Mundane Genealogy

Here’s another piece from my friend, Tom Fiske:

It is all a few dates and a collection of stories. At least that is all my genealogy is. Maybe a photo or two. Little else. Other peoples’ genealogies may consist of scalps and commendations from a president of the United States and maybe a splinter from the True Cross or a piece of stone chipped from the original Ten Commandments, but my genealogy is more prosaic.

There was a time when I retired from industry and was looking for something to fill my days. My wife was still working as a teacher, and she was a very good one. She taught math to seventh graders. I decided I could do that, too. When she laughed and said there was no way I could teach seventh graders, I knew my destiny had been settled: I was going to be one of the best sub teachers in the world.

After some bad experiences in other districts I wound up teaching where I lived—Arcadia, California. It was a place where parents would do just about anything to get their kids into the local schools—because it had a really good school district. In general, the kids were a pleasure to teach. Parents could not countenance their kids being sent out of the district for bad behavior, so they forced them to behave. Also, the teachers and principals were first rate.

I fit in rather quickly because I was a sub who wanted to teach math and science, while other subs wanted to teach subjects like English and Social Studies and PE. Perhaps I went through the lessons too quickly, but I often found that I had 4-5 minutes left over before the bell rang, ending the period. I filled in the gaps with stories about my family. Most of the stories were about my own two children. I told, for instance,

“The Day My Wonderful Brother Blew His Toe Off with a Shotgun”
“Holly Had Two Arms and Three Elbows”
“Dad, I Have a Needle in My Foot!”
“The Day the Python Pooped”
“When Holly’s Eye Came Loose”

There were a lot more stories. I told about wacky science and weird history. But most of the kids like gore. My stories had lots of gore in them. Yet, they managed to be edifying and with morals. The shotgun story, for instance, concerned itself with gun safety. “There is no such thing as an unloaded gun,” I would remind the kids at the end of my tale.

It wasn’t long before parents were calling the principal of my favorite middle school and asking him to ask me to fill in for a teacher who was going to be on extended leave. Unfortunately, I could not handle long periods of teaching because I had broken both legs a few years before and they would painfully swell if I spent too many days standing in the front of classrooms.

Where did I learn to tell such stories? While pursuing my genealogy, of course. I had a long time to practice after I broke both legs and was recovering from surgery. To me, it was a lucky break, but most people thought it a curse.

My school stories were genealogical in nature. They were also my fame and fortune for a while. At the request of the kids, I put the stories together into a book which I called Four on the Floor in honor of the number of toes remaining on my elder brother’s right foot. I suspect there are a few copies still for sale somewhere on the Internet.

After Four on the Floor I wrote a few family history novels that involved murders of ancestors. They seem to have made very good targets (the ancestors, not the novels).

Most genealogists, I have concluded, are a lot like me: story-tellers at heart. But they let weak excuses such as, “I can’t spell” keep them from writing the really good stories. That is too bad, because other people need to hear the funny or uplifting tales they could be telling. Sometimes, it is enough just to tell about the research that went into finding facts for a tale. Methodology might not interest seventh graders, but it sure would help novice genealogists.

You know the often-told story that begins, “Boy, Uncle Joe kicked the old bucket last year. I sure wish I had talked to him when he was well. He knew all about the family.”

Uncle Joe is not me. My goal is to have people say, “Don’t get Uncle Tom started on genealogy. He’ll tell you more than you ever wanted to know and he’ll take all day doing it.”

Besides, more people need to understand, “there is no such thing as an empty gun.”