I visited with a neighbor this weekend. He’s my parents’ age (which is to say, middle-aged), and is the undisputed king of the tangential story. Given any question, he’ll manage to turn it into a 5-10 minute yarn. This would be annoying, if it weren’t for the fact that he’s got some awesome stories.
This weekend I asked him for the correct pronunciation of his last name, which is rather unique. In one sentence, he answered my question, and then proceeded to relate the following story.
His surname, it turns out, is Portuguese. His paternal great-grandfather immigrated from the Azores and settled in New England, where he took up his prior trade of whaling. (My neighbor was quick to point out that whaling was fully legal back then, and that it was how most people got the oil they used to light their homes at the time. A tangent within a tangent! I told you he was the master of this technique.)
His great-grandfather was the harpoonist aboard the ship. One day, as they were out hunting Right whales (which, according to my neighbor, are called “Right” whales because they were the “right” kind of whale, due to the prodigious amounts of oil they produce), they sighted a whale and proceeded to harpoon it. To their dismay, they had harpooned not a Right whale, but a large Sperm whale, which proceeded to drag their boat at great speed for some distance. After pulling the boat quite some way from land, the whale dove, snapping the cable, and then breached, jumping right up from below the boat and snapping it in two. (Moby Dick, anyone?)
This was a largish boat, with oars some 14 feet in length, and my neighbor’s great-grandfather clung to one of these large oars for three and a half days, before washing ashore on (get this) a deserted island. There, he survived by scavenging for several more days before a search party finally found and rescued him.
And all of this, because I asked for the proper pronunciation of my neighbor’s last name!
As with most family lore, I suspect there is more than a little exaggeration in this story, so I don’t necessarily accept it all at face value. But I love to hear stories like this, from people’s family history. It’s one thing to read history in a book, and another to hear it told to you as it was passed down orally through multiple generations of someone’s family. It breathes life into it, somehow.
What stories have you got from your own archive of family lore? (If you don’t know of any, try asking your parents or grandparents, if they are still alive. You might be surprised what stories they can share.)
Kevin
on 08 Dec 08Great story!
Devan
on 08 Dec 08That’s a cool story – so sad that the art of storytelling is fading with each generation.
My parents grew up during the Japanese occupation of Malaysia in WWII and have some awesome stories to tell.
Ian Lotinsky
on 08 Dec 08A friend recently told me about This American Life—a Chicago-based radio broadcast on real-life stories. Fascinating stuff! Check it out.
BJ Clark
on 08 Dec 08My grandfather was in WWII, a Lt. in Paton’s 3rd army (735th Armored Battallion, Reconn officer, HQ Company) and was a scout. He drove/rode in a jeep with another guy, and they scouted for a battalion of tanks.
On Christmas day 1945(or possibly 1944), he and his driver drove over to a small town near where his battalion was camped, in an attempt to buy tea cups to send to my grandmother. This was obviously against the rules, but they thought they were pretty safe because they were supposedly well behind enemy lines getting R&R.
About a 1/4 mile before getting back to camp, then came around a bend in the road and were ambushed by a lone nazi machine gun. The guy driving the jeep reacted quickly by slamming on the breaks which caused the jeep to slide in snow/ice on the road and it ended up, upside down, in the ditch that was next to the road. Luckily this put the whole body of the jeep between the machine gun and them, but unfortunately this made for a great target. The machine guy really opened up on them.
However, upon hearing a machine gun less than a 1/2 mile away, a few of the tanks that were on patrol quickly followed the sound of the guns back to where my grandfather and his partner were, and took out the machine gun. My grandfather and his partner made it out completely unscathed, except for some snow down their shirts and a few bumps and bruises.
44 years later, at a reunion in Louisville, KY, the driver of the tank that first responded and destroyed the machine gun relocated my grandfather and greeted him with “Bill Clark, you SON OF A BITCH! Do you know who I am? I saved your ass on Christmas!”.
