When I read on CNN yesterday that Colonel Sanders's original handwritten secret-recipe formula for the world's most famous fried chicken was being moved under guard while its secure location was being updated, I started to drool and gurgle Homer-Simpson-like on my keyboard. Mmmmm, eleven secret herbs and spices....gaaaaah.....
Now, I can tell you that I make a mean fried chicken myself. Over the course of the 11 years I've been cooking for me and Jason, I've consulted with my mom, watched cooking shows, and pored over techniques from chicken geniuses like Paula Deen to get a darn-good version into the supper rotation. Of course, we only use boneless, skinless chicken breasts in my immediate family, and some would tell you that this doesn't count. All I know is that my mother, one of the finest chicken fryers in the southeast, likes to come over for dinner whenever I get inspired to whip up a batch. That's just about the biggest compliment I could ever get.
I don't want to hide my "secret"; I'd gladly tell you the tips and tricks I've learned (some of which I just learned in the past 2 years or so; God love the Food Network.) The Colonel, on the other hand...Not so big on the sharing.
It's genius, really. By making such a big deal about all the security behind that little yellowed piece of paper, the KFC people have gotten a lot of publicity for their product. And by making people like me think about perfectly and secretly-seasoned deep-fried chicken skin, which I can't get on my own chicken, they're pretty much guaranteeing that this Kentucky girl is going to make a KFC drive-thru stop sometime in the very near future. I know I'm not alone.
Like McDonald's secret sauce, and Skyline Chili: often imitated, never duplicated. And therefore crave-worthy. As much as I try to stay away from fast food, these are the things I abandon my own perfectly-passable home-cooked dinners to eat and to later clog my arteries.
Damn you, Colonel. You and your wee beady eyes.
Do you crave the Colonel's Original Recipe? Are there other fast-food faves that make you abandon diets and New Year's resolutions and good food sense?
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
Kiss Me, I'm A Little Irish
Of all the things I thought I would dig up as I began genealogical research last week, I never thought I would find Irish roots.
I had never heard anyone talk about it. On both sides, all I heard was about the long-lost Cherokees and the speculation that we are German because there are a lot of German-sounding names. Every March 17 I celebrated St. Patrick's Day mostly because I like an excuse to drink Guinness and make my favorite Irish-stout-laden beef stew.
But now I know...my maternal grandfather's lineage is Irish. Many generations removed from the island, and mixed in with some other stuff, but Irish nevertheless.
My maternal grandfather took his mother's maiden name, not the name of one of her four "husbands" like we had previously thought. Once I uncovered this, it was pretty easy to find his mother's parents through census records. And once I found my great-great-grandfather, I learned that another researcher on Rootsweb shares him as a distant anecestor and uncovered a lot about that line through census records. Sources point to a common ancestor coming over from northern Ireland around 1719; that main line settled in Pennsylvania, then migrated to Virginia, then one branch moved into the mountains of Kentucky. I know that it's a litle iffy trusting someone else's research, but this someone documents all his sources and has transcribed most of them to give proof. It all looks very plausible.
I am hitting dead ends on my father's side of the tree, but I was able to find an Irish immigrant from the late 1700s on his paternal side, too.
So this year, on March 17, I have a real excuse to celebrate. I'm, like, 1/1000th Irish! Well, maybe more than that if you count the two instances of inbreeding I found (they were distant cousins, so it's less icky, but it still concentrates those Irish genes, am I right?)
I had never heard anyone talk about it. On both sides, all I heard was about the long-lost Cherokees and the speculation that we are German because there are a lot of German-sounding names. Every March 17 I celebrated St. Patrick's Day mostly because I like an excuse to drink Guinness and make my favorite Irish-stout-laden beef stew.
But now I know...my maternal grandfather's lineage is Irish. Many generations removed from the island, and mixed in with some other stuff, but Irish nevertheless.
My maternal grandfather took his mother's maiden name, not the name of one of her four "husbands" like we had previously thought. Once I uncovered this, it was pretty easy to find his mother's parents through census records. And once I found my great-great-grandfather, I learned that another researcher on Rootsweb shares him as a distant anecestor and uncovered a lot about that line through census records. Sources point to a common ancestor coming over from northern Ireland around 1719; that main line settled in Pennsylvania, then migrated to Virginia, then one branch moved into the mountains of Kentucky. I know that it's a litle iffy trusting someone else's research, but this someone documents all his sources and has transcribed most of them to give proof. It all looks very plausible.
I am hitting dead ends on my father's side of the tree, but I was able to find an Irish immigrant from the late 1700s on his paternal side, too.
So this year, on March 17, I have a real excuse to celebrate. I'm, like, 1/1000th Irish! Well, maybe more than that if you count the two instances of inbreeding I found (they were distant cousins, so it's less icky, but it still concentrates those Irish genes, am I right?)
Out of the Mouth of Ains: GUSPP edition
Friday night as I was helping Ains finish up her shower I told her that after I dried her off I wanted her to "go bathroom."
She looked at me funny. "Go bathroom?" she asked.
Uhhh, what part of this didn't she understand? I left out the "to" and the "the" to make it a command. I verbed it, if you will. "Yeah, go bathroom. Like, go potty."
