Category: Nonfiction

Chasing Rabbits

In celebration of 10 years of blogging, I’m reposting old entries. This is the second post to ever appear on this blog!

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Genealogists work in an economy of questions and answers. It seems like for every answer I find, 5 more questions pop up to take its place. The obituary of Mary Benn that I posted in my previous entry is a good example. Before I sit down to research, I try to focus on finding the answer to just one question I have about a family member or a document. This technique has worked well for me because I’m distractible. The question I was trying to answer when I found Mary’s tribute was, How did my relative, Eliza Kelley, meet and marry Hank Ruffe?

A little back history is required here, I think. According to census records taken in Council Bluffs, IA, our Miss Eliza lived in the same house with her parents until she was about 50. I lose her after the 1905 Iowa special census and pick her up again on her wedding day in Portland, Oregon, in 1912. For a while after I found it, I wasn’t sure their marriage record was the right Miss Eliza. I mean there she is taking care of her elderly parents and then suddenly she pops up as a wife in Oregon? It seemed unlikely. But, her brother’s obituary confirmed that she was indeed Mrs. Henry Ruffe of Oregon. Finding her brother’s obituary supplied an answer, but it also generated more questions for me. The following is what I call a list of rabbits:
1. Where was Eliza in the 1910 census? (US Censuses are taken every ten years starting consistently in 1790.)
2. Did she disappear from the census because she was traveling to Oregon?
3. What made 2 people well into their golden years (we’re talking 1912 remember) decide to retire their single lives?
4. How exactly does someone move from Iowa to Oregon in 1910?
5. How did she meet this man from Oregon after seemingly leading a sheltered life?

Let’s just chase #5 down the rabbit hole.

Obviously Mary Benn’s obituary alone doesn’t answer my question. It’s definitely interesting, though. She ran a cigar factory, she grew alfalfa, she hunted bears, she collected rocks for posterity. So, when the obituary mentions her father’s eccentricities, I had to look him up. How could Mary’s father possibly top his daughter’s ‘colorful’ life?

Turns out Mary Benn’s father founded Aberdeen, Washington. He sailed through the Panama Canal, and up to Olympia, WA. He then set off south, found a spot where 2 rivers meet, and decided it was going to be a town.  And since Samuel Benn was a founding father, his life and family are very well documented.

Samuel Benn, builder of cities Samuel Benn, builder of cities

I have never owned land or a house in my lifetime. The idea of traveling somewhere, sticking a flag in the ground, and declaring it to be Oregon’s next BIG THING is just amazing to me. If I were to go to some remote part of the country and declare it  for myself, I would immediately be deemed as eccentric. Thankfully, when Mr. Benn was doing it, it was a highly respectable prospect.

This article mentions that Mary Benn’s mother was born and raised in Polk County, Iowa. That’s a couple counties over from where our Miss Eliza was raised. As Mary Benn’s right hand (so the obituary paints him), it would follow that Hank may have been introduced to Eliza as a freshly-arrived acquaintance of Mary Benn’s Iowan family. So, BAM! Question answered.

Well, a little bit. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I’m never going to be able to wrap up my family tree in a neat little package. It’s messy work that never ends; it’s a kid eternally stuck in the “Why” phase.

The death of a brother; a cigar rolling ranch hand; a Native American artifact collection; the father of Aberdeen, WA. Answers to the questions we ask our family trees can take us on a journey to unexpected places. I never know where I’m going to end up.

All of this is to say that the questions and the messiness are worth it for the journey. In fact, they’re probably more valuable than the hard copy of my family tree. To put it a different way: the paper work is the body, the journey is the soul.

It’s important to mention also that Mary’s obituary may have solved another mystery. Its explanation of Michigan lumbermen in Oregon might explain some relative’s migrations on my mom’s side of the family, but the details of that clue aren’t important here.

This story continues. I’m awaiting the arrival of Eliza Kelley Ruffe’s obituary from the University of Oregon library. We’ll see where that rabbit leads us together. I can’t wait!

 

The subject of this post is also related to the song “Come As You Are.” Google Aberdeen, Washington, and look around a little; you’ll see how pretty quickly.