Lysonne
on 08 Dec 08Where his great-grandfather settled had to be New Bedford, MA where Portuguese is still spoken with the regularity as Spanish in Miami and EVERYBODY’S ancestors were whalers or shipbuilders (because they are more likely than not Portuguese). It’s an interesting place, whaling museum and all.
BUT, I’m left wondering what his unusual name is. So much for storytelling ;)
The important thing is that I had an onion on my belt…
Jamis
on 08 Dec 08@BJ, Love that story! Thanks for sharing.
Pierre Larochelle
on 08 Dec 08Story about my entrepreneurial grandfather here
Lisa Rex
on 08 Dec 08Great post and great story. Far too few people appreciate hearing these old tales, embellished or not. I’m doing all I can to find the stories and the facts in my rambling family tree. The web is a great place to connect to distant cousins around the globe – it’s very handy living in the Internet age!
Sridhar Oruganti
on 08 Dec 08A good post.This reminds me the names in my country. Its ‘may’ based on 3 factors : based on region,based on occupation(caste), and in few cases your paternal origins(might be your father’s name or the name of the ascetic to whose lineage you belong.
My surname ‘Oruganti’ is actually derived from a region called Warangal in Andhra,India(Warangal was previously Orugallu). Enough said!
Jim
on 08 Dec 08My mom’s father told me a story a few years before he died about taking a rail car load of cattle from their family farm to Chicago for sale. This would have been a big experience, considering he was going from the middle of nowhere (a farm in the country outside Greenfield, IA) to the Windy City. He was a teenager at the time and they were very poor so he actually rode with the cattle for the trip to save the train fare.
When he got there he got paid for the cattle at the stockyards. Then a man approached him offering him some work for a few days if he was willing. Grandpa was thinking about it when another man sidled up and said “Don’t you go with him! He’s going to get you away from all these people and then hold you up for the money you just got!”
My Grandpa lived a long, simple and honest life. He liked everyone and “never met a stranger.” Sixty-some years later Grandpa’s voice was still a mixture of incredulous outrage when he summed up, “That man was going to ROB me!”
The really cool thing was that was the first time anyone in the family had heard that story – he had never told his kids.
Dave
on 08 Dec 08I wrote wrote the story of my great uncle a couple years ago. It’s a little long to post here, but you can read it here.
In summary: at 17 years old my uncle wanted to join the army. He had a fake ID made that bumped his age to 18 (and mistakenly changed his last name). On D-day he was on Omaha beach and got shot in the head. He lived. He went on to have a great career at MIT’s Lincoln Labs working with sick computer systems before most of the world new they existed.
He’s in a nursing home now and probably doesn’t remember most of his life. I’m glad I had so many great conversations with him when he did remember.
Jason Watts
on 08 Dec 08Please forgive me for being a horrific story teller – but my grandmother definitely told me this story when I was in 6th grade.
I was creating a genealogy project for school and had to ask questions about country or origin, if she remembered the journey, things like that. She was very animated and excited as she reminisced about the journey.
Apparently, her mother was pregnant with her in April of 1912 and they were planning to take a boat from Ireland to New York City. At the time, they probably didn’t realize their fortune to have been running late and they missed the boat. The boat they were scheduled to travel on was the Titanic.
Whether the story has any resemblance to truth remains to be seen, but it did spark an intense fascination for me regarding with the story of the Titanic.
Jeem
on 08 Dec 08Lots of great stories at The Moth. One of my favorite podcasts.
Matt
on 08 Dec 08In the early 20th century, my Great, Great Grandpa Silver made his fortune in the land development business in Hoopeston, Illinois. Just before the great depression, his financial adviser felt that something was going awry, and encouraged my grandfather to turn all of his cash savings into gold and silver. Trusting the experience of his adviser, my grandfather took his advice just before “black Tuesday” in 1929.
Thinking he had avoided a terrible disaster, my Grandfather was oblivious to the fact that his financial adviser had been having an affair with my Great, Great Grandmother. They had secretly put this scheme together to steal the gold and silver, and run away when the time was right. My Grandfather was left poor and alone, in perhaps one of the hardest periods in American History.
