Knowitall

Let Them Ancestors Be! (Or They Might Come Back To Hant You)

2005-10-15T09:03:00.000-07:00

Several years ago I was bored, probably because I do next to nothing whenever I can get away with it, so I decided I needed a hobby. I chose genealogy. It sounded interesting and even better, romantic. How soon would I discover that I DO descend from some dashing figure from the past--a king, a duke, maybe even Robin Hood?? I was already excited. Well, my first stumble occurred when I couldn't understand why my mother's great grandmother Margaret AND Margaret's parents were all being called the parents of Margaret's two little boys. (This was around the beginning of the Civil War in the South--or as we prefer to call it, The War of Northern Aggression. ) So being the nosy and intrepid explorer I am, I kept digging til I found the truth. Yes, Maggie (as I prefer to call her, Margaret is just too formal) had not one, but two, children outside the bonds of matrimony. We know the name of the dad of the first son. I descend from the second son and alas I have no idea who he was. My grandmother said he was a wandering man who sauntered into town one day and started seducing all the ladies--married or not. Maggie was apparently one of this vast number of conquests. Grandma says she heard Mr. Nameless (whose blood I share) finally picked the wrong paramour--the sheriff's wife. So, according to Grandma, our Casanova was unceremoniously lured out of town one night and shot. His body was never found and--surprise, surprise--there was never any investigation into his untimely death. Maggie did go on to marry more or less respectably while maintaining the fiction that her two oldest sons were her youngest brothers. Of course no one at the time fell for it, and it has only served to confuse later researchers--like me. Another Civil War incident involving Maggie's relatives and murder occurred a few years later, when the war was off to a roaring start. Two cousins of Maggies had gone off to serve the Confederacy and according to records still on file they served with honor and distinction. Problem is, back home they had a sister. This sister was not a stalwart Daughter of the South. She was a timid, whining, scaredy-cat, clingy kind of woman who was in a perpetual state of terror at being left alone to run the farm. She wrote letters constantly to each brother, long moans about how dangerous it was living alone with only "bad men" still around, how her back ached from lifting loads never intended for a delicate female to lift--and on and on. She kept begging her brothers to come home, and they would write back, patiently, explaining that they were now soldiers who had taken a vow and they couldn't just up and leave. Did she care? Certainly not--she had bigger problems-now a neighbor was stealing their hogs. She reported this dolefully, adding that if this kept on she would starve to death during the winter--assuming of course that that bad neighbor didn't come over one night and rape and murder her in her bed (that was the insinuation, anyway). It was meant to scare her brothers and it did. They sent several appeals to their commanding officer for a leave of absence, citing their sister's fears, the thefts, and the fact that the farm was pretty much falling apart. They were flatly denied permission to leave. But---the letters kept coming, each more frantic than the last. At last the brothers had a private--very private--discussion and decided that they had to go home long enough to straighten out (ie rough up) the hog-stealing neighbor and settle their sister's nerves before returning to their camp. So they snuck easily out of camp and made a quick trip home. Their sister was ecstatic to see them and thought they were home for good. After talking to her and looking over the situation they seemed to start agreeing with her. After all, both of them had already served several years, including bravery in combat--why shouldn't they come home to a sister who needed them? (Southerners are nothing if not logical-minded.) So they stayed a few days. Problem is, their absence back at camp was quickly missed. Everyone knew where they would have gone. So a colonel took a small detachment of men to go get those Futch boys and bring them back--as deserters. This is when everything went very badly wrong. When they saw the colonel's men arriving, the brothers ducked into a barn. A shouted conversation ensued, the gist of it being that the brothers were to come out with their hands up to be arrested and tried for desertion. Yelling back, the Futch brothers tried to explain that they had done their duty and now their sister and their farm needed them. The colonel vehemently disagreed. This finally devolved into chaos. Guns were drawn and shots were fired. The colonel fell off his horse, stone dead, shot by one of the brothers. Now they were wanted not only for desertion but also murder and perhaps treason. At least one of the Futch brothers was wounded in the fight--while waiting in a dank prison to be executed, he died instead of his wounds. His brother was not so fortunate--if that's the word. He was hanged for murder and desertion. The interesting thing is, I found these cousins of mine listed in official records of North Carolina Volunteers during the Civil War, and I was puzzled that according to these "official" records, their causes of death kept changing. I smelled a coverup, which is why I started looking into it, which is how I discovered this whole story. You never know what you're going to find when you go on a genealogical dig, so consider yourself forewarned. Still and all, I'm kind of glad I did it. I feel kind of sorry for these Futch brothers, torn between their loyalty to the Confederate Army and their love and concern for their sister and their home. God knows, they paid a horrible price for that divided loyalty. (And frankly, since she was the ever-whining catalyst, I think it would have served her right if that endlessly moaning sister of theirs had been hanged right along side them!!). Anyway, hope you enjoyed this little slice of my dysfunctional family tree. You think THIS is something?! Wait til next time, when I'll tell you about another relative--the Bishop who was a witchfinder.

