Can we talk?

A Long Line of Crazy

         I have a friend in his 70's who said he comes from a long line of crazy. He started listing briefly the weird uncles and other relatives who starred in the story of his childhood. He turned out okay, so it must not have impeded his development much. The truth is that probably most of us have a little crazy in our backgrounds.

         If you look at your extended family, you could probably come up with a black sheep of some sort. Some families are so full of crazy relatives that they're actually proud of them. They used to go on the Jerry Springer show. Now they go on Doctor Phil. You might have to look at second cousins or your parents' second cousins, but they're out there. People just do a really good job of keeping secrets or covering things up, sometimes.

         My grandmother's family had such an experience. This was before talk shows or reality TV, so they felt ashamed of a situation. My grandmother's cousin started out west with her family in the early 1900's. She got TB and died in Illinois. Her husband turned to alcohol and farmed out the children to various relatives and strangers. The one who went with a stranger went out west, but was a slave to the woman who promised to care for him as a son. She beat him, and refused to let him go to school. So at age 14, he ran away to his mother's sister in Oregon. Later he rejoined his father in Washington State.

         In Washington, the father got into a poker game. When he thought he was being cheated, he shot him. He went to jail for murder. (A cowboy tale almost 20 years after cowboys faded away). He went to jail and died there. I've seen the records.

         Well, my grandmother's family was so ashamed. Too many people knew about it in their area, back East. So they packed up 14 kids and moved 3 hours away at today's speed limit, where no one knew them. They always spoke of it in hushed tones if at all. She was very young when they moved. All her life, she believed the killer was one of her much older brothers, and the runaway was a middle brother who did disappear after age 20. And that's what she told her children. It wasn't until I did the research on the family, proved the records, and found her brothers names in the census, that we learned differently. Grandma will never know the truth. My dad was quite upset, and couldn't believe his mother had not told him the truth. But it shows how badly secrets can turn uglier.

         These days I think people would just try to live it down. It's too easy to track down ugly facts. But I've got an ex-sister-in-law you could write a book about.