She became all prissy. "You really shouldn't say it like that, 'cause I heard it like," and here she put one fist on her hip and pumped one fist in the air, cheerleader-style, "go, bathroom! Go, bathroom!"
Smartass.
I guess this means it's official: she's a member of GUSPP. You know, the Grammar, Usage, Spelling, and Punctuation Police. I myself (depite typos on the blog) belong; my GUSPP card is in my wallet right next to my Shoe Carnival Frequent Sucker Club card and my Kentucky Democratic Party card (motto: Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory since 2000! Oh, I kid because I love.)
Or maybe in her case it's Grammar, Usage, Spelling, and Punctuation Princess.
She looked at me funny. "Go bathroom?" she asked.
Uhhh, what part of this didn't she understand? I left out the "to" and the "the" to make it a command. I verbed it, if you will. "Yeah, go bathroom. Like, go potty."
She became all prissy. "You really shouldn't say it like that, 'cause I heard it like," and here she put one fist on her hip and pumped one fist in the air, cheerleader-style, "go, bathroom! Go, bathroom!"
Smartass.
I guess this means it's official: she's a member of GUSPP. You know, the Grammar, Usage, Spelling, and Punctuation Police. I myself (depite typos on the blog) belong; my GUSPP card is in my wallet right next to my Shoe Carnival Frequent Sucker Club card and my Kentucky Democratic Party card (motto: Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory since 2000! Oh, I kid because I love.)
Or maybe in her case it's Grammar, Usage, Spelling, and Punctuation Princess.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Critter, Creature, Carcass
"That kid," said Jason last weekend at the pool, "is a Creature."
He was of course talking about Creepy Stalker Kid who followed Ains around and eventually went all Ike Turner on her.
"Creature?" you may be saying. "What's this?"
I blogged after our vacation about the Ainsley Wave Classification System, wherein she described the different waves she encountered in Hilton Head as being either a splat, a jiggle, or a jink.
As one commenter noted, there is a Cranky family history of coining terms to further identify people and things. This commenter mentioned that, thanks to us, the terms "critter", "creature", and "carcass" are used in her house.
I cannot take credit for this, but I can explain it. Especially since Jason and I just used the term "Creature" last weekend in describing the stalker kid who hit my daughter.
The Three C Classification System was developed by Jason's brother to describe people whose behavior and demeanor are, shall we say, less than ideal. The lowest level is "Critter." This is for those who are, as the name suggests, small and maybe a little cute and only mildly and sporadically annoying. Like most babies and kids who are just doing their thing, just being kids. Think of it as a squirrel who gets up on your deck and sometimes eats all the seeds out of your bird feeter. Critter. "That critter is back in the feeder again!" It's so low-level that I don't hear the in-laws use it so much anymore; it's just a given that all the nieces and nephews are, in their normal state of being, Critters.
Come to his family's Christmas Eve party and you will see Creatures. This term is still mostly used for smaller human beings. Though I have seen it used on adults who are breaching the annoyance threshold. Creature-ness is what happens to otherwise normal children who get a little hyper, or a little tired, or a little cranky. It's like the largish spider you find in your shower one morning; it's alarming, and rather troubling, but easily dispatched with a shampoo bottle. On Christmas Eve the nieces and nephews all turn into Creatures. By 10pm, the older kids are tired and complaining loudly about the toys that don't work as they should out of the box and/or need batteries or pouting because you won't let them have their 50th salami roll. The 3-and-under set starts fighting and biting. Around this time Jason's brother can be seen in a corner of the room, hands on top of his baseball cap, in awe at the destruction and chaos.
"What a bunch of Creatures," he'll say.
Indeed.
Then there are the Carcasses.
A true Carcass is rare. I don't hear it used much. It really takes a special kind of person to own this status.
A Carcass is a larger, adult person (I don't think I've ever heard it used about kids) who is such a massive tool that it's almost disgusting. It's like the dead whale that washes ashore on your favorite beach, spreading its foul methane decay and large, unmovable mass all over an otherwise pleasant place.
Here's a timely example of a "Carc." Jason and I watched Wednesday's Daily Show last night and saw Jon's clips of doughy-headed Karl Rove from several months ago, bashing the idea of Tim Kaine of Virginia as a potential running mate for Obama, belittling him because he only has three years executive experience as governor and was "only" the mayor of Richmond, Va., before that. Jon had just shown a clip of Karl from just this week praising Palin's experience and qualifications for office because she has been governor or Alaska for two years and mayor of Wassilla before that.
"I don't care what party you're from," I said. "You've got to admit that Karl Rove is a Carcass."
Carcasses are rare, and I think they might be a cool thing to collect. I know my readers must know some fine Carcasses. Chime in below with how some people in your life would measure up on the Critter, Creature, and Carcass scale.
He was of course talking about Creepy Stalker Kid who followed Ains around and eventually went all Ike Turner on her.
"Creature?" you may be saying. "What's this?"
I blogged after our vacation about the Ainsley Wave Classification System, wherein she described the different waves she encountered in Hilton Head as being either a splat, a jiggle, or a jink.
As one commenter noted, there is a Cranky family history of coining terms to further identify people and things. This commenter mentioned that, thanks to us, the terms "critter", "creature", and "carcass" are used in her house.
I cannot take credit for this, but I can explain it. Especially since Jason and I just used the term "Creature" last weekend in describing the stalker kid who hit my daughter.