 

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If you were to be the founder of a town, like Samuel Benn, where would it be in the world? Why there? How would you run it?

Mapping People

In celebration of 10 years (!!!) of blogging, I’m reposting my very first entry on this site.

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Growing up, my Pop rarely told stories about his childhood, but when he did I was riveted. I think his stories caught my attention because his childhood was so different from mine. You see, he was taken from his parents and raised by various foster families. He and his siblings grew up in three separate houses around town.

I couldn’t conceive of a childhood like my Pop’s: without siblings and parents. I marvel at the strength and independence necessary for him to reach adulthood. Because of his childhood, he never knew the basic facts of his family most people take for granted: the names of his grandparents, where they came from, and what kind of people they were. About ten years ago, I started asking him about his tumultuous past. It wasn’t until his illness a while back (He’s fine.) that he told me the first clue I needed to find his relatives: his mother’s name.

So I set myself the task of finding out about her and her family. Suddenly, towns I’d never thought twice about before became important places: Council Bluffs, Iowa; Hensall, Ontario; Portsmouth, Ohio. These were the communities my family was a part of for generations. These towns were springboards for where my family is today.

“When a man’s stories are remembered, then he is immortal.” ~ Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

In my research, I’ve discovered mysterious and intriguing characters on both sides of my family. So, recently, I found myself telling a friend about a spinster great-grandaunt who left her small Iowa town in the 1910s to marry a cigar manufacturer in Oregon. A half hour later, my mouth was dry from talking and my friend was volunteering to help me research.

That made me think it was time to get these stories ‘on paper.’ This blog will be my funnel for the people I encounter in my research and a recommitment to my love of writing. Hopefully, this internet thing isn’t just a craze and my words will be available to future family members who share my curiosity. I will also include some of the history involved, as well. For instance, I found myself researching exactly what a 1910 cigar manufacturer did for a living. But, more on that later.

This is how I see this blog working:

Does anyone else think it's weird that her ranch manager is mentioned more than her father, and her husband wasn't mentioned at all? Does anyone else think it’s weird that her ranch manager is mentioned more than her father, and her husband wasn’t mentioned at all?

Nothing will be posted about living relatives, except an occasional reference to my parents. Some of the posts will be my thoughts on actual documentation: census records, random certificates, photographs, and articles. Other posts will be fictional stories with names changed, if necessary. The stories will be edited for dramatic effect, but they will all fall somewhere on the ‘truthy-ness’ spectrum between the plain facts of a Civil War pension document and the outlandish tales of the book/movie Big Fish by Daniel Wallace. They will be cobbled together as my imagination interprets the information I have at the time. As I gather more information, the stories may change, but that’s the beauty of history.

My ancestors were mostly Midwestern farmers— not the most exciting bunch on paper, but their stories and relations often surprise me. If I find such interesting people in my humble family, I’m sure everyone else’s families are just as interesting. So I hope my stories and research will inspire others to look into their own pasts and share the stories they find.

Among other things, I’m working on telling what I know of the man who lost his government job because of Roosevelt’s New Deal and the significant ripple effects of that case of unemployment across my family tree. And the story of my sweet grandfather’s dahlias. And, of course, that great- grandaunt who found her cigar-smoking love, Hank Ruffe. The article at right is a hint at what’s to come. It is the obituary of Hank’s employer and sister-in-law, who seems to merit her own post based on her big-game hunting skills alone.

And with that, I’m off to write, Lord help me.

Back Here

A woman in a green visor and apron asks me what she can get for me. I tell her a six-inch tuna on wheat. She assembles my sandwich automatically—bread, cheese, meat—but I am anything but automatic. I am trying something new; I am breaking old habits. I am following advice.

“Easy on the lettuce, please,” I say with an exaggerated smile. I’m trying too hard, but she doesn’t look up. “I’m a bit of a delicate flower.” I laugh at my words. Her head remains aimed at the bins of vegetables in front of her.

Great. Now she thinks I’m hitting on her. Maybe this is the wrong place to do it. Maybe I should try it with a co-worker first.

The sandwich artist’s eyes are suddenly on me, her eyebrows raised in question. Shit. Okay. She must have asked me what condiments I want.

