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During my college days, my long-term boyfriend was the grandson of a Nazi soldier. His grandfather was just a regular German who fought for his country. In fact, many Germans sat idly by while their leaders tried to spread their ideals to other countries.
A couple of weeks ago my blog post bordered on alarmist. A friend had voiced a prophecy some years back that now seems to be coming true. This was no ordinary prophecy. She warned of a growing movement that could overtake us without our resistance. She warned of economic woes, a growing divide between economic classes, and a rigidity that could mean intolerance towards some groups.
There have been several disturbing articles recently that bolster her prognostication. Imagine a country full of people who are proud patriots, nationalists, true believers in the absolute military power of the country. It's not so bad when it's us. But imagine if that country were Spain under a present-day Franco or Italy ruled by a present-day Mussolini. Remember during the '30s all the swastika-emblazoned flags that lined the streets of Berlin. Now imagine a fiscally-sound Germany who bails out weaker economies insisting that countries pay fealty to their German saviors.
Imagine if it were us instead of the Germans. Would we sit idly by like the good German people of the 1930s did? Would you leave the country? Would you focus your energy on reclaiming your country? Would you live a quiet, consenting civilian life? Or join the military and climb to the top of the ranks? Would you go along with the people in authority? Would you throw your moral reservations to the wayside and join the army? Would you put a belief in your chosen political party ahead of the country? Would you be proud of your country and your heritage to the point of wanting the country to look exactly like what you think it should look like?
Have we already met the enemy? Is he us?
[Take the Would-I-Be-a-Nazi test and tell me what you would have been. Me? I scored as an Expat.]
What would you need to know about someone to switch places with them for a day? The great thing about the loss of privacy in the past 40 years is so much is known about so many people that there is not a single person I would want to switch places with today. In all of history is a different matter entirely.
The sixth day of the 30 Day Non-Facebook Prose-Instead-of-Pictures Challenge delves into the question, but doesn't limit the answer to someone alive today. In case you missed any, the last three challenges were:
4.A picture of your favorite night - Check
5.A picture of your favorite memory - Check
6.A picture of a person you'd love to trade places with for a day - This is it
It's a good thing this is my Prose-Instead-of-Picture Challenge. There are two people I'd love to switch places with for a day. The problem is no picture exists of either of which I'm aware.
The first would be my 11th great-grandmother, Mary Horsemanden Byrd. She was only two years older than I am now when she died on November 9, 1699. To know how people lived back then, the mundane stuff, the boring! How exciting that would be! Yes, it's official. I am weird. I get excited over boring details like what she ate for breakfast or drank with supper or how she put her children to bed at night. Why her and not any of my other ancestors? With her, things are tangible. I've walked the banks of the river that she called home, put flowers on her grave, read her husband's diary. For someone 400 years gone, she has a real presence in my life.
The other person from history to switch places with? Her presence in my life has lingered as a question of who she was and what motivated a simple act of kindness. Her name is unknown to me. As is the town she lived in or when she was born or whether she had children. All that is known to me is that on December 24, 1944, she offered an American soldier supper and took him to church. From old memories, I feel certain she was married and might have had children. But those stories weren't recorded except as tales told at my childhood bedside. For one day (Christmas Eve of 1944) I would like to be that woman in the French countryside. The one who offered hospitality to my daddy.
[Title taken from this.]
The following is not original material. It was plagarized from Becca. Play along on your own blog if you like.
NICKNAMES: Yes, I have two. One my husband calls me. One my father took to his grave with him.
BIRTHDAY: The anniversary of the first atomic bomb that was dropped. Yep, that pretty much describes me, too.
HEIGHT: 5'10"
EYE COLOR: Hazel
HAIR COLOR: Red, strawberry blonde, titian, I'm not really sure
HANDED: Bats left, throws right
FROM: American by birth, Southern by the grace of God!
PETS: One dog, two cats
PERSONALITY: Leo
HOBBIES: genealogy, hiking, backpacking, reading
LIKES: How long do you have?
DISLIKES: See last answer.
FAVORITE ACCENTS: Coastal Georgia, South Carolinian Low Country, Cajun, Scottish
FAVORITE COUNTRY: Other than my own, Scotland
FAVORITE DAY OF THE WEEK: Friday, Friday!
