Skeletons

If you have been followng me, I think I have mentioned that I am working on the genealogy of HRR and myself. Well, I am getting a lot of help from a shirt-tail family connection in Florida. And, as we are cautioned when we start digging, you never know what you will turn up. How true!!. I think my calendar is out of whack, because thanks to her (Julie) some skeletons are starting to rattle in the closet. I don't think any of them have actually come all the way out yet, but they are making noises. Possibly, just possibly, not definitely yet, we have an ancestor who was convicted of Carnal Knowledge of a teenager in 1917; an aunt who ran away from a teen residential home; and a slave owner. Interesting, huh? It's going to be interesting to see how these stories develop. So far, I have been able to trace one line of my family back to 1495. Getting pretty old, huh! I started to do this several years ago, but have lost all my records and research , so had to start all over. Now, thanks to this Julie, I have been going great guns. It is so interesting - I hope we can continue, or at least with what she has taught me, I can continue.

Judy and I spent two or three hours this afternoon, looking over some random family pictures I have. I think the box is mainly duplicates of others I had sorted out several years ago, which I believe are now in storage. It's such fun to look at these pictures - very few are over 50 years old. There are pictures that have both of my grandmothers in them, and of course, Judy never knew either of them, so these were especially interesting to her.

In 1994, I took a trip all by myself, up through Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Maily it was to visit HRR's family, but I did a lot of sightseeing, too. I took a video of most of the trip, and had not been able to find it for several years. I had just about given up on it, but the other day, it turned up in some of the things the girls had taken from HRR's apartment. It is such fun to watch that home video. It has a section on Becky's graduation from a business school in Yakima; about 14 minutes of my drive in the snow coming out from Crater Lake. I had positioned the camera on the dash board on the car, and had it running as I drove out - with about three feet of snow along the side of the road, and snow and slush and ice on the surface of the road. You get quite an impression of what bob-sled driving is like. Of course, I was only travelling about 25 miles an hour, not 100+ like the racers do. On the film, I think I have pictures, and conversations, with all but one of my mother-in-law's sisters and brothers, as well as other pictures that have much significance in the family history. I am going to try to have this video transferred to Cd's and see if I can get stills of some of the individuals. I feel that video has become almost priceless. All these family members have since passed away, so there is a lot of history here.

Well, this started out to be just a quick note, but as usual, I don't know when to stop, once I get started, so for now,

That's all folks!