The Three C Classification System was developed by Jason's brother to describe people whose behavior and demeanor are, shall we say, less than ideal. The lowest level is "Critter." This is for those who are, as the name suggests, small and maybe a little cute and only mildly and sporadically annoying. Like most babies and kids who are just doing their thing, just being kids. Think of it as a squirrel who gets up on your deck and sometimes eats all the seeds out of your bird feeter. Critter. "That critter is back in the feeder again!" It's so low-level that I don't hear the in-laws use it so much anymore; it's just a given that all the nieces and nephews are, in their normal state of being, Critters.
Come to his family's Christmas Eve party and you will see Creatures. This term is still mostly used for smaller human beings. Though I have seen it used on adults who are breaching the annoyance threshold. Creature-ness is what happens to otherwise normal children who get a little hyper, or a little tired, or a little cranky. It's like the largish spider you find in your shower one morning; it's alarming, and rather troubling, but easily dispatched with a shampoo bottle. On Christmas Eve the nieces and nephews all turn into Creatures. By 10pm, the older kids are tired and complaining loudly about the toys that don't work as they should out of the box and/or need batteries or pouting because you won't let them have their 50th salami roll. The 3-and-under set starts fighting and biting. Around this time Jason's brother can be seen in a corner of the room, hands on top of his baseball cap, in awe at the destruction and chaos.
"What a bunch of Creatures," he'll say.
Indeed.
Then there are the Carcasses.
A true Carcass is rare. I don't hear it used much. It really takes a special kind of person to own this status.
A Carcass is a larger, adult person (I don't think I've ever heard it used about kids) who is such a massive tool that it's almost disgusting. It's like the dead whale that washes ashore on your favorite beach, spreading its foul methane decay and large, unmovable mass all over an otherwise pleasant place.
Here's a timely example of a "Carc." Jason and I watched Wednesday's Daily Show last night and saw Jon's clips of doughy-headed Karl Rove from several months ago, bashing the idea of Tim Kaine of Virginia as a potential running mate for Obama, belittling him because he only has three years executive experience as governor and was "only" the mayor of Richmond, Va., before that. Jon had just shown a clip of Karl from just this week praising Palin's experience and qualifications for office because she has been governor or Alaska for two years and mayor of Wassilla before that.
"I don't care what party you're from," I said. "You've got to admit that Karl Rove is a Carcass."
Carcasses are rare, and I think they might be a cool thing to collect. I know my readers must know some fine Carcasses. Chime in below with how some people in your life would measure up on the Critter, Creature, and Carcass scale.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
This Is Me In Grade Nine, Baby
Picture day at our school today.
As any teacher can attest, picture day is one of the worst days. The intercom sounds off all day long, interrupting classes to send different groups down for their portraits. Girls fuss over their hair and makeup and boys whose parents made them wear a shirt with a collar fidget and seem umcomfortable. There's always a feeling of being on the edge of chaos.
All day today I've had ninth graders in the library. Ahhh, the smell of freshmen in the morning.
As they file past me in their fashionable retro tight-legged jeans and brightly-colored shirts ('cause we all know that, according to the Lifetouch people, bright colors look best in pictures even if they wash you out and make you look vaguely jaundiced in person) I keep hearing part of the Barenaked Ladies song "Grade 9" in my head:
I got a blue and red Adidas bag and a humongous binder
I'm trying my best not to look like a minor niner...
This is me in grade nine, baby, this is me in grade nine...
It could be that this song is stuck in my head because the Ladies sing part of it at the beginning of the live version of "If I Had A Million Dollars" that I put into my annual summer mix CD this year. Or it could be that every year when I see our freshly-minted and spiffed up freshmen I think of myself as a petite little wide-eyed ninth-grader.
Finding Jason's old ninth-grade yearbook this summer and seeing myself sprinkled throughout it (there's me in the chorus, singing a very wide-open "ah"! There's me out of focus behind a group of mugging seniors, looking like a fashion victim in my high-waisted and pegged-leg pants!) just made me shake my head at myself a little bit. More so than any other time in my school years, I look at pictures of myself and say, "What on earth were you thinking?"
But I can forgive myself, for is there ever a time when we are so divided inside ourselves as that freshman year? Freshmen have one foot in childhood and one foot in the adult world. On any given day, you might write a note of undying love to your first boyfriend and then later go play kickball in your best friend's back yard. It is for this reason that teachers either love them or hate them. You either embrace the childishness or run screaming and ask to have 17 and 18 year olds the next year. I used to love teaching freshmen when I was in the English classroom, though working with mostly seniors the last 8 years has shown me that there something to be said for those students who are truly young adults.
In honor of picture day, here's a glimpse of Cranky in grade nine. I am not a poet, so this will be prose rather than imitating the lyrical song stylings of BNL. I hope to post my actual ninth-grade school picture soon; my hair in the picture is truly a work of art.