FAVORITE DRINK: Old Fashioned, Dirty Martini with bleu cheese stuffed olives, sweet iced tea, seltzer water
FAVORITE FLOWER: Orange Gerbera daisies
FAVORITE FOODS: Soft-shell crab, beets, creme brulee, gazpacho
FAVORITE GIRLS NAMES: Caroline, Rebecca
FAVORITE NUMBER: 1
FAVORITE PLACE TO HANG OUT: My own backyard
FAVORITE SHOES: Anything with a heel over 3 inches high
FAVORITE SPORT: Tennis to play, Football to watch
THREE THINGS THAT SCARE ME
1. Snakes
2. Serpents
3. Reptiles without legs
THREE THINGS I'D LIKE TO LEARN MORE OF:
1. Arabic
2. Shuttle tatting
3. Rock climbing
*See Emily Dickinson.
Having exhausted all my ideas on why my photos won't properly upload on Blogger, there are no pictures of the cake we took with us to the Murder Mystery Party last night. (And no pictures of Thing 1 or Thing 2, either, for those of you who asked.)
It's a flourless cake. Just three ingredients - 1/2 pound of unsalted butter, 1 pound of bittersweet chocolate, and 6 eggs. My preference of bittersweet chocolate is Valhrona Amer, which is 71% cocoa. It's like the Darth Vader of chocolate. Beware the Dark Side!
To cut through the richness, my choice of accompanying sauce is a raspberry puree. Again, three total ingredients - raspberries, lemon juice, and superfine sugar (not powdered). Because only the raspberry juice is boiled down, not the pulp, it retains a fresher, tarter taste. And the dark red against the dark brown almost black looks so cool.
Even though another couple brought a cleverly decorated cake, mine tasted better. Rolled fondant takes so much time that the red velvet cake underneath was a bit on the dry side. My one attempt at a fondant cake wasn't as moist as most of my cakes. But the hand-painted fondant flowers were really memorable. (It's was Mr. Gaelic's birthday cake the first year we were married.)
But enough about desserts.
- Monday
- Breakfast: carrot-raisin muffins
- Supper: butternut squash soup, homemade potato bread
- Tuesday
- Breakfast: cereal (as always on Tuesdays)
- Supper: barbecued ribs, homemade white bread, sauce (Ask anyone who's ever tried Dreamland BBQ, it's the only way to eat ribs.)
- Wednesday
- Breakfast: soft-boiled eggs, toast
- Supper: fried okra, black-eyed peas, picked beets, spoon bread
- Thursday
- Breakfast: cereal (Veteran's Day = no school = sleep late)
- Supper: French onion soup, salad (Veteran's Day = remembering my daddy who landed on Normandy Beach on D+14 = French food)
- Friday
- Breakfast: English muffins, fig preserves or honey (We're currently out of Tupelo honey, so I'll poke around the condiment section for something interesting.)
- Supper: cheese soufflé, asparagus
- Saturday
- Breakfast: pancakes, bacon
- Supper: pizza for girls, Mr. Gaelic and I are headed to a party at church for major donors of a new grand piano
- Sunday
- Breakfast: sausage gravy, homemade biscuits
- Dinner: roast chicken, potatoes Anna, green beans
Sometime during the week, we'll finish off the last five slices of chocolate cake. The slices are quite thin since the cake is quite rich. As well as the almond cookies that Maeve made last night while we were trying to solve the murder mystery.
My budding chef. Following in her sisters', and mother's, and father's footsteps.
By the late 1950s America was in a recession the likes of which hadn't been seen in post-World War II society. Hard hit were the steelworkers and those associated with steel, automobiles, and oil. In one small southern town in particular, the local pipe shop and foundry, the largest single employer in the town, suffered from the recession forcing the men to find other incomes.
One man's father returned to life as a tenant farmer, renting the land that he plowed and planted before opening a gas station. The man's father-in-law had no farm to fall back on, the federal government having taken his family's land for an Army camp during World War II. The man? He supported his wife, his teenage daughter, and his father-in-law and lived in a house in the city miles away from his father's farm.
To solve the problem, the man found work where he could. At another foundry. In New Jersey. His wife and daughter moved to New Jersey while his father-in-law, in his late 50s, too old for a new hire, remained in their home in that small southern town.
But the man was a southerner and knew that he needed a better life for himself and his family. Moving back to that small southern town, he turned to teaching math and science at a primary school in the next county to the north. To supplement his income, he would moonlight at a foundry in the largest city in the state. Before the interstate system was completed between the small town and the big city.