There were those during that awful time that gave up on life, but my Grandfather was not one of those. He continued to work hard, and eventually left the business to his two sons, who then turned Silver Brothers Construction Company into one of the most thriving construction companies in Hoopeston, Illinois that still survives to this day.
Christopher Fahey
on 08 Dec 08My wife’s father passed away last year. He was a career CIA officer who first joined the agency in the 1950’s. Needless to say he had an interesting life.
My wife heard him tell wonderful stories her whole life, and decided in the early 1990s to start recording these stories. Every time we visited her family, she and her father would decamp to a side room where she would set up a video camera on a tripod and proceed to interview him for an hour or more. Each visit would involve an interview about a different topic: His childhood in Indiana, his service in the Navy, his cultural work with Soviet dissidents, how he got Polio from a defector, his life with his children, etc.
After he passed away, she edited the many hours of tapes into a single 45-minute movie, and played it for friends and family at her father’s memorial services. Everyone loved seeing and hearing him tell his stories.
I can say unequivocally: Everyone should do this. Get a video camera and interview your parents and grandparents this and every holiday season.
Ryan Briones
on 08 Dec 08You should really check out StoryCorps (http://www.storycorps.net/listen/). It’s a really cool project with exactly this in mind.
Allan Branch
on 08 Dec 08My Grandfather, because of his color blindness, couldn’t be a pilot during WWII, so he was a plane mechanic. He gave the Enola Gay the mechanic “ok” to take off and bomb Japan. He watched them load the atomic bombs and everything. I didn’t appreciate his stories until he passed away.
Douglas Mayle
on 08 Dec 08The non-profit I work for (The Open Planning Project) collaborated with the town of Starksboro, Vermont to create a website for sharing these sorts of stories that represent the oral history of a town and the people in it. It’s called the Community Almanac, and anyone can use it to share their stories. You can learn more from this article in the New York Times.
Ben
on 08 Dec 08My grandfather flew bombers for the Air Force in a couple of wars, including WWII. He was shot down over the North Sea, escaping the bullets of enemy planes because he passed through some clouds. The water was so cold it knocked him out when he hit the ocean.
He was picked up by Germans and brought to Stalag Luft III, a famous prison camp where the Great Escape happened (made popular in a film with the same name). Allied war prisoners dug a long tunnel and one night tons of them ran for freedom.
My grandfather invented the method of putting together the tin cans to make a ventilation pipe for the diggers to receive fresh air. He wasn’t one of the ones who tried to escape so he spent 2 years in the camp eventually getting liberated by General George Patton. He let Patton try his homemade “P-toing Pudding”, a delicacy in the camp, but Patton spit it out saying “this isn’t fit for dogs to eat.”
So many incredible stories come from him and he is definitely an anchor of our family. What am I doing? Sitting in front of a laptop all day with soft hands, sipping on lattes, reading blogs. Ha! So manly.
Michael
on 08 Dec 08I would be shocked if he wasn’t from New Bedford. I’ve lived in New Bedford for a number of years now and the spirit of the old whaling industry is still alive in the downtown area.
Great city. No matter what people say about it.
David A
on 08 Dec 08Jamis,
storytelling is broken online. we think we’ve fixed it.
I’d encourage you to check out Heekya, a social storytelling platform we’ve built (see the demo here: http://www.heekya.com/preview.php)
shoot me an e-mail, i’d love to let you in the alpha and get your feedback.
Bob
on 08 Dec 08Both of my parents have great stories from growing up in the rural south and, in my father’s case, serving in the Navy around the time of the Korean war.
Dad was a yeoman and served mostly desk duty, but did serve some time on a minesweep in US waters. A minesweep is a rather small ship, but it sits tall in the water, so a gentle ocean motion below decks becomes rather violent at bridge level. Anytime Dad had to do bridge duty, he carried a bucket with him to heave into. The first time up, the captain laughed at him, called him various unsavory names that are euphemisms for “sissy,” for bringing his bucket onto the bridge. They got underway, and it wasn’t long before Dad got seasick and rushed over to use his bucket. He says he was mid-heave when he felt a rough hand on his shoulder, pulling him away from his bucket. It was the captain, of course, who puked his guts into the bucket and then had to go below decks. Dad says the captain never gave him anymore guff about the bucket.
