1 post tagged “family roots”
The most surprising thing about my bloodline is that I'm actually 1/16th Cherokee. For someone as pasty white as me, it doesn't even seem possible, the last traces fo swarthiness reside in my mother, and then, solely in the form of sandy colored hair and a slightly longer tolerance for direct sunlight.
The rest is far less surprising. The rest of me is all American Appalachian, from the hills of Eastern Kentucky. I come from a shame addled bloodline (crime and alcohol), and my great grandparents eventually left Appalachia during Andrew Carnegie's heavy recruiting of the south so my great grandfather - Paw Shira could work on the Lancaster - Pennsylvania Railroad, where he was killed, like so many others breaking their backs during its construction. My great grandmother, whom he married at 16, and their cow, Estelle, a wedding present for the happy couple moved north and never looked back, in an effort to shake off what was at the time an even less savory reputation than Appalachian people currently enjoy. My Mee maw - Great Great Grandmother, remined in Kentucky with the rest of her 12 children and the family split in half - hard drinking gun toting felons, and snake handline religious zealots. They lived next door to one another all their lives, so visits were always a study in contrasts.
My Mee Maw was alive until I was 4, my great grandmother lived until I was 20. Having your babies early makes for an extended family that has a chance to meet.
The men from the ketucky side of the family are a colorful lot, none of whom I have remained in touch with, and whose stories I tell very selectively, but the names all sound straight out of the social register, or from the rolls of an animal house frat, because given names in Appalachian culture are based on last names, and nicknames are usually based on unfortunate mishaps. So there's a Twoey and a Jackie (short for jackson) and a Butler, and host of Logans, but there's also a Fret, Bucky and Seesaw. The history mirrors the history of labor and justice in America - the Brookside strike, the Harlan mines, the rise and fall of the company store, and I used to be a little embarassed about it until I was old enough to understand that distance isn't always measured in miles and hours, and just how subjective and arbitrary opportunity can be.
Oh and the last name? It's German, but I have no biological relation to anyone with that name. My last name came from my grandmother's third husband. Technically, I'm a Ballanger by bloodline. Wish we could have kept that name, but alas, not to be.