Weird Happenings

2005-10-11T17:54:00.000-07:00

I like stuff that's really weird and out-there. Normal everyday life can get really boring, but out beyond the bounds of convention things can get really wacky. Lots of us who like stuff like that call ourselves forteans--after Charles Fort, an American who wrote a series of very unusual books about unexplained phenomena--such as live toads falling from the sky--which traditional science is helpless to explain. There are already some cool websites out there dealing directly with bizarre stuff like that, not to mention books and magazines. Well, in one of these founts of information I read a very interesting story (a true one!) that I'd like to pass on--to try to give due credit as I learned in my journalism class, I believe I found this via the British magazine "Fortean Times"--if you like this kind of stuff you really need to check these guys out! Anyway--story was like this--there's this perfectly ordinary guy who's getting really fed up with his lemon of a car. But he's stuck with it since he can't afford another one right now. The car breaks down a lot--each time he pays to get it fixed, only to have something else go kerflooey, he gets THAT repaired--and around and around this little game goes. Finally one day not long after the most recent (expensive) repair, this guy goes and gets into this car to go to work. Well, yeah...the engine won't start. He tries and tries--same result. By now adding in a pretty colorful monologue in hopes that that might help, the man opens the hood a tinkers around a bit. Then he tries to start the car again---nothing. Finally CONSUMED with frustration, the guy does the only thing he can think of at the moment. He goes into his house and comes back out a few minutes later carrying his gun. He raises the gun and fires several shots directly into the hood of the car. The local police soon arrive and arrest this guy--for something like unlawful use of a firearm. Here's where it gets funny--and a little bit creepy (ie Fortean). The police have to write up a report of the incident. In this report a police officer refers to the bullet-riddled car as "deceased". So here's what I began to wonder. If that troublesome car is now "deceased"--does that mean that before the shooting the car was alive?? How would a car experience life? Maybe it deliberately egged the man into shooting it (suicide by owner) after falling into a deep depression after hearing itself described day-after-day as a worthless piece of crap, a lemon, a heap of junk, etc. Can a car develop such low self-esteem that it would actually prefer to be "deceased"? On the other hand, can a car enjoy life, racing down the road terrifying old ladies doing 35 in the fast lane, tailgating the most humongous SUV just for laughs, spurting ahead thru red lights and daring the cops to come after them? Maybe we're wrong to always blame the OWNERS of these cars--maybe they're just helplessly along for the ride when the car gets in a playful mood and goes a little berserk on a pretty afternoon. In that case--who owns who?! Sure, when the cops finally pull over a guy who's been "driving recklessly" *wink* they may find him staggering from a prodigious intake of alcohol and promptly charge him with DUI. But let's take a more fortean view of this. Maybe this poor man is just a drunk and terrified victim of a daredevil car which took him on such a wild ride that the only way the man could endure the terror was by drowning his fears in a carton of Budweisers. Now here he is in serious trouble with the law (and his wife) all because his car decided to cut loose and have a little antisocial fun. What do YOU think?

In the Beginning...

2005-10-10T19:46:00.000-07:00

This really is the beginning, so bear with me. Basically I have no idea what I'm doing. I think I created this blog by accident. But now that it's been born, I guess I have to deal with it! First, I'd like some well-considered opinions on a subject that's been bothering me awhile now. Actually, these could even be half-baked or totally ignorant opinions, I don't really care, just let me know what you think! I live in South Carolina, beautiful state, great people, all that--but we have a problem. A group of nutwings is planning to move into my state and take over. Yep, you read that right. They call themselves "Christian Exodus" and they chose us to be their first victims--lucky, lucky us, huh? They believe my little corner of heaven is ripe for a right-wing, fundamentalist, and probably racist takeover where we will supposedly be allowed to reside in peace as long as we obey their rules, like good little Aryans should. These rules will naturally be taken straight from the Bible (King James Version, with Words of Jesus in red) and I'm not quite sure what will happen to those of us who break the rules....I guess something along the lines of public stonings and other forms of cultural entertainment. I'm sure to be one of the first to find out, since I find it difficult to follow rules at the best of times--but even more so when the rules are enforced by latter-day Brownshirts carrying Bibles in one hand and Confederate battleflags in the other. Oh, and if the Feds bother us--I mean the new South Carolina-based Christian Exodus us--we'll just do what we did back in 1861--we will secede from the Union. That's what our new would-be masters tell us, anyway. Of course last time the secession idea didn't turn out so well. As most of us in South Carolina recall, it led to one ugly war and a very long Reconstruction. I don't know though, I'm just a lone voice crying in the wilderness, but I have a bad feeling about this. Call me parochial if you will, I just don't "cotton" (old Southern phrase) to the idea of being invaded--again. Check out this group on their pair of websites if you think I'm kidding: www.ChristianExodus.com and www.ChristianExodus.org. Then tell me: am I being paranoid and unhospitable, or are we really about to be invaded by the latest group of Storm Troopers?