“Extra extra extra mustard.” I cue her again with a smile. “Can’t have too much.” Yellow splatters the thin layer of lettuce. It’s too much mustard.

This is work for her. Listening to me is her job. Making me engage with someone who seems miserable at her job is unfair. It’s setting me up for failure. No. You’re going “back there” again. Be present. Listen to her.

“What’s that?”

“Anything else?”

I shake my head and she rings me up. Something on the other side of the cash register catches my eye. I stick my bottom lip out. “Those look good,” I say, pointing sheepishly to a display of cookies. “Could I get one, please? No, no, two. Two chocolate chip cookies!” I say it like the Count on Sesame Street.

She gives me a little laugh. I wonder if it’s pity.

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“Back here” is the place I go during most conversations. On the rare occasion I tell someone about it, I point to a place behind my right ear and make a small circle. It’s the place I mull everything I’ve ever said to anyone ever. Ten minutes ago, fifteen years ago, it doesn’t matter. It’s my body language analysis chamber, my “What-I-Shoulda-Said” think tank, my “social faux pas” panic room.

My therapist, Esteban, reassures me that everyone has a Back Here, but some people stay locked back there longer than others. Or that’s what I read as his subtext at least because I’m pretty sure I’m the only person I know whose therapist recommends purposefully getting everyone they talk to in a day laugh.

“You do understand that I already put enough pressure on myself in social situations, right?” I asked Esteban when he suggested it. My scapulas prickled with sweat at the idea.

“Yes, but the logical  solution isn’t to never speak again, is it?” Esteban has a bit of an attitude. Usually, I like it.

“Well, no. But this seems like adding kindling to the fire.”

“Let me ask you this: How well are you listening to the person you’re talking to when you’re ‘back there’?”

I’d never thought about it. I am usually so anxious about what I say that I can’t process the other person’s words. “Not very well?”

“I think making someone laugh will force you to be present in the moment, really listening to what is being said and relating to it.”

“But what if laughter isn’t appropriate?”

“Then I want you to consciously be kind to them. If you’re walking away from people after making them laugh or giving them a compliment, then it will be harder for you to fixate on any perceived mistakes. We need to associate conversations with good things, not punishment.”

“But it sounds exhausting. I’m not a comedian.”

“More exhausting than making yourself feel bad about something you said a decade ago? I’m not asking you to do stand-up. I’m asking you to stay in the moment. Have some fun.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You’ve made me laugh three times so far this session. Of course, you can.”

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Three weeks later, my co-worker, Andrew, greets me with a Good morning.

“Hi, Andrew. Can you show me your feet, please?”

“My feet?”

“Yeah, just checking something.”

He swivels in his chair and raises one penny-loafered foot, then the other.

“Good. No chains. You were sitting there when I left last night and you’re here now. I wanted to make sure you aren’t shackled to your desk.”

He fills the room with his chuckling. His laugh is a trophy.

*Names changed to protect the innocent.

A Parking Lot Full Of Stones

The party store the Guls owned was within walking distance of our house.

But let me back up a minute to explain that very Midwestern sentence.

In Michigan, where I grew up, a “party store” is not a place to buy helium-filled balloons, or economy packs of Power Ranger-themed napkins and paper plates, no. A party store is a convenience store, a Kwickie Mart, a 7-11. Back in the 80s, they were everywhere and they were family-owned and the Guls, an Iranian-American family, happened to own the one nearest my house.

In rural Michigan, “walking distance” was a flexible term. It was all relative to how far away the places you needed to walk to were. I was 12 and lived about 15 minutes driving to anything interesting. So that’s how the Guls’ store became a neighborhood hangout. In 20 minutes, my friends and I could walk down a two-lane country highway and buy all the pop, Fritos, and Snickers bars we could afford. But the real attraction was in the back of the store.

If you walked past where Mr. Gul sat beside his cash register and turn left down a shadowy hallway, a neon glow would eventually greet you. It was there we would gather around the latest arcade games. Two at first, and then the Guls expanded to three.