When Mom was a small child, maybe four years old, she witnessed the birth of a calf in the barn. The calf was in breach, and her grandfather was in full sweat trying to assist with the birth. Shortly afterward my mother ran to the house and announced to her mother, grandmother, and several neighbors who were over for coffee that the new calf was here, and that grandpa had named it “G_ddamned Sonofab_tch.”
It’s stories like these that shape and bring color to all our lives. :-)
Benjy
on 08 Dec 08My paternal grandfather served in Europe during WWII. A few months after the conclusion of the war, a list of Holocaust survivors/refugees was published in newspapers around the world—including the New York Times. Somebody in New York wired my great grandfather in Iowa about some survivors with our last name on the list. My great grandfather then was able to send a telegram to my grandfather, who was in France at the time.
Because general my grandfather served under was from the same hometown as my family and knew my great grandfather, he granted my grandpa a truck and driver to go into Germany and rescue our cousins—4 young couples and an infant born in the post-war refugee camp. Because my great grandfather owned a coat factory, he was able to sponsor them and bring them to Iowa. They came to the U.S. in the mid-40’s and started a new life, but they were in some ways the smart relatives and fled Iowa for Southern California in the early 50’s where they owned liquor stores, invested in real estate. Their children, contemporaries to my parents, are now all professionals, as are their adult children.
This part of the family is not very close on the family tree—the survivors’ grandfather was one of 15 siblings of my great grandfather. But our parts of the family are incredibly close becuase of this shared bond. In fact, we go to Mexico on vacation with a contingent every year.
lduvall
on 08 Dec 08I know someone similar – he will start to tell a story – and it goes up and down, round and round, off on the longest tangents.
The thing that always amazes me is he can wander all over the story map – but in the end, 20, 30 or more minutes later, he comes back and ties it all together – I on the other hand would have gotten lost long before the end if I tried to do likewise.
Brian Christiansen
on 08 Dec 08Sadly, this oral tradition of history is passing away with the generations.
By the way, being dragged by a whale like that is known as a “Nantucket Sleighride.” Oh, the interesting things we learn in New England.
There’s a strong Portugese tradition up in Gloucester, MA, too, but that’s more or a fishing tradition, whereas southeaster Mass (New Bedford) has more of a whaling history.
Matt Gorecki
on 08 Dec 08Grandpas tell the best stories.
My Grandpa was a rancher, a County Commissioner and a hardware store owner in eastern Montana.
I’m not a very good storyteller but I’d like to share this poem about him. It was written by his brother Wallace McRae. It’s called Malcolm and the Stranglers.
I’m a fair, upstanding citizen,
honest, trustingly true-blue,
But one time in my secret past,
I joined a vigilante crew.
We had trailed a herd to Colstrip
where the N. P. had a yard
And punched ‘em into rail cars
It was hot and we worked hard.
My mother and Aunt Alice
had fixed a scrumptious lunch
That the hands dispatched with relish
after loading up the bunch.
My dad (or Uncle Evan) said,
“Boys, lead our horses home.
We’re hot ‘n tired ‘n sweaty;
our backsides crave the foam
Of Chevrolet car seats, besides
we’d be plumb insane
Not to post the buyer’s check
for the steers there on the train.”
So, Duke took the reins of Peanuts
and I led my dad’s horse, Star.
We all hit the road for home,
it wasn’t all that far.
So as we’re trotting homeward,
right down the country road,
A car with California license plates
scatters gravel as it slowed
To a sliding stop amongst us
and this family scrambles out.
They starts to snappin’ pictures
‘n quizzin’ Mac what we’re about.