Still he knew he needed to do more to support his family. He traded foundry work for more school work.
After teaching fourth and fifth graders, he would drive home, grab a quick supper, and sit in class at a small state university in the next county to the east. It took multiple years to complete. His degree in Business Administration came two years after the arrival of an unexpected and un-planned-for baby in the mid-60s.
Forays into real estate, insurance, and used cars never amounted to more than a side-line. What put food on the table was teaching. And even with the side-line, his wife often claimed at supper not to be hungry and wouldn't eat. Did the man see through her ruse as a way to spread the portions among all the mouths?
His desire for a stable and ample life led to summers away from teaching spent at one of the larger state universities clear on the other side of the state. He'd pack up his wife and young daughter and sublet an apartment while attaining his masters in education and working towards his Ph.D. in psychology. By this time, his father-in-law had died and his first daughter was living in another state.
Never satisfied with his one income and even with all those letters after his name, the man would drive a school bus before and after school. He always wanted more for his children than he had. But he also made it clear to his daughters that they had to work for what they had, never doling out cash for anything more than college-level expenses. His one extravagance was letting his younger daughter have the trade-in value when buying her first car. The car he let her use as a trade-in? A 1972 green AMC Gremlin.
What I wouldn't do for that Gremlin today!
The fits of crying began in earnest over my decaf latte and the morning newspaper. And the crying jags became a constant as the day wore on.
The world isn't in such a mess that reading about the state of things provoked tears. Even worse than that! It was a love story sixty years in the making. Buried near the back of the Sunday Style section are the wedding, engagement, and anniversary announcements. Usually people only read those if someone they know is in the paper. But as a genealogist, reading about births, marriages, and deaths is a daily occurrence.
The article that brought tears to my eyes was about a couple who couldn't get married. No, not star-crossed lovers or two people in other marriages. Two men. In earlier years, they circumvented laws of inheritance and privacy by having one legally adopt the other. Then something happened. All of a sudden it was legal for gays and lesbians to marry. (They annulled the adoption well before the wedding.) Their lives have been rich and full and they plan to remain together forever. Even after death, their ashes will be placed side by side in Arlington National Cemetery, both having served our country during World War II.
The next hankie soaker did not take me so much by surprise. Enough people had told me that Toy Story 3 is a real tear-jerker. Waterproof mascara to the rescue! Sure enough. The tears started rolling early in the movie. Without giving too much away, it should be safe to say that Andy is heading off to college in this threequel. With my eldest heading off to college herself in two months, the movie took on a new gravity as seen through the eyes of a mother about to watch as her first baby leaves home. My critique of the movie? Three thumbs way up.
Both heartwarming stories. Both stories of the power of love and devotion. To answer my youngest when she asked if you can cry tears of joy. Emphatically. Yes!
I don’t know what’s a better birthday present – starting my birthday week with the Paul McCartney concert or finding my long-lost bestest guy friend on Facebook.
Update of the friend first: He made it out of Iraq alive even though some of his fellow pilots weren’t as lucky. He’s got a brand-new baby girl and enjoyed some very productive turkey hunting.
History lesson for today: I was born on the anniversary of the first wartime use of an atomic bomb. And also Lucille Ball’s birthday. Which sort of explains me as a whole – a redhead with the temper of a nuclear bomb. Oh, wait, that’s redundant. Nevermind.
Sir Paul: Come to find out that our third child’s godfather was attending the concert as part of his 50th Birthday celebration, thanks to his wife’s posting it on Facebook. Rather than fight traffic closer to concert time, we arrived two hours ahead of time, found our friends, and tailgated our way through a couple bottles of sparkling rosé and some wicked vodka tonics. We parted ways at the gate, us to our cheap seats, them to their prime real estate on the field. A little ways into the warm-up act and Mr. Gaelic gets an email on his Blackberry from a friend at his office saying that the man has two extra tickets on the field, do we want them? Do you have to ask?
On the field! Section B, Row 10, Seats 19 and 20! Didn’t have to use the binoculars! Soot on the nose from the fireworks during Live or Let Die. Confetti down the shirt after The End. Stood (or should I say danced?) the entire two and a half hours of Beatles, Wings, and Macca.
So he didn’t play Birthday. Who cares? He played Something.
