard from again. I think I like Gladys Hanson, a lot.

Your Relatives are not Famous, and Neither are Mine.

Have you ever noticed how those people who believe in reincarnation were always someone famous in their past lives? They were a King, or a Martyr, or some other historical figure of great importance. I've had several people tell me they were Henry V, or Charlemagne, or even someone like Anne Boleyn in their previous life. They're never a serf, or a slave. They're never someone of dubious history, or someone downright evil. No one has ever, to my knowledge, claimed to be Genghis Khan, or Rasputin, or Robespierre. No one has ever claimed to be Hitler reincarnated.

The same is true of many family historians. They love to claim famous ancestors. So much so, that many so called genealogists actually doctor their family trees to support the tie to a legendary individual, instead of acknowledging that most of us are descended from the shoulders on which great men stood, rather than the great men themselves.

Case in point: Several nights ago I was at a dinner with a group of friends. A friend and I were discussing genealogy when another friend interrupted with the story of his supposedly researched family tree. Turns out this man sitting at that very dinner table was related to two Medieval Kings! Imagine! And incidentally, they were two kings that weren't related to each other! Imagine how blue the blood is in his veins! Wow. Of course, when asked how exactly they connect to my friend, he is unsure, even if it's on his father or mother's side.

Here's the thing, the vast majority of Americans tend to claim English royalty in their lineage, but there have been only 69 rulers of England, and only 40 since the Normans invaded in 1066. By contrast, there have been 44 United States Presidents.

We all want to be important, and genealogy is popular in the United States because we have a desire to find out where we came from. Humans are social and want to associated with a community, and we want to produce, or be, something of value to our world.

I'm like everyone else. I would love to find someone great in my family tree. I'd love to be related to a King, or an Indian Princess, or even a United States President-- preferably a well respected and loved one. However, to doctor my tree to create the illusion of a famous relative is dishonest, and I would always know it's not true. A hollow win isn't really a win at all, and it diminishes what so many of our other ancestors did do, which was to create a new life for themselves in a new, uncharted world. That's pretty legendary, even if their names are not remembered by the masses.

How The Story Ends

Until last week, I had never seen a photo of my grandfather before he was married to my grandmother. I had never seen him as a little boy. I knew he was born in Kentucky. I knew all the dates and names there are to know. I even found out he'd married someone before my grandmother, and that my father has a half brother out there somewhere. Family secrets just don't hold up against public records and a dedicated genealogist.

I was working online when another woman contacted me through Ancestry.com, and said she was a distant cousin, and had photos of my grandfather as a boy. She sent me copies, and I waited with baited breath for the ultimate goal of any genealogist, the elusive "identified photograph." When they arrived, I poured over them, and then proceeded to digitize them so I could put them on the site.

As I was loading them I saw it. I'd looked at the photo a dozen times at least, but this time I saw him. My grandfather, young, maybe not yet twenty, smiling the same smile my father has, the same smile I look at every day in the mirror. There he was, younger than I am now, before my grandmother, before my dad. A life full of opportunity yet to be lived.

His life flashed through my mind in the form of all the photos I'd seen of what came after this one. Marrying my grandma, enlistment, the war, the lifetime of service to Ac Delco in Flint, Michigan, riding motorcycles with my dad, the deaths of his parents, the accident that would claim his arm and make him the old man I knew in my childhood, the loss of my grandma, and finally, his own death.

Here I was looking at this photo of a young man with everything in front of him, and yet it was all behind him now. In that instant, I felt many things, among them, loss.

My "Gramps" died when I was only twelve, and his grumpiness in those days made me afraid of him. I really never knew him at all. What I would give to sit next to him with these photos and say, "Who was that?" "Where was this taken?" "How old are you here?" The stories connected to these photos are lost forever.

We look at photographs everyday and comment to each other on Facebook, or in family groups as they're passed around, "Oh, you look so young there," or "Wow, you looked so beautiful that day, how happy you were." Yet there will come a time when nobody knows anyone in the photos we leave behind. Someday, a descendant of mine will look at an old photo of me, taken when I was young, with my whole life ahead of me, and that descendant will already know how the story ends.