Though Malcolm’s long suit’s bullshit
(plus an artful type of braggin’)
He deals ‘em straight til they inquire
on the empty mounts we’re draggin’.
“We just caught and hung two rustlers,
t’other side of that divide,
and we’re fetchin’ to their widows
these two broncs they usta ride.”
“You kids get in the car right now!”
the woman volunteers.
“These men are killers! Don’t look at them!
And cover up your ears!”
The man backs up a step or two,
“Is that legal?” he inquires.
“Far as I know,” Mac says, and grins.
“That’s what the law requires.”
“Are you lawmen then?” the dude asks Mac,
as his knees begin to rattle.
“We’re vigilantes,” Malcolm says,
”’N them bastards stole some cattle.”
“Could I take some camera pictures
Of those rustlers in their tree?”
“Hell, they won’t care,” says Malcolm
“and its sure Jake with me.”
Next week, in rolls a deputy
whose demeanor’s sort of tense,
With a tale about two murders;
says he’s seekin’ evidence.
Well, Malcolm, he confesses,
concludin’ California folks
Ain’t got no sense of humor
when it comes to cowboy jokes.
But somewhere out in California
there’s photographic dossiers
Of Malcom and us Stranglers
in our vigilante days.
Josh Christie
on 08 Dec 08My Grandad tells the story of his voyage to join his B-24 bomber squadron in England during WWII. He was shipped over on the Queen Elizabeth ocean liner which they normally packed to the gills with troops.
On this particular voyage, the ship was also packed full of convicts who were granted release from prison in return for joining the Army.
My Grandad eventually found his assigned bunk bed deep in the belly of the ship, in the bottom of a drained swimming pool, surrounded by convicts. He was scared for his life down there.
One day, my Grandad’s brand new red sweater went missing. He waited until his swimming pool roommates went to their scheduled dinner and then systematically searched all the criminals’ luggage looking for his red sweater.
Sure enough, he found it. And he spent the rest of the voyage avoiding the swimming pool convicts by sleeping on the deck. He never went back to his scheduled dinner either, instead eating Mallo cups (candy) he could buy on deck.
Justin Ko
on 08 Dec 08After the vietnam war, my father, who is from South Korea, moved to leavenworth, KS in 1974 with $15 in his pocket to teach Taekwondo at the military base there. A little after, he opened his own school in Independence, MO. During that time, martial arts was hugely popular. Bruce Lee was on screen and there were local tournaments everywhere. Well one day my father was in his school minding his own business when an American Karate practitioner (maybe a school owner in the area) walks in and says “I’m challenging you to a match.” So my fathers says “Okay” and walks to the front door and locks it. The Karate guy asks “Why did you lock the door?” My father says “Because one of us is going to die here tonight.” The Karate guys says “no no” and unlocks the door and leaves. Learning Martial Arts in Korea, my father was drilled the Tenants of Tae Kwon Do. One of which was ‘Do not retreat from enemy attacks’.
Here is his bio and photos.
Brenton
on 08 Dec 08One of my goals is to get a video camera and go on a road trip interviewing all the random people I meet – getting their history. First on my list is my 88-year old great-grandfather, who I don’t get to see as often as I’d like.
This is one of my favorites from him:
When my grandma was a little girl, they were on a road trip. We’re from the west coast, but I believe they were in the midwest for some reason. Water starts to wash out the road, so my great grandpa guns it to make it to the other side while it’s still safe to do so. A flash flood hits, and there’s water splashing up against the door panels. His engine cuts out – it’s flooded.
The man rolls down his window and swims out to the front of the car. He discovers the radiator fan is blowing water into the engine, causing the car to stall. So, he removes the fan belt, swims back to his family, and continues about his merry way, saving them all in the process.
My great grandfather has led a pretty amazing life. He was in WWII, built most of the bridges in the Bay Area, homesteaded in Alaska (but didn’t keep the land cause his family didn’t like the weather), and spent 3 different 6 month blocks working in Greenland, where sunset and sunrise each happen once a year. The last time I saw him, he was telling me of a radio tower he was working on in Alaska. They climbed down for lunch and started driving away. The tower started swaying as they were leaving, and by the time they got to the car the whole thing had collapsed.