Cranky In Grade Nine:
First, the hair. I had grown out the layers from my long, feathered, permed, middle-school 'do and lopped my newly-straight hair into a simple bob a la Dana Delaney from the China Beach years. But this was the fall of 1988, so I couldn't just let my hair, you know, hang there. I had to pump it up. So I curled and lifted and sprayed the bangs into a Kentucy Claw (though I prided myself that I no longer teased them into a standing-straight-up ratty mess like I had done in eighth grade, because that was soooo tacky.) But this wasn't enough. The height from my bangs did bad things for my face shape if the rest of my hair was flat. So I took a cue from Linda Evans's Krystal Carrington look and sprayed the sides of my hair into wing-like structures that I probably could have used to slow my fall from a tall building. This look, I thought, was so mature and so classy. Never mind that I couldn't get a brush through it.
Then there were the clothes. What you see in my school picture isn't so bad; a simple cable-knit crewneck peach sweater. I was dressing simply that day. But other days I was big on layering; later in the fall, that peach sweater would have been worn over a peachy-plaid button-down shirt. Which still isn't so bad. But on cold days, I couldn't stop myself. I wore a peach turtleneck under the shirt under the sweater. I wouldn't be surprised to find a picture of myself with a blazer on top of all that. I just loved the layers, man. And if the layers were all pastels...well, that just made it all the cooler. I loved to wear colors that today you can only find in baby clothes.
My shoes were always a statement. I am sure that on picture day I was wearing pointy-toed shiny-black flats with my acid-washed jeans. I loved to wear dress shoes with jeans and even shorts. But with skirts? Well, I had to wear my Chuck Taylors or my Keds with my dresses and skirts. Because it showed my funkiness. My nonconformity. Which happened to look a lot like everyone else's nonconformity.
This is me in grade nine, baby.
Pull out your old ninth-grade pictures. What was your style? Were you able to resist The Claw?
As any teacher can attest, picture day is one of the worst days. The intercom sounds off all day long, interrupting classes to send different groups down for their portraits. Girls fuss over their hair and makeup and boys whose parents made them wear a shirt with a collar fidget and seem umcomfortable. There's always a feeling of being on the edge of chaos.
All day today I've had ninth graders in the library. Ahhh, the smell of freshmen in the morning.
As they file past me in their fashionable retro tight-legged jeans and brightly-colored shirts ('cause we all know that, according to the Lifetouch people, bright colors look best in pictures even if they wash you out and make you look vaguely jaundiced in person) I keep hearing part of the Barenaked Ladies song "Grade 9" in my head:
I got a blue and red Adidas bag and a humongous binder
I'm trying my best not to look like a minor niner...
This is me in grade nine, baby, this is me in grade nine...
It could be that this song is stuck in my head because the Ladies sing part of it at the beginning of the live version of "If I Had A Million Dollars" that I put into my annual summer mix CD this year. Or it could be that every year when I see our freshly-minted and spiffed up freshmen I think of myself as a petite little wide-eyed ninth-grader.
Finding Jason's old ninth-grade yearbook this summer and seeing myself sprinkled throughout it (there's me in the chorus, singing a very wide-open "ah"! There's me out of focus behind a group of mugging seniors, looking like a fashion victim in my high-waisted and pegged-leg pants!) just made me shake my head at myself a little bit. More so than any other time in my school years, I look at pictures of myself and say, "What on earth were you thinking?"
But I can forgive myself, for is there ever a time when we are so divided inside ourselves as that freshman year? Freshmen have one foot in childhood and one foot in the adult world. On any given day, you might write a note of undying love to your first boyfriend and then later go play kickball in your best friend's back yard. It is for this reason that teachers either love them or hate them. You either embrace the childishness or run screaming and ask to have 17 and 18 year olds the next year. I used to love teaching freshmen when I was in the English classroom, though working with mostly seniors the last 8 years has shown me that there something to be said for those students who are truly young adults.
In honor of picture day, here's a glimpse of Cranky in grade nine. I am not a poet, so this will be prose rather than imitating the lyrical song stylings of BNL. I hope to post my actual ninth-grade school picture soon; my hair in the picture is truly a work of art.
Cranky In Grade Nine:
First, the hair. I had grown out the layers from my long, feathered, permed, middle-school 'do and lopped my newly-straight hair into a simple bob a la Dana Delaney from the China Beach years. But this was the fall of 1988, so I couldn't just let my hair, you know, hang there. I had to pump it up. So I curled and lifted and sprayed the bangs into a Kentucy Claw (though I prided myself that I no longer teased them into a standing-straight-up ratty mess like I had done in eighth grade, because that was soooo tacky.) But this wasn't enough. The height from my bangs did bad things for my face shape if the rest of my hair was flat. So I took a cue from Linda Evans's Krystal Carrington look and sprayed the sides of my hair into wing-like structures that I probably could have used to slow my fall from a tall building. This look, I thought, was so mature and so classy. Never mind that I couldn't get a brush through it.
Then there were the clothes. What you see in my school picture isn't so bad; a simple cable-knit crewneck peach sweater. I was dressing simply that day. But other days I was big on layering; later in the fall, that peach sweater would have been worn over a peachy-plaid button-down shirt. Which still isn't so bad. But on cold days, I couldn't stop myself. I wore a peach turtleneck under the shirt under the sweater. I wouldn't be surprised to find a picture of myself with a blazer on top of all that. I just loved the layers, man. And if the layers were all pastels...well, that just made it all the cooler. I loved to wear colors that today you can only find in baby clothes.
