The Diary of Queen Mothy |
My Genealogy Extravaganza written @ 2:30 PM on August 18, 2003 I just got back from my trip o' genealogy extravaganza in Pittsburgh this weekend. The overall rating? It was a bitter-sweet experience. On Saturday, upon reaching my birthplace, Mom took me to the first house I ever lived in in Greentree, a small borough outside of the city. This is the house we lived in when my parents were just about as dirt poor as you could get and still live in a house, and I have few memories of it-- namely the ones where I toilet-papered the entire upstairs, where I got stuck in my mother's rocking chair (don't ask), how my mom used to store the breakfast cereals in the railings going down to the basement, and the playground up the hill. Ahhh, the playground up the hill. . . It really is funny how some memories stick with you over a lifetime. In spite of the blatant DO NOT ENTER sign going up to the swing set, Mom drove up there anyway to get a picture of me on the playground. Upon taking a few good swings and Mom snapping away, I felt a sudden sense of closure for that ancient part of my life, some sign of coming full circle. Seventeen or eighteen years ago I had swung on this swing and lived life like it was a river and I was a small raft. And then Mom got stopped by a cop for trespassing by car onto the playground, but she tactfully weaseled her way out of that one by conveniently blaming me and my genealogy project. Good one, Mom. I couldn't even begin to tell you how elated I was to have driven over the Fort Pitt Bridge and see that sweeping Pittsburgh cityscape stretch out along the Allegheny and Monogehela Rivers. Ever since moving from the city when I was eight, I never felt like I had gone to another home. Home had always been here. Of course, I found out from the nightly news that the city is bankrupt and citizens are getting together to help oust the mayor, much like what California is doing to their governor, and the economy is going down the tubes. But that is still my city, my home, and there is a spirit that lingers there, a certain je ne sais quoi about its age and history that always rooted me there. I took a picture of the hospital where my brother and I had been born. And then we went to the Carnegie Library, where most of my genealogy sources are housed. Our mission this afternoon was to search through the city directories from the years 1890 to 1947, but we only got through about half that many because it took a long time to sort through the microfilm. By searching the city directories, I hoped to get an idea as to where my ancestors lived and what they did for a living. And then I could send away for county records instead of taking stabs in the dark like I have been doing with my dad's side. Most of what I found didn't surprise me and I gathered only to make my records more concise. But my readers will remember my trilling about my great-grandfather David Francis Reno. What a fucking gypsy. Every year in the city directories he was living at a different address until he got married! Every year he was mooching off his railroad buddies and bunkering down at their families' houses, only to displace himself (or get thrown out), and then it was off to the next "friend." When he got married to Margaret (who was 15) and had my grandfather, he moved the family to Wilkinsburg (so he's missing from the Pittsburgh city directories of the 1920s), reappears once or twice in the 1930s, and then completely disappears. So I'm guessing that he died between 1930-1940. Mom thinks he was a real alley cat. I would bet Margaret not only got a divorce but got their marriage annulled. By the late 1920s, she was married to another man. On top of that, there are a lot of similarities between him and my father... so much so that I'm willing to bet hard money that my dad is David Francis reincarnated and is paying a karmic debt for the turmoil his absence caused my grandfather, who was only a young kid when he disappeared. I asked Grandma if she could request David Francis's presence sometime during the course of the trip to give me a little help, but something tells me his soul was already reincarnated into the living world. He never showed up, and Grandma passed me the hint that she wasn't quite sure where he was. Either that, or my focus was so scattered in my excitement that I missed the true message. In any case, I have to admit that I didn't cover half of what I wanted because the library is so fucking huge, but I got enough to satisfy me for the time being. Next summer I want to spend a week there at the library. I'll get everything I need in a week. That evening, we went to the Red Bull Inn for dinner, where I had a lobster pot that I haven't had since I was seven (and it was one of the best meals of my life), and then we went shopping at IKEA. I have been converted to the religion of furniture shopping at IKEA. I bought a tall floor lamp for the dorm this year, plus an oversized Chinese lantern... that doesn't really look Chinese... but I like to think it is. We did a little bit of driving down Memory Lane, for sure. I saw the old flea market, where we used to get the best pizza in Pittsburgh, and observed how Robinson Township had been so built up since last visiting. On Sunday we went to Moon Township, where I spent the bulk of my early childhood, and saw that in place of the old movie store where I first rented The Last Unicorn there's a New Age shop (it must have been fate). As for my old house at Lansdowne Drive, it's still pretty much the same as I remember except for some of the outrageous jungle-like landscaping the current owners