What started it all

(The author of this story on the day her first Great-granchild was born)


My brother Eugene and his daughter Suzi were over for Sunday dinner. Whiling away the time as dinner was cooking we got to looking at old pictures and explaining to Suzi ‘who was who’ in some of the older pictures. Frankly, in some of the pictures, neither my brother nor myself knew who these people were as they had no notations or dates to identify the time, occasion or what have you.

The conversation turned to how unfortunate that our knowledge of family history is so vague. When I was growing up and in later years I didn’t have a real curiosity about my roots. Now that my parents are gone plus their siblings, there are no elders to relate stories of the past. We can only put together bits and pieces of what we heard and what we can remember of the days of the past.

For starters I asked my brother if he could remember all of the places we lived in the early years. Bear in mind these were the years from 1924-1941. These were tough times during the depression when everyone was dirt poor and few jobs were to be had.

With little effort my brother began reeling off all the times we moved and where and in what order. Must have been a dozen places in as many years. For the most part we lived in shacks, small houses owned by relatives and sometimes with relatives and sometimes even as squatters. We laughingly explained to Suzi that at some places we lived the owner wasn’t aware we were there. This led to some hasty departures when we were discovered. Indoor plumbing was a luxury seldom experienced.

Our numerous moves in the 1920’s were in the Burien and West Seattle area. My brother says we lived in a stucco house up on 35th and Roxbury when I was born in 1929. Nancy and Jim were born in the early 30’s probably around 14th and Holden, a house owned by Aunt Edna, Mom’s oldest sister. My brother started school at Burien Grade School. Recently my brother and I attended a 60th class reunion for Highline High School and he was pleasantly surprised in meeting many classmates he had started grade school with.

With the help of my brother, Suzi and other sources of information I am going to make an attempt to slap something together to pass on to our kinfolk. If you have hopes of finding relatives of note or royalty read no further…perhaps you could dig deeper with the resources available today and find someone to your liking. I will only write of family I grew up with or heard stories of. On review, our lot gives the word ‘dysfunctional’ a whole new meaning.