My shoes were always a statement. I am sure that on picture day I was wearing pointy-toed shiny-black flats with my acid-washed jeans. I loved to wear dress shoes with jeans and even shorts. But with skirts? Well, I had to wear my Chuck Taylors or my Keds with my dresses and skirts. Because it showed my funkiness. My nonconformity. Which happened to look a lot like everyone else's nonconformity.
This is me in grade nine, baby.
Pull out your old ninth-grade pictures. What was your style? Were you able to resist The Claw?
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Roots
I really don't know where I come from.
I mean, I know that, basically, all my "people", on both my mom's and dad's sides, are from the mountains of southeastern Kentucky. But when we've tried to trace back further than a few generations, we've hit roadblocks. We've never known with any certainty what breed we are; I envy those folks who know which ancestor came over on which boat from which European country. As far as my grandparents ever knew, their known ancestors hailed from Knox, Bell, or Lee counties, not from Ireland, England, or Germany. It was as if my family sprung wholesale from the rocks and springs of the Appalachian mountains in some sort of divine occurrence.
I've tried some genealogical research before using the new online resources I'd heard so much about. Some of my friends were able to go back many generations without ever visiting a county courthouse or state records archive; I was never even able to find anything about my grandparents. When you're from a group of people who were not born in hospitals, and who only filed birth certificates years later when they needed to pay into Social Security, it can be difficult. Not to mention that many of the rural counties of Kentucky have had a history of piecemeal record-keeping and few resources to help them get what records they have scanned and available online. I gave up years ago; I figured I would have to drive 4 hours each way to get to some of the county courthouses I needed to go to find anything out.
Yesterday afternoon while waiting for a class to come in, I decided to play my favorite online game, Beat Wikipedia. Here's how I play: I go to a Wikipedia article about a topic I know a lot about myself and try to find an inaccuracy that I can later use to show researching classes that Wikipedia is not always a reliable source for academic research. On a whim, I decided yesterday to see what everyone's favorite free encyclopedia had to say about my parents' home county, Knox. Because I am a creature of habit, I did my search through Google rather than going straight to Wikipedia.
One of the first hits, above the Wikipedia page, was a link to Knox County, Kentucky records available through Rootsweb. I knew it was probably a dead end, but I clicked on it anyway.
And ten minutes later, something popped up on my screen that made me gasp and made tears come to my eyes: my maternal grandparents' marriage certificate in all its handwritten glory.
After that, I found my paternal great-grandfather's death certificate.
And after that, the death certificate of my maternal great-grandmother.
I could not believe it. And the beauty of seeing marriage and death certificates is that I now have some leads I didn't have before; the parents' names and birthplaces are listed on death certificates, and parents' names are also on marriage licenses.
The downside is that some of the records I've seen for my family are illegible or vague or even contradictory; the great-grandfather's birth location is listed on one document as Bell County, Ky., but on another as simply, "Va." The man listed as my maternal grandfather's father is not his biological father, but a man who his free-spirited part-Cherokee mother settled down with after having 3 or 4 kids by different fathers. It will take finding his birth certificate to finally solve the great family mystery of who his dad really was, and so far birth certificates are hard to find through either the county's records or the state's. There is a great disclaimer I found about the general state of chaos of Kentucky birth records until around 1920. Apparently, it was not thought of as a big deal to file one with the state in the rural counties. In a place where everybody knew everybody and people stayed on one piece of land from cradle to grave, it just wasn't that important.
After Ains was in bed last night, I did some more digging and tracing and have some leads that will take me to Virginia's online records and to some other Kentucky counties. Surprisingly, the little bit of research I did in other counties made me even more impressed with Knox's recent initiative to digitize their records; my ancestral county has really been a pioneer and is working hard to help people doing genealogies. Who would have thunk that that little poor county would be such a digital-searcher's paradise?
I hope before the first snowfall that I will be able to tell you, with certainty, who that first Cranky pilgirm was who travelled across the ocean in search of religious freedom and/or a better life. And the name of the Cherokee who gave life to my maternal great-grandmother, the striking high-cheekboned, eagle-nosed woman who I have seen in a picture with her long arms around my Papaw and his brother. My Papaw didn't talk much about his mother and her family, but my mom has said he knew the name of the tribe he was descended from. If only we learned more of the details from our elders while they were still alive.
I am not so idealistic to think that all my ancestors from both sides are going to hail from one country and let me be able to say, "We're English," or "We're Scottish." The beautiful thing about being an American is that so many of us are "mongrels." So many of us can say we're a little this and a little that. I am just really excited to finally have some leads about what the "this" and "that" are.
Have any of you traced your families? What did you learn? And the big question: What are you?
I mean, I know that, basically, all my "people", on both my mom's and dad's sides, are from the mountains of southeastern Kentucky. But when we've tried to trace back further than a few generations, we've hit roadblocks. We've never known with any certainty what breed we are; I envy those folks who know which ancestor came over on which boat from which European country. As far as my grandparents ever knew, their known ancestors hailed from Knox, Bell, or Lee counties, not from Ireland, England, or Germany. It was as if my family sprung wholesale from the rocks and springs of the Appalachian mountains in some sort of divine occurrence.