did. By fundamentalist Christian next door neighbors still live there-- the ones I argued about He-man and She-ra over-- but I didn't knock on their doors and surprise them. They were weird and crazy back then, and I wasn't quite sure I was ready to see what they evolved into. Travis must be twenty years old and in jail or cracked out by now, and Seth and Matt must be seventeen... and God knows what they're up to. We did run into an old friend of the family while circling the neighborhood, so we chatted for some time. You could tell she was surprised to see us. I wandered off a little bit, remembering things I hadn't remembered in years: how there were no sidewalks, how the neighborhood kids used to tear down the roads on their bikes, how we lived so close to the airport that the planes would buzz our houses at 200 feet (no joke). I remembered the forest I lived by, remembered how that was the first time I felt the raw energy in the Earth and had to block it out since because it made me dizzy. The creek. The weeping willows by our old house. How Suzy's gravel driveway was now paved. The energy in the earth was still there and as raw as ever. I now know it was not simply my imagination; those were powerfully charged grounds. You could feel it on the air. My first elementary school was gutted and turned into a Christian private school. The playground is no longer there, except for the monkey bars. The blacktop isn't as big as I remember. And my preschool is no longer a preschool but an advertising agency. We went back downtown to the cemeteries. The guy at the office who handled my requests to find the graves of my family was a real asshole and would only give us two: my grandparents (but I knew where they were anyway) and my grandaunt Julie. Finding Julie's grave was a real chore. Why? Because while she is buried in section 30, there is no damned headstone for her site. Her kids "haven't gotten around to it" yet, and she's been dead since last autumn. Sometimes I am happy that I never got as close to many members of my clan. It's good that I became more of my own person than falling under their influence at an early age. Julie's grave was one reason why. We went to two other cemeteries that day, both unsuccessful attempts to find my great-grandmother and my great uncle. But at least I know where the cemeteries are located; that way, when I get my week off to return to Pittsburgh, I can go through them more thoroughly. I took pictures of churchs and places where I knew some family to have lived or attended at one point or another. I met my cousin Claudine, her husband Marc, and their daughter Hannah for dinner at the pub down the street from Grandma's old house. She lives in the old house; she couldn't bear to see the house, which has been in the family for over 50 years, go on the market after she and Grandpap died. But she's pregnant again. Marc has a strange job in real estate and hasn't worked since January. And now they're moving to Philadelphia and into Marc's mother's home. She has good reasons to, the economy in Pittsburgh being what it is, and it'll be good for Hannah to grow up with family that she's close to. I was unhappy to hear about these plans, though, because that would mean Grandma's house will be sold. I was hoping they would keep the house long enough for me to buy it in the case I moved back to Pittsburgh (or in the case that Dad moves back to Pittsburgh if my parents divorce), and I couldn't bear the thought of that house belonging to someone not of our blood. I wanted to cry, in fact. My grandparents still "live" in that house; I couldn't imagine what they would do if strangers occupied it. I tried to imagine them being angry at this decision to give the house up. But as I thought about it, painfully aware how they were at the table with us, Grandma kind of hinted to me that it doesn't really matter to her: in her mind, the house has served its purpose and she will continue dropping in on Claudine's family, my family, my aunt and uncle down in North Carolina, and what's left of her family up here. She did say that she will check on the house for me to make sure it's still "whole," but I'm not supposed to worry about it. I told her that if I ever move back to Pittsburgh, I will buy that house, should it ever be for sale again (which is likely, if my intuition is correct). The only ghost who I could ever conceive staying in the house is my great-grandfather, the Czechoslovakian alcoholic. He's still very much haunting the third floor attic. So with my genealogy finds and the news about the house and how things must inevitably change, as Mother told me when I voiced my concerns, the trip was bitter-sweet for me. Of course I know things must change; change is why I survived the trauma of four moves through three states over a nineteen year period (five, if you count college in Kentucky). I just wish I could slow change down enough for time to take a picture. I'm happy to be back in Cincinnati now, however, and I can't say why. I have a lot of work to do. On Thursday I have to call the genealogist at Cavalry Cemetery to retrieve the grave locations of the relatives I did miss. I have to transcribe the records I got copies of to my database and binders. I have to prepare to send away for some vital records... all in all, I'm going to be busy until move-in day at school next Saturday. *sigh* Days like these remind me just how different I am from my family. I think I'm suffering from "elderly reincarnated soul-itis."
A Bit of History ~ And Onward! L'Amour Toujours! - August 08, 2005 |
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