He’s got some disease now that his doctors don’t understand. He’s living in Utah, and has one doctor who flies in from New York to see him. The sheer number of times he’s cheated death have led him to joke that we’re all aliens incapable of defeat. His doctors can’t figure out how he’s still healthy while battling something like leukemia.
That is the story of my great grandpa.
Nicole
on 08 Dec 08During the Depression, my great grandmother, who was a single mother at the time, sent my grandpa to work for various families for his room and board. At one point, he ended up on a ranch in western South Dakota. My grandpa had to ride 3 or 4 miles each way on his horse everyday to get to school. Of course, this is South Dakota where winters are brutal. One of the older cowhands at the ranch finally told my grandpa that if the thermometer outside on the bunk house was at -5 deg. F or colder then he wouldn’t have to go to school. My grandpa didn’t like school very much, so each morning he rushed out to check the temperature. Every morning it was just above -5 and he’d have to slog off to school.
20 or so years later, he visited the old cowhand. The cowhand at some point remarked that he did everything he could to make sure my grandpa amounted to something—he even held a match under the thermometer every morning so it would always be above -5!
I’m lucky to have this story and many others from his cowboy life in a book he wrote and self-published. He’s talked about writing another book, so hopefully I’ll have more stories soon.
Brenton
on 08 Dec 08Great story, Jamis. Next time I’m in Utah (which doesn’t happen very often), I may have to trek out there.
Great UI, by the way, indenting the comments that have stories in them.
dave glasser
on 08 Dec 08About the only thing I remember from Moby Dick is that sperm whales are the right thing to hunt, and anybody who hunts right whales is a total loser. Sorry!
Charlie Triplett
on 08 Dec 08My grandfather was a bomb loader at Duxford airforce based during WWII. After VE day, he and some other fellas from the base were taken on an aerial tour over war ravaged Europe.
He returned from the war, and raised a family, whom he practically never took on vacation. When asked by my father, uncle, and aunt, “Dad! C’mon, don’t you wanna see the world?” he would reply, “I saw the world already. It was on fire.”
Kevin
on 08 Dec 08My Dad was in the Air Force Officer Candidate School during the Vietnam War and he was at the top of his class. However, they were worried about his blood pressure so every time marching class came up they sent him to see the doctor to have it checked (it was fine, but was really high the day he signed up when they made him drive to another state for his physical instead of gong to the base down the road). Anyway, when the final exams came he had to lead a troop marching around the base and he had never had a chance to practice it.
He got in front of the group, faced them (the leader marched backwards), and then promptly led the whole group marching right over a parked car. He graduated second in his class.
Mark Ma
on 08 Dec 08I think this was a great thing to talk about before the holidays. So many get-togethers come and go with activities that are insignificant (food, TV, movies, etc). If families would crowd around the older set, instead of the TV set, and ask for personal stories that will pass away with time, the holidays might become a truly treasured time..
Indi
on 08 Dec 08When I was young my grandmother told us of an episode from when she was a girl during the Mexican Revolution/Civil War (sometime between 1910 and 1917). Soldiers were going from house to house demanding food and raping the girls and killing the boys in the family. Her mother saved her and her seven brothers and sisters by rolling them up one by one in woven mats (petates) and leaning them up against the back wall in the dark. They could hear the soldiers anger and even felt the petates being moved about, but then they were left alone and were unrolled by their mother in the morning, the soldiers having moved on.
During the 1918 flu pandemic people in her town of Colima were dying. Almost every family had a least one death, often more. Her mother was a friend of the local Mayan people, often helping out with extra food and work. Because of her kindness they gave her an herbal recipe for staving off the flu. None of the Mayans my grandmother’s family knew died in the pandemic, neither did any of her immediate family.
