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Looking out my Backdoor: Piecing a partial picture patchwork past

DNA and ancestry search sites are the latest greatest. I’m not sure I want unknown relatives crawling out of the woodwork. The relatives I know are scary enough.

Of my background, I know I am predominately British American (English, Welsh, Scotch, Irish) with added German from Dad’s side and French (Brittany) and a secret on Mom’s side. That is to say, mongrel.

Cousin Nancie and I have spent the last two weeks talking about our shared maternal family. Nancie and I did not meet until I showed up unannounced at her mother’s funeral. Strange family? Yes.

Our mothers were raised in Indiana, sisters in a family of eight children. Anne, Nancie’s mother, was the only child to finish high school and go on to what was called Normal School, where she gained certification to teach.

Job in hand, Anne, along with older sister Lucille, fled to Port Angeles, Washington, pioneers searching for a better, different life. Looking on a map, Port Angeles is about as far from New Middletown, Indiana, as she could run and she never returned. Instead, Anne reinvented herself.

Nancie’s best guess is that she was ashamed of her family. My guess is that in school, she met children whose families provided a huge contrast to ours. We all have such experience, don’t we? But some take it to heart more than others.

I spent my first eleven years of life in Indiana, near both maternal and paternal relatives. While my perspective is flawed by youth, it is also balanced with adult visits to Indiana plus Aunt Joanne’s answers to my questions.

Our moms’ family is straight-from-Li’l Abner-type hillbilly people. Our great, great-grandparents migrated from England to West Virginia, then crossed the mountains to Tennessee, share croppers with small plots of their own corn and tobacco. Not satisfied, our grandparents managed to buy a hard-scrabble farm west of Indianapolis.

Our folks were not dumb but they were ignorant, poor, talked funny, not highly educated, kept old-country folk-ways and mannerisms.

Uncle George, the family patriarch, eventually owned and farmed the largest acreage in the county. He was a brilliant mechanic, could fix anything, and if he needed a specialty tool, he invented it.

Uncle Henry was mild mannered, and shall we say, less ambitious. In his later years he took his own life and nobody would talk about why.

Twins, Roy and Ray, courted tragedy in a Model A Ford, Ray behind the wheel, Roy balanced on the running board, hit a rut in the road and landed in a tree. They were well lubricated but Roy never made it, and in his own way, neither did Uncle Ray, my favorite, the sweetest, gentlest man I’ve ever known.

I was four, 1949, when my mom, Jean, went to the State Hospital in Madison, Indiana. I swear I remember an ambulance and men in white coats but that is probably a false memory. Certainly my Dad drove her there in our gray Pontiac.

Aunt Joanne said Jean was always strange. Years later, we learned she was severely depressed and in modern times, treatment would have been different.

I lived in terror that I would be just like my mom. I dreaded Mother’s Day. I was the only person in class without a mother and teachers always had us make gifts to take home.

Aunt Joanne got a job building chairs in a furniture factory in Indianapolis when she was 16. She married a man who owned an apartment building on Park Avenue, ended up with the building. She took me under wing and taught me basic woman stuff and later, became one of my best friends.

Oh, I nearly forgot. The secret. My Aunt Jo sent me reproduction photos of my ancestors. A great, not sure how many greats, grandmother shows undeniable American Indian features, right down to the braids. I asked Jo; she immediately and defensively denied the possibility and would say no more. Nancie said that’s no surprise. That fit what little she’d heard of a family secret.

The men, including my male cousins, all shared a wicked sense of humor, keen insight, and were never mean-spirited. Stories I’ve heard, they were all hellraisers in their youth.

The family women, I would describe as slower to open up, but generous and warm hearted once they accept you.

My Dad’s family is a story for a different time.

If you come visit me some day and I’m sitting on the porch in patched bib overalls, clutching my corncob pipe, feet propped on a cream can, ceramic jug marked with XXX within arm’s reach, I guess you will know I’ve reverted to type.

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Sondra Ashton grew up in Harlem but spent most of her adult life out of state. She returned to see the Hi-Line with a perspective of delight. After several years back in Harlem, Ashton is seeking new experiences in Etzatlan, Mexico. Once a Montanan, always. Read Ashton’s essays and other work at montanatumbleweed.blogspot.com. Email [email protected].

 

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