I've tried some genealogical research before using the new online resources I'd heard so much about. Some of my friends were able to go back many generations without ever visiting a county courthouse or state records archive; I was never even able to find anything about my grandparents. When you're from a group of people who were not born in hospitals, and who only filed birth certificates years later when they needed to pay into Social Security, it can be difficult. Not to mention that many of the rural counties of Kentucky have had a history of piecemeal record-keeping and few resources to help them get what records they have scanned and available online. I gave up years ago; I figured I would have to drive 4 hours each way to get to some of the county courthouses I needed to go to find anything out.
Yesterday afternoon while waiting for a class to come in, I decided to play my favorite online game, Beat Wikipedia. Here's how I play: I go to a Wikipedia article about a topic I know a lot about myself and try to find an inaccuracy that I can later use to show researching classes that Wikipedia is not always a reliable source for academic research. On a whim, I decided yesterday to see what everyone's favorite free encyclopedia had to say about my parents' home county, Knox. Because I am a creature of habit, I did my search through Google rather than going straight to Wikipedia.
One of the first hits, above the Wikipedia page, was a link to Knox County, Kentucky records available through Rootsweb. I knew it was probably a dead end, but I clicked on it anyway.
And ten minutes later, something popped up on my screen that made me gasp and made tears come to my eyes: my maternal grandparents' marriage certificate in all its handwritten glory.
After that, I found my paternal great-grandfather's death certificate.
And after that, the death certificate of my maternal great-grandmother.
I could not believe it. And the beauty of seeing marriage and death certificates is that I now have some leads I didn't have before; the parents' names and birthplaces are listed on death certificates, and parents' names are also on marriage licenses.
The downside is that some of the records I've seen for my family are illegible or vague or even contradictory; the great-grandfather's birth location is listed on one document as Bell County, Ky., but on another as simply, "Va." The man listed as my maternal grandfather's father is not his biological father, but a man who his free-spirited part-Cherokee mother settled down with after having 3 or 4 kids by different fathers. It will take finding his birth certificate to finally solve the great family mystery of who his dad really was, and so far birth certificates are hard to find through either the county's records or the state's. There is a great disclaimer I found about the general state of chaos of Kentucky birth records until around 1920. Apparently, it was not thought of as a big deal to file one with the state in the rural counties. In a place where everybody knew everybody and people stayed on one piece of land from cradle to grave, it just wasn't that important.
After Ains was in bed last night, I did some more digging and tracing and have some leads that will take me to Virginia's online records and to some other Kentucky counties. Surprisingly, the little bit of research I did in other counties made me even more impressed with Knox's recent initiative to digitize their records; my ancestral county has really been a pioneer and is working hard to help people doing genealogies. Who would have thunk that that little poor county would be such a digital-searcher's paradise?
I hope before the first snowfall that I will be able to tell you, with certainty, who that first Cranky pilgirm was who travelled across the ocean in search of religious freedom and/or a better life. And the name of the Cherokee who gave life to my maternal great-grandmother, the striking high-cheekboned, eagle-nosed woman who I have seen in a picture with her long arms around my Papaw and his brother. My Papaw didn't talk much about his mother and her family, but my mom has said he knew the name of the tribe he was descended from. If only we learned more of the details from our elders while they were still alive.
I am not so idealistic to think that all my ancestors from both sides are going to hail from one country and let me be able to say, "We're English," or "We're Scottish." The beautiful thing about being an American is that so many of us are "mongrels." So many of us can say we're a little this and a little that. I am just really excited to finally have some leads about what the "this" and "that" are.
Have any of you traced your families? What did you learn? And the big question: What are you?
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Shotgun Daddy
I have seen the future.
Something happened to our little family on Sunday that gave me an eerily clear picture of the kind of dad Jason is going to be when Ainsley starts dating. I could just see him 10 years from now, gray in his hair, a few lines around his eyes, sitting on our stairs, absent-mindedly polishing a shotgun.
"Oh, this?" I can hear him say as the unwitting suitor comes into the entryway. And then like Ash from Army of Darkness, "This...is my BOOMSTICK! Now, I swear, if you even touch her..."
Sunday we were enjoying magnificent pool weather at Silverlake. Ainsley was, as usual, going back and forth from slides to diving board. Early on she was befriended (and by "befriended", I really mean "stalked", though in a kiddie Nickelodeon-meets-Lifetime-movie-of-the-week sort of way) by a boy a year or two older than her who kept challenging her to races down the twin body slides and who followed her everywhere she went.
When she tired of slide races, he followed her to the diving boards. I followed; even with lifeguards, we like to be close to her when she's jumping into 12 feet of water. Shockingly, some parents let their little four-, five-, and six-year-old kids have the complete run of the place with little supervision; we're worry warts so we tend to hover.
All the kids going off the boards at that time were challenging each other with cannonballs; the goal, of course, was to soak the lifeguard in their wake.
"Did you see how big a splash I made? Did you see my awesome cannonball?" asked Ainsley's admirer/stalker/stage 5 clinger after a very unspectacular jump.
"That wasn't even a cannonball!" replied Ainsley.
The boy did not like that comment and "playfully" slapped her on the arm. When she didn't react to that, he very unplayfully slapped her in the arm with a look in his eyes that frightened me; he was mad, and wanted someone to hurt. That's pretty scary in a 7- or 8-year-old.
"Hey! Don't hit her!" I said in my best controlled-anger, teacherly voice. I didn't like what I had seen. And where, pray tell, was this kid's mother, who should have been the one to tell him to not hit?