And of course there are many tales from the great depression and World War II. Now that she is gone, I need to write all of this down before I forget. Thanks for reminding me :-)
Daniel Draper
on 09 Dec 08My old man has a good one. He and his Dad were mad keen sailors – they used to sail a class of boat called a Sharpy. About 20’ long and lots of sail area. My grand dad built a bigger version of the sharpy called a “Usual 6m” which had a cabin and even more sail area.
On its maiden voyage the Usual was sailed in some pretty heavy weather – about 25 knots and heavy seas. Quite serious for a 6m (20’) boat. What was worse is that the Usual was supposed to be a 3 man boat and on this occasion it was just Dad and Grand Dad – don’t ask me why!
As they sailed out past the point they began to realise that they were in trouble and within moments got blind sided by a run-away wave not only capsizing the boat but turning it turtle and ripping mast, rig and cabin from the hull. Dad and Grand Dad clung on to the upturned hull, floating perilously close the rocks for several hours before being picked up.
The amazing thing is that the hull of the Usual was recovered and Grand Dad rebuilt it! It was passed down to Dad and now I sail it regularly!
Geoffrey Dyer Graham
on 09 Dec 08My mother’s side of the family is mostly mountain folk from North Georgia. In the days of yore, that meant they were either preachers or farmers. Great people to this day, and I still enjoy my time with them. Probably at least in part because they come from good stock.
You see, my great great great grandfather, Micajah Clark Dyer, was both a farmer and the inventor of flight. You may have been taught that the Wright Brothers invented flight. In my family, we refer to that fable as “The Great Lie.”
We have long known that Micajah, back in the 1870s and 1880s, was regularly seen flying around the North Georgia mountains decades before the Wright Brothers “invented” their suspiciously similar machine and had their far more effectively publicized flight at Kitty Hawk.
On Thanksgivings, when cousins or siblings or children would bring their serious boyfriends or girlfriends for family scrutiny, the litmus test has always been whether, upon hearing that our Micajah is the true inventor of flight, they expressed appropriate awe (marriage material) or amused disbelief (not allowed to eat any white meat from the turkey).
The advent of the internet has recently pushed our family tale into the history books. Apparently, Micajah actually filed for a patent back in 1874, had a working prototype, and secured statements from eyewitnesses. When the patent office finally got around to making all their records available via the world wide web, sure enough, up popped his “apparatus for navigating the air”.
His widow ultimately sold his plans and the working prototype to some speculators from Atlanta, who in turn are believed to have sold them to the Wright Brothers. You can read the State of Georgia’s official assessment of the story here, along with references to his other inventions.
The truth, it turns out, is even better than the folklore we’ve been passing down from generation to generation.
Jason Watts
on 09 Dec 08Geoffrey,
THAT is an incredible story. I look forward to the day when we have an aircraft carrier named Rattlesnake Mountain.
p-daddy
on 09 Dec 08story # 1:
This story is told through the eyes of my father, who was 4-9 years old growing up in Italy during WWII.
There was an older man (Domenico) in his home-town of 500 people who had lived in America for a few years and had moved back to Italy.
Domenico looooved America and would routinely tell tall tales to the other pensioners about how life was so much better over there.
e.g.,
-“In America, they take a house-a house just like these all around us—pick it up with a machine, put it on a truck and move it to wherever the owner wants to live next!”
Domenico neglected to mention that pre-fab mobile homes were typically made of light materials and not the stone that most of the Italian houses were made of.—“In America, when people finish their dinners, they THROW THEIR PLATES AWAY!”
Not sure whether the US had paper plates prior to WWII so this was either an outright fabrication or an exaggeration.—“In America, when they slaughter a hog for the ham, a new hog will “pop” out from the insides of the dead hog ready to grow large again!”
Clearly this was outright fabrication, but my father thought American hogs could molt like insects.Finally, during WWII, the pensioners (including Domenico) would sit at a local bar and listen to Italian propaganda on the radio.
To hear my father tell it, the radio announcers would typically read the “news” in a manner like this:
--"Last week, the Italian 3rd infantry battallion destroyed 3 Allied planes and 5 American tanks in the African desert. We have the Americans on the run..."These types of pronouncements would be punctuated by cheers and congratulations from all the older men in the bar.