The arcade hallway also happened to be the connection between the Guls’ store and their home. Through that closed door at the end, we could smell unfamiliar food cooking and hear people, usually women, chattering in a language we didn’t even know the name of.  Without fail, the Guls conversations would switch from Farsi to English when they walked through that door. The switch wouldn’t even register on their faces or in their body language; their cultural identity shifted as naturally as the cows in the fields outside shifted their weight to walk.

I suspect that door was also where the Gul children traded in their Persian names for English ones. I never knew the names Victor, Lila, and Ashley’s parents called them. Victor was a year younger than me in school. He had a round face with dark eyes and a gleaming smile. He didn’t have an accent; he was American, born and raised.

When Victor came through that hallway, he’d always stop and joke around with us until his father called him to stock the refrigerated case or sweep the parking lot.

He would sweep the entire parking lot. He’d even sweep the large stones that acted as barriers between the lot and the small patch of lawn that separated it from the trailer park street. While he swept, Victor waved to the cars that drove past. The store was on the corner of the country highway and the entrance drive to a large trailer park, so he knew most of the people in the cars. He swept and waved daily for years.

In 1990, two major things happened: I turned 16 and received my driver’s license, and the United States began sending troops to Kuwait to fight in Operation Desert Storm. The idea of wars wasn’t completely lost on me; we’d read about them in history class. Still, I was surprised at how little our lives had changed after President Bush had invaded. I was surprised at how few people even talked about it.

One morning, I got up early—I think I had to open the Subway restaurant I worked at—and headed to Gul’s party store for breakfast. As I was approaching, I saw all five of the Guls standing in the lot looking at the huge stones blocking the entrance to the parking lot. Someone had moved the barriers from the edges of the lot. The words “Go home Camel Jockeys” were spray-painted in red across the stones. With no way to pull in and a job to get to, I kept driving. I don’t remember thinking about it much after that. Work and school and friends kept me busy.

A few months later, my dad mentioned that the Guls had gone out of business. Apparently, the people of the trailer park got together and decided not to shop there anymore. They turned on a dime

Living just down the street, we hadn’t heard a thing about it. It never occurred to me that someone would treat the Guls that way. They’d been a part of the neighborhood almost all of my life.

Early early draft. Constructive criticism welcome.

The Difference Between Sympathy and Empathy

CW: pet death

“So, are you going to get a new cat?” my coworker, Bridget, asked. Her eyebrows rounded and the gray streak in her hair glowed in the harsh fluorescent light.

A mixture of impatience and grief constricted my throat. I had come so close to getting out the door. My computer was off, and I was on my way to the kitchenette, hands full of the dishes I’d dirtied over the course of the workday. A bowl and a plate balanced on top of a coffee mug. The strap of my messenger bag, filled with textbooks and prototypes of a project that was behind schedule because I’d taken an unexpected day off, dug into my shoulder, and I began to sweat under my winter coat.

“Well, she only passed a few days ago. I haven’t really thought about it.”

My words came out in an awkward lilt, a relic of my customer service days when I was forced to mask annoyance with politeness. I knew where this conversation was headed. Several other sympathetic co-workers had felt compelled to tell me stories of their pets’ deaths today.

“I remember when my Lucas passed. He hadn’t been well for a few weeks; the vet said it was probably a kidney infection. Anyway, I was on the couch watching TV. He got up on my lap like he usually did. I probably watched two or three shows before I got up. I stirred a little—that usually gets him up—but he didn’t move. Then I nudged him and realized how stiff he was, how cold to the touch. He had passed right there on my lap.”

A hiccup rose in my chest. Peering down the corridor into the kitchenette, I calculated how offended my coworker would be if I just walked away, or if dropping my dishes right now would reset the conversation or force me to listen to more memento mori stories. Instead, my mind flashed to three days ago. Daphne lay in her Darth Vader bed in the quietest corner of the living room. I shook a bag of treats as a greeting, which usually elicited a few meows and as much excitement as a sick 19-year-old cat could muster. But something was different. Her front legs moved to lift herself, but her hind legs stayed folded up against her white belly.

I emerged from my memory to find Bridget imploring me.

“Are you okay?”