Then I pulled Ainsley aside.
"I don't like that this boy hit you. I don't want you to play with him if he's going to be mean to you."
So she went off the board one more time and told us she wanted to go back to the slides. I think she wanted away from young Ted Bundy.
He wasn't daunted just yet. "Oh, yeah! I'll race you down the slides! I call red!"
As we followed Ains back over to the slides, I told Jason, who had not been close enough to the diving board to see the slap, what had happened.
"I don't know if I want him playing with her."
"Oh, relax." he said. "Are you sure he wasn't just playing around? He was probably just being a boy."
Yeah. A boy who bullies. No big deal.
I left him in charge of watching Ains on the slides while I ordered our lunch from the concession stand. When I came back to our chairs, he looked very alert and very serious.
"Well, we're going to have an irate parent over here any minute now. I just chewed out a kid."
While I was gone, Angry Stalker Boy, for reasons still unknown to us and to Ainsley, followed Ainsley off the slides after a race and punched her (yes, punched, not slapped) in the back. Jason had watched them come one at a time off the slide and saw nothing transpiring between then that explained the punch.
Jason had just gotten up and said, "Hey!" when he punched her again, this time in the stomach.
My husband then went into his own angry-teacher mode. When he became an angry teacher back in the day, though, he was much, much scarier than I've ever been. This was the guy who broke up a girl fight by asserting himself and yelling in the middle of two wildcats about to claw and who once shoved a chair all the way across the room a la Bobby Knight.
He got right in the kid's face.
"Don't you ever, EVER, hit my little girl again."
The kid, freaked by my husband's leering 6-foot-4-inch frame and angry baritone, immediately ran away.
And cue the other parent in 3...2...1...
"Did something just happen over here? My son just came over to me, crying, and saying that another kid's dad just yelled at him and scared him."
I let Jason do the talking at first. He very diplomatically explained what he had seen and why he reacted the way he did.
"My son doesn't hit," the mother said. "Are you sure he wasn't just playing around?"
Are you freakin' kidding me?
I told the mom what I had seen earlier at the diving board and that, though I couldn't speak for what happened at the slide since I wasn't there, I could say with certainty that the slap at the diving boards was not a friendly, joking kind of thing. I told her how I had seen him slap her twice, with the second one done with what I perceived as anger.
She didn't want to believe that her angel would really hit someone out of anger, and Jason sort of apologized for scaring the kid but had the last word with, "I'm not going to just sit and let someone hit my daughter." Especially when it's an older boy who should know better and who seems to have some anger issues his own mother isn't aware of.
Just as Jason wanted to defend our kid, I know that she was just trying to defend hers and get the whole story. I would have investigated, too, if Ainsley said a stranger yelled at her. But since I keep a pretty close watch on her in public places, I have a feeling I would have seen something to clue me in. I'd like to think that if she hit another kid on two separate occasions that I would have at least seen one of them.
A few minutes later, we saw the mom and her family leave the water park. Ainsley wasn't hurt, and didn't cry after she got hit (though Jason said she looked like she was going to, which was part of the reason why he reacted so strongly), so we didn't make an issue of it after it was all over. But much later, after we had gotten home, Jason told me that his hands still felt shaky and he was still angry.
"The more I think about it...it was like I had an out-of-body experience. I saw my little girl getting hurt, and I just reacted. I'm sure I scared the crap out of him. But clearly the kid has problems."
Yes, clearly. Clear enough that I had not wanted them to play together after the slap at the diving board, but whatevs.
What was also disturbingly clear is that Ainsley isn't so great at sticking up for herself. I've always told her she needs to stand up more; when I watch her play with the neighborhood kids she kind of lets them walk all over her. They take toys from her, don't take let her have her turn, and generally boss her around. I don't interefere here because I am hoping she will assert herself more.
But her getting slapped and punched and just taking it...it's worrysome. The future I saw on Sunday with Jason guarding his little girl's honor with a well-oiled firearm has another grimmer chapter; Ainsley as a victim of domestic violence, just sitting back and letting a man slap her around when he gets angry and not putting a stop to it.
I know, I know, she's only 6. There's a lot of time for discussion and teachable moments. And when she gets a little older, those wonderful Lifetime movies (based on the true story.)
And a lot of time for Jason to polish his already-impressive Shotgun Daddy routine.
Something happened to our little family on Sunday that gave me an eerily clear picture of the kind of dad Jason is going to be when Ainsley starts dating. I could just see him 10 years from now, gray in his hair, a few lines around his eyes, sitting on our stairs, absent-mindedly polishing a shotgun.
"Oh, this?" I can hear him say as the unwitting suitor comes into the entryway. And then like Ash from Army of Darkness, "This...is my BOOMSTICK! Now, I swear, if you even touch her..."
Sunday we were enjoying magnificent pool weather at Silverlake. Ainsley was, as usual, going back and forth from slides to diving board. Early on she was befriended (and by "befriended", I really mean "stalked", though in a kiddie Nickelodeon-meets-Lifetime-movie-of-the-week sort of way) by a boy a year or two older than her who kept challenging her to races down the twin body slides and who followed her everywhere she went.