Except for Domenico, who got really angry once and told everyone to (in the words of my father):
“SHUT UP! The Americans don’t even need bombs to kill us all. America has so many sweets they could bomb us with Chocolate CANDIES and we’d all suffocate from the assault!”
So this was my father’s first impression of the U.S., a land so powerful that they had enough chocolate to cover the entire surface area of Italy.
p-daddy
on 09 Dec 08story #2,
My father eventually emigrated from italy, but not to the US. He and his family moved to Canada, and they lived near Windsor Ontario across the river from Detroit.
being close to Detroit, my father was able to get a job on an assembly line @ a Chrysler plant in Windsor in the early 1960s.
On weekends, he could work overtime where (in his plant) they would routinely finish up assembly of “specialty cars”.
On one particular Saturday, the line was in charge of completing assembly for a batch of Ontario Provincial Police cars (equivalent to a collection of State Police cars in the U.S.).
Apparently, one of his friends had a few too many run-ins with the Provincials and he decided that he was only going to loosely fasten the front bumpers of the police cars so that at low speeds everything would appear fine, but eventually (presumably at high speeds), the bumpers would begin to rattle and slide off.
Don’t know whatever happened in this case, but giving the Provincial Police a collection of cars with rattling bumpers always seemed like the ultimate prank.
Kit
on 09 Dec 08(first, a brief cetacean-nerd moment: they’re also the right whales to hunt because they’re positively buoyant; while it is generally the case that whales will float after you kill them, with right whales, you really didn’t have to worry about it. also, they’re [compared to many other whales] crazy docile, and were once really abundant.)
now, i believe i owe a story. my uncle was a pilot for the americans in WWII, flying missions over europe. on one mission over northern france, he was shot down, and crashed … somewhere. he awoke some time later, with no memory of who he was or what was going on. checking his dog tags, he figured out some of what was going on: a war, and he was behind enemy lines. he knew he was in france, and he knew he needed to get back to england. and he knew he could fly a plane.
so he eventually found his way to a nearby german airbase, and somehow (i wish i knew the details!) stole a fighter. he managed to take off with it, and fly it back to blighty, where an RAF squadron was scrambled — a german fighter was coming in. but they quickly realized something was wrong: it was a lone fighter, in the middle of the day. so they flew up towards him, until they could make visual contact, and he signaled distress. they all of them landed.
the RAF took him into custody, and were, needless to say, somewhat suspicious of him: no memory, flying a german plan, insisting he was on their side. he eventually recovered his memories, and was able to present a clear story to them, with proof. his uniform is now one of the WWII uniforms at the air and space museum in washington, DC.
Martial
on 10 Dec 08My family has always told our stories to each other, but I was especially fortunate in my choice of grandparents. When I was about ten or so my dignified, stately preacher grandfather dictated the stories of his hellraising childhood and youth to my grandmother, who then fair copied them into three blankbooks for each of the three grandchildren. He wanted to preserve the great, great tales of his brothers and sister and his immigrant parents, as well as showing us how he grew and changed to become the man he was. Years later when my grandmother was dying, she wrote me a series of letters that collected every story of our family from her side that she could remember.
The story that follows is the key story of our entire family history and was often told at family gatherings. It sets an example which everyone for six generations has been and is expected to live up to.
My great-great-great grandfather was a blacksmith in Kentucky. He came to America in the middle of the nineteenth century from an unknown European country (his origin was never passed on orally or recorded in any family documents and, as far as the family historians can tell, he almost certainly changed his name between getting off the boat and getting married in Frankfort). One day a slave trader stopped at his smithy and asked him to repair some shackles. My ancestor replied, “I’ll be damned if I put chains on any man.”
diarmuid ryan web design
on 12 Dec 08even plenty of my mates in their 20’s can go off on rants and tangents in reply to a simple question. i think some people just like to talk, just others have more interesting things to say than others….
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