I put the dishes down on the nearest tabletop. The room was empty, excepting the two of us. Screensavers on every computer showed lava lamp bubbles bouncing within the confines of the screens.

“What? Yeah, I’m so sorry about Lucas, but it was sweet that he came to you for safety in that moment. How long ago was that?”

“Maybe fifteen years? I’ve had three cats since. Ginger died at the vet, but she was older, like your kitty, so we had time to prepare…” She continued, but all I could do was wonder how she could possibly prepare. There is no preparing.

“She’s malnourished and dehydrated,” a young vet had said three days before, her white coat and purple Vans too bright in the beige room. “I had a hard time finding her pulse. What were you thinking about her care tonight?”

Daphne lay on the examination table wrapped in a white towel. She was so quiet; visits outside the house usually made her mewl. The vet tapped a clipboard with a pen as I looked at my partner. Muzak fogged the room.

“We’re prepared to let her go.”

Back at work, Bridget placed a hand on my arm. I didn’t know how long it had been since she’d stopped telling her story. Her mouth pinched with concern, and she held out a box of Kleenex decorated with Minions, their smiles and popping eyes looked sinister.

“I’m so sorry. Probably the last thing you want to hear right now are stories about death,” she said.

Early draft. Constructive criticism welcome.

Writing for the YeahWrite nonfiction challenge. Click the badge above to read other well-written essays!

Shoes, or What Not To Do When People Call You Names

As the bus doors opened, a tall man planted his feet wide in the threshold and stretched his long arms to the top corners of the jamb. He wore jean shorts and an old concert tee, and he had what looked like a cold sore on his lower lip. Our eyes locked as he leaned out toward me and my partner standing at the bus stop. A smirk pulled at his mouth, and he mumbled as he stepped onto the sidewalk and elbowed past me.

A minute later my partner asked if I’d heard what the guy said. I had. Despite the racket of the idling bus I’d heard him clearly. He said, in an almost genial tone, “How’s it going, faggot?”

 

The first time I remember hearing that word I was in church. Some dude wearing a cardigan was pulling felt characters of Jesus and sheep and wise men out of a Ziploc baggie, preparing for class. I remember street lights were on in the parking lot outside, which means I wasn’t in Sunday school but at Awana, what the Baptists called a youth group but was really just Sunday school on Wednesday nights with a game of dodgeball and a juice box thrown in.

I was sitting in a half-circle of school desks with the other young Christian boys aged 9 to 11. The classrooms in our church basement smelled musty year-round, but especially so in the humidity of that early September night in Michigan. To this day, a dank room reminds me of rubbery pancakes and eternal salvation.

The kid next to me told everyone to look at how I was sitting. Hands on desk, left ankle on right knee. He said, “Why are you sitting like a girl, faggot?”

The Cardigan stopped unpacking.

“I’m not,” I said. “My dad sits like this all the time.”

“Haha! Nathan’s daddy’s a queer!”

“That’s enough. Let’s get started. Nathan, both feet on the floor, please,” the Cardigan said, and then he launched into his lesson, probably the one about turning the other cheek. I spent the rest of that class studying my teacher and classmates, watching how they sat, staring at the floor because, for some reason, I thought their shoes would show me what unified them and set me apart.

 

Just like in the church basement, the moment with the tall man on the bus happened in a flash. He was smirking and then he was gone and then I was sitting in the back of the bus kicking myself for not confronting him.

I could have adopted my most winsome Southern drawl, slid an index finger down his sternum and said Why, honey, you interested? Or I could have unleashed a wild grin—each tooth a separate act of defiance—and quipped I’m great, asshole, how ’bout you?  I could have called him the epithet that popped into my head when I saw the scab on his lip. I could have punched him in his willfully-exposed torso or tripped him as he stepped past me or I could have simply said “Fuck off.”

But I didn’t.

Thirty-some years after I put my feet on the floor, after the tribulations of reconciling my sexuality with my religious upbringing, after the lonely years post-college believing the ridiculous notion that all gay men ended up sad and alone, after the exhilaration of meeting my partner, after almost 15 years of enjoying a happy loving relationship, a stranger called me a faggot and I looked down at his shoes.