When she tired of slide races, he followed her to the diving boards. I followed; even with lifeguards, we like to be close to her when she's jumping into 12 feet of water. Shockingly, some parents let their little four-, five-, and six-year-old kids have the complete run of the place with little supervision; we're worry warts so we tend to hover.
All the kids going off the boards at that time were challenging each other with cannonballs; the goal, of course, was to soak the lifeguard in their wake.
"Did you see how big a splash I made? Did you see my awesome cannonball?" asked Ainsley's admirer/stalker/stage 5 clinger after a very unspectacular jump.
"That wasn't even a cannonball!" replied Ainsley.
The boy did not like that comment and "playfully" slapped her on the arm. When she didn't react to that, he very unplayfully slapped her in the arm with a look in his eyes that frightened me; he was mad, and wanted someone to hurt. That's pretty scary in a 7- or 8-year-old.
"Hey! Don't hit her!" I said in my best controlled-anger, teacherly voice. I didn't like what I had seen. And where, pray tell, was this kid's mother, who should have been the one to tell him to not hit?
Then I pulled Ainsley aside.
"I don't like that this boy hit you. I don't want you to play with him if he's going to be mean to you."
So she went off the board one more time and told us she wanted to go back to the slides. I think she wanted away from young Ted Bundy.
He wasn't daunted just yet. "Oh, yeah! I'll race you down the slides! I call red!"
As we followed Ains back over to the slides, I told Jason, who had not been close enough to the diving board to see the slap, what had happened.
"I don't know if I want him playing with her."
"Oh, relax." he said. "Are you sure he wasn't just playing around? He was probably just being a boy."
Yeah. A boy who bullies. No big deal.
I left him in charge of watching Ains on the slides while I ordered our lunch from the concession stand. When I came back to our chairs, he looked very alert and very serious.
"Well, we're going to have an irate parent over here any minute now. I just chewed out a kid."
While I was gone, Angry Stalker Boy, for reasons still unknown to us and to Ainsley, followed Ainsley off the slides after a race and punched her (yes, punched, not slapped) in the back. Jason had watched them come one at a time off the slide and saw nothing transpiring between then that explained the punch.
Jason had just gotten up and said, "Hey!" when he punched her again, this time in the stomach.
My husband then went into his own angry-teacher mode. When he became an angry teacher back in the day, though, he was much, much scarier than I've ever been. This was the guy who broke up a girl fight by asserting himself and yelling in the middle of two wildcats about to claw and who once shoved a chair all the way across the room a la Bobby Knight.
He got right in the kid's face.
"Don't you ever, EVER, hit my little girl again."
The kid, freaked by my husband's leering 6-foot-4-inch frame and angry baritone, immediately ran away.
And cue the other parent in 3...2...1...
"Did something just happen over here? My son just came over to me, crying, and saying that another kid's dad just yelled at him and scared him."
I let Jason do the talking at first. He very diplomatically explained what he had seen and why he reacted the way he did.
"My son doesn't hit," the mother said. "Are you sure he wasn't just playing around?"
Are you freakin' kidding me?
I told the mom what I had seen earlier at the diving board and that, though I couldn't speak for what happened at the slide since I wasn't there, I could say with certainty that the slap at the diving boards was not a friendly, joking kind of thing. I told her how I had seen him slap her twice, with the second one done with what I perceived as anger.
She didn't want to believe that her angel would really hit someone out of anger, and Jason sort of apologized for scaring the kid but had the last word with, "I'm not going to just sit and let someone hit my daughter." Especially when it's an older boy who should know better and who seems to have some anger issues his own mother isn't aware of.
Just as Jason wanted to defend our kid, I know that she was just trying to defend hers and get the whole story. I would have investigated, too, if Ainsley said a stranger yelled at her. But since I keep a pretty close watch on her in public places, I have a feeling I would have seen something to clue me in. I'd like to think that if she hit another kid on two separate occasions that I would have at least seen one of them.
A few minutes later, we saw the mom and her family leave the water park. Ainsley wasn't hurt, and didn't cry after she got hit (though Jason said she looked like she was going to, which was part of the reason why he reacted so strongly), so we didn't make an issue of it after it was all over. But much later, after we had gotten home, Jason told me that his hands still felt shaky and he was still angry.
"The more I think about it...it was like I had an out-of-body experience. I saw my little girl getting hurt, and I just reacted. I'm sure I scared the crap out of him. But clearly the kid has problems."
Yes, clearly. Clear enough that I had not wanted them to play together after the slap at the diving board, but whatevs.
What was also disturbingly clear is that Ainsley isn't so great at sticking up for herself. I've always told her she needs to stand up more; when I watch her play with the neighborhood kids she kind of lets them walk all over her. They take toys from her, don't take let her have her turn, and generally boss her around. I don't interefere here because I am hoping she will assert herself more.
But her getting slapped and punched and just taking it...it's worrysome. The future I saw on Sunday with Jason guarding his little girl's honor with a well-oiled firearm has another grimmer chapter; Ainsley as a victim of domestic violence, just sitting back and letting a man slap her around when he gets angry and not putting a stop to it.
I know, I know, she's only 6. There's a lot of time for discussion and teachable moments. And when she gets a little older, those wonderful Lifetime movies (based on the true story.)
And a lot of time for Jason to polish his already-impressive Shotgun Daddy routine.
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