I SEE DEAD PEOPLE

ONE

I became interested in genealogy a long time ago. My folks didn't have family bibles or photo albums of their ancestors. I didn't think about it much until my grandmother died. I was a late bloomer in matters of attending funerals. My first was when I was 15. I was dumb struck to see all the people my father told me were my relations. I didn't know I had any! The get together was a smörgåsbord of people. My aunties and great aunts were Indian women with beautiful black hair and strong like me. 


Many families were Mormon which frankly blew me away. How did that happen? Our family was Methodist. I'd never thought about it until then. Being southern meant Baptist mixed in with the Methodist and an occasional Presbyterian. I found out much later that on my dad's side were Catholics. It was condoned, he said, because before the Republic of Texas the Spanish, then Mexican governments insisted people become Catholic if they wanted to stay, which they did of course or they wouldn't have come all that way to turn around.

That was the extent of my family tutorial until years later when I asked to take my grandmother's trunk out of the garage where it sat for twenty years. No one knew what was in it and mother didn't want me to open it. I was a little squeamish myself because when I was little I used to stick grasshoppers in the hole where the lock had been. I couldn't imagine what it looked like in there. It was agreed they'd put it in the back of my truck and I'd drive it back with me to East Texas where I lived.... to be continued.