My mom organized a concerted effort at family memoirs some time back, so I’ve got a few of these.
Let’s see… One of my great-great-grandfathers was killed in military service in WWI, without leaving American soil. He was assigned to patrol a railroad tunnel for saboteurs, and was killed by a train.
Further back in that line, my great[sup]5[/sup] grandfather, the first of my European ancestors to come to the New World, came over from Ireland in 1775. Apparently, he saw that a war was brewing up, and wanted the opportunity to fight against the English.
More recently, there are plenty of stories I could pass on about my grandfather. Let’s see… He lost his left big toe in an accident while mowing the (very hilly) lawn. His response was to tie a rope onto the lawnmower, so he could stand at the top of the hill and pull it up and down, without ever having to be below it.
And a few years ago, I learned that we had a genuine long-lost cousin in the family. She was born out of wedlock to one of my uncles, and her mother decided she didn’t want to have anything to do with him any more. We didn’t even learn about her until she turned 18 and decided she wanted to seek out her father.
Not my family but a schoolfriends. I’ve recently remembered the story and it’s too good to keep to myself. We were all around 14 and talking about our hair (all white English kids) - this particular friend always wore hers in a certain style, the front locks in a tight ponytail at the back of her neck and the rest of it loose. “How come you never wear all your hair down?” we asked. She explained that she had so much hair it was like an afro so she kept this style, apparently her grandmother was raped by a Masai tribesman. Wow - of course we had a million questions. Our friend promised to ask her granny all about it. We then started saying that might be a bad idea, bringing up bad memories etc. Our mate said - nah, granny’s a game old bird she won’t mind at all.
Fast forward to Monday lunch break - our friend is ready to fill us in. She asked granny who took a deep breath, a drag on her fag and a sip on her whiskey and stated the following:
“Your grandfather’s been dead these last five years and I think you’re old enough to know … it wasn’t rape.” :eek: schoolgirl :eek:
My aunt married uncle Harry - their kids, my cousins were all what we’d call the black Irish with dark hair and eyes. Turns out they actually were - Harrys great grandparents had been overseerers on a plantation in Antigua, West Indies. The story goes they were murdered and their two children were sent away - the son, Harry’s grandad back to Ireland and the daughter to New York. Harry died in a pub in Dublin at lunchtime, he finished his whiskey, got to his feet, announced he was off home and dropped dead on the floor.
All these army stories remind me of a funny incident from when my grandfather was a young soldier.
This was World War II, and he was a scout for his regiment in the Italian Alps. One day, the local resistance captured a bunch of Germans locked them up in a church. I’m a bit hazy on the details here, but I think they wanted Grampa to grill them before they sent them elsewhere.
Well, somehow the message got a bit garbled on the way to Grampa. He walked into the church, saw a bunch of people sitting in the pews, and assumed they were allies. He proceeded to give a rousing patriotic speech to the confused POWs.
The incident was written up in an army newspaper. I actually saw a copy of the article in a scrapbook, although I have no idea where it is now.
Back in the seventies, when we lived in Fort Lauderdale, a young guy with a gun walked into my grandma’s house demanding money. It was the middle of the day and she was home alone, but she just started talking to the guy. She asked him why he was doing this and he gave her some sad story about being out of work and he needed to support his kids. She offered to pray with him and he accepted. Then he started crying, and left without hurting her or taking anything.
I have something really similar that. My grandmother lives in Fayetteville, AR and awoke one night to the sound of someone literally breaking down her front door. He was a deranged man obviously high on serious drugs. She had a gun but decided not to use it. He held her hostage for most of the night and the motive was never quite clear other than insanity. My grandmother decided to get him to sit on the couch and then talked him to sleep with random stories and singing. Once he passed out, she made a break for it and ran to a convenience store about a mile away to call the police. He was still sleeping on the couch when they got there. The regional newspapers caller her “The Whispering Widow”.
My mom was a teenager in Germany during WWII. She has lots of stories, but one that has always stuck with me is that her mother and brother were in a hospital that was bombed. Her father was in the military, so she was asked to view the bodies to see if she could identify her mother and brother. Here’s the odd part–the bodies were covered with only their feet showing; relatives were supposed to recognize their feet, I guess. Fortunately, her mother and brother survived.
Short one: I was raised with a silver bust of Hitler in our home. Nice, eh?
Grandma Jean was married three time before she was 20.
This was during WWII. First marriage was the cliche of meeting at the USO dance a few days before he gets shipped out scenario. He was KIA a short time later. I believe she was 16ish?
Second marriage was basically the same scenaio, except her husband wasn’t killed. He received brain trauma and was sent home. He was never going to be “right” again. His family told my grandmother that she was too young to have to live with this and they helped get the marriage annuled.
3rd marriage was after the war. My grandfather, Prince, was a big fan of Jimmie Rogers. My great grandmother was his sister in law and helped write some of Jimmie’s songs. My grandfather visited her (because southern hospitality dictated that if someone wrote you a fan letter, you invited them to stay with you for a spell) and there he met my grandmother. The next year Prince invited Jean to come up to visit his family. Her whole family saw what was coming and told her flat out “If he asks you to marry him, you say no.” Of course he proposed at the trainstation and she said yes.
In addition to the marriages, Grandma Jean had also been a trapeze artist in the circus, a lounge singer in New Orleans and confidant to the New York transvestite scene.
I found this all very hard to believe until my mom showed me the scrapbook a few years ago.
Were either of your grandmothers featured in Reader’s Digest? I used to read old issues of RD when I was young and I’m pretty sure they did a feature story similar to these.
RealityChuck, your grandpa’s friendship with Einstein is awesomely cool.
My story is kind of sad, but hopefully interesting.
My uncle is paranoid schizoaffective. He was an absolute genius kid, and used to devour encyclopedias for fun. My mother reports that he derived basic calculus without ever seeing an advanced math textbook (taken with a grain of salt–my mother is also crazy.) I have read his high school poetry and he was very gifted–he still writes me poetry, but it makes less sense now.
Anyway, he had his first major psychotic break when he was about 18 or 19 years old. The story goes that he stopped eating altogether because he believed people were poisoning his food. My grandparents were somewhat concerned but it has always been their way to minimize the severity of things.
Until one morning at the breakfast table. My Mom and grandmother report that he began complaining of a tremendous headache, and then in all seriousness ascribed this to aliens shooting microwave beams into his head. In a fit of desperation he yanked open the kitchen drawer, pulled out a roll of tinfoil and began to construct a tinfoil helmet to keep the microwave beams out. When his mother told him to quit messing around, he ran out in the yard and began screaming (to the aliens) at the top of his lungs: ‘‘STOP IT! STOP IT! JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!’’
He finally got taken seriously, that’s for sure.
That was, oh, about twenty-seven years ago, and I’m sad to report he’s still battling with the aliens. And the government. And the local university. They lace his cassette tapes with cyanide and put dead bodies in his cigarettes. I wish I could say he was the most interesting person in our family. (We laugh to keep from crying.)
