Pass The Shovel! Digging Up The Family Tree.

"Find Your Anecestors."
"Where do you come from?"
"Start Your Own Family Tree."

AT all costs, do NOT get sucked into this.

Perhaps it's because we live in a country of immigrants. Except for the native peoples or aboriginals or whatever the government is democratically calling them these days, we are ALL from somewhere.  And, being human, we just can't resist the Pandora's Box of what may lie inside if we open the lid. Were our ancestors famous? Royal? Heros? Horse Thieves? The best thing I can say is that they were driven by passion. That's the romantic side of me covering up for what they really were - a bunch of hot-headed, war-mongering, Alpha males driven by their gonads, lacking any kind of moral fibre, and full of the other kind of fibre.

Now a family tree, like a real tree has roots, a trunk, branches and leaves. As the unofficial family geneologist, I consider myself the trunk whose mission it is to connect the branches to the roots. The branches and leaves of my family tree extend far and wide, some of them too many to count. The roots are a different matter. Any gardener knows if you start poking around the roots of anything you will find grubs, worms, insects, rot and disease. Many a tree has fluorished in shaky ground. Mine is no exception. In fact, I'm surprised lightning hasn't struck and burned the whole thing back to the stump! (Aren't we full of metaphors today!)

This is a cautionary tale of what happens when your curiosity gets the better of you. Remember the cat?

My curiosity was benignly militaristic. I have (had) a number of family members who were in the Armed Forces during the big conflicts which involved our country under the Crown. (That was pre-Trudeau!)  With the many anniversaries revolving around major battles - Hong Kong, Dieppe, Vimy - I decided to contact the Department of National Defence (DND) and Veterans Affairs to see if I could obtain copies of my collective grandfather's service records.

The thing is, like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get.

You see, when you signed any kind of military/governemnt document, you automatically forfeited your right to privacy - much like today. So you had to put down your parents, siblings, family members, wives and/or common-law wives and assorted children as dependents.

And that's when the skeletons fell out of my closet and bit me in the Ass.

Oh, Edna! Oh, Albert! Naughty, naughty! What a tangled, little web. Proof positive that the current
generation did NOT invent sex. Clearly, even without t.v. and video games and with the drudge of wringer washers and mopping floors, you found the time for other things. Did you ever stop to think that 80 or 90 years down the road, your future generations would end up having to re-write their own history?  I now understand how Marty McFly felt in Back To The Future. If I were to open up the dozens of photo albums in my possession, would I find half of my family slowly fading into oblivion all because of one little omission? Would my revelation, in essence, change the future? Would names cease to exist, birthdates be eliminated? Are these too many questions to ask? Not funny, Bertie.

As I have yet to inform the pertinent family members of my discoveries, I'll leave out the gory details. I'm not really certain I should say anything to anyone and keep my discoveries to myself. I'm not into opening up cans of worms anymore. I would rather the world keep blindly turning at it's own pace since it's worked fine so far. I therefore have decided to keep my secrets and re-bury the skeletons deep. One side of the fence can keep showering their leaves, procreate like rabbits and scatter their progeny across the earth. Be fruitful and multiply...I shall snicker and not speak ill of the dead.

I will give you one final tribute, Bertie, and that is I believe I have inherited your Machiavellian sense of how to manipulate a plot. Comes in real handy when I'm trying to rescue what we writers call a "sagging middle" or a "blah ending." Proof that fact really is stranger than fiction.

The other side of my family tree is just as evil and unrepentent. Really Robert? FIVE cases of syphillis? It's incredible that you managed to decorate yourself out of the trenches at Vimy. It sounds like you spent the Great War fucking your way across France. It's a wonder you had any time to do enough fighting to win those medals. Don't get me started on the still. Oh well, they say God suffers idiots and drunkards. The fact that you managed to make it back to Rossmore alive lays to rest any doubt about that. Sir William must have been spinning in grave. However, when examining more closely your own Scot's ancestry, you behaved no more or less nobly than one would expect with your blue blood and noble heritage. It is men like you who gave Scotland it's greatest myths and legends. Your tribute ends with a line from the great John Ford film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a pile of bodies and a whole lot of digging to do.......