The Bard

I have been exploring genealogical sites as of late to try and fill in the holes and gaps of our family tree.  While such sites are helpful, I wish I had been more interested as a youngster. I would have paid attention to the tales of my elders. Sometimes when I explore the sites, I grow weary from reading the census lists and other such recordings. My parent's families either have not added family stories or there are no worthy feats to pen. What I think I am searching for is that one relative who knows all of the family history and recent news. We all have that relative, the one some call a 'busy body',and our person was a great uncle. I loved the days at my grandmother's when he would visit.

My great uncle was a bachelor.  My grandmother told me that he was jilted at the alter. Her limited and broken English did not say the word "jilted", but I gathered from her tale that is indeed what happened. And then again my limited experiences at such a young age may have interjected my own story into this telling. Whatever the case, he began to drive around Texas visiting relatives. He would gather the stories of the families, and at each stop share the news.  He would finally return home with family stories and newspapers and magazines from various locations. 

He lived close to my grandmother, and when he returned home, he would visit my grandmother and spend the afternoon sharing a wealth of family happenings. I would listen for awhile and try to cipher their language, but Czech was not spoken in our home, so all I could understand were the names of people and towns. My grandmother certainly would have shared the news, but by the time my uncle left, I had already taken the sack of old newspapers and magazines to a bedroom and was absorbed in reading them. I lay on the bed and spread the papers out across the white chenille bedspread. This particular room was dark and mysterious as it had been my grandfather's room.  It smelled of tobacco and was furnished with older pieces.  I did not like it better than my grandmother's pink bedroom, but I liked the vanity with mirrors and stool. I never napped in this room. I only used it to read.

I was fascinated especially with the newspapers as they were a glimpse into the communities where relatives lived. And occasionally there would be a magazine or newspaper in Czech. I would try to pronounce the words to myself, but mostly I enjoyed looking at the faces of the people in those pictures, the faces that smiled or frowned as I would imagine their lives. Sometimes the sack contained weeklies like The Enquirer, and it cracked me up to think my grandmother read stories about "Big Foot" and "Alien" sightings. My mother  told me I should not read such "trash" but I did anyway because my grandmother and I would discuss these tall tales.  Rarely there would circulars in the mix, and I had fun comparing the advertised food items and cleaning products from the various grocery stores.  

After my uncle would leave,  my grandmother would call for us to come into the living room, and she would talk some of her family. My oldest sister listened more intently than I, because I had grown weary from reading and needed a respite from the house, so I would leave to go and find my brother who was certainly creating mischief somewhere on the farm.  I wish I had been as curious about my own family as I had those faces and stories in print. There was no one to gather the stories after my great uncle died, or  I never knew of them visiting my grandmother. My father did make a few family pilgrimages, but  I was grown and not home when he would share with my grandmother.  I am envious of those whose families chronicled their lives through letters or journals, but nothing is quite as rich as listening to the bard weave together his tales of  the family.

My two sisters and I connected with a relative well into her 80's who had created a family tree on our grandfather's side, so we journeyed to Bryan,TX to visit her and learn a bit of history. The woman was a remarkable story teller, but when she showed us the tree, sadly our branch was blank after our grandfather's name. She explained that the family lost contact after his parents died and he went to live with friends.  It is now time for us to piece together the stories we know with records we can find so we can fill in the blanks on the tree.  As we journey into the past, I hope we cross paths with those family stories of our uncle. Only then will our bard be heard once again.