My Great-Great-Great Chicken Lived There!

An oft-told family story is the shock and vertigo experienced by my mother when she moved to my father’s hometown. The paternal side of my family takes its cousins VERY seriously – even today. Her mother-in-law, trying to acclimate her to life in the community, introduced her around, but it was all a bewildering maze of “Cousin So and So” and “Cousin This” and “Cousin That.” As my mama recounts it, “everyone was a cousin!”

My grandmother, noted by the blue arrow, with a few of her cousins. Second decade of the 20th century.

Cousins and stories and stories of cousins dominated my childhood. Left to my own devices, I would sit quietly and read through the family genealogy book, delighting in some of the horrifying stories recounted in its pages. (My great-great-great aunt apparently turned to stone after her death in 1811 – see, this is the sort of stuff that gets young kids hooked on family history!) Driving home, or around the area, my father would point out landmarks and relate them to the larger family. It’s really inevitable that I became a historian (of sorts).

Visits to cemeteries were de rigueur growing up.

When my oldest child was born, and we traveled home to the family farm for a visit, I kept up a steady stream of conversation – mainly to just keep the baby awake and thus maintain our all-important schedule. (Listen, when your child is sleeping for 6-8 hours a night at four months old, the schedule is your religion. I like my sleep.)

The non-stop chatter later expanded to include actual conversation once said child was verbal, and much of it focused on the passing landscape. I pointed out old barns, old houses, inappropriate development, lovely trees, livestock and the like. (We now engage in commentary about the aesthetic appeal of new houses. Most of the time we conclude that it is ugly, but we don’t share that opinion because we don’t want to hurt the feelings of the people who call that house home.)

Each structure speaks to me of the people that built it, who lived in it, and who called it home.

I don’t know what synapse must fire to jumpstart a love of history and stories. I know that remembering who is who on a family tree is second nature to me, while my sisters…well, they know the important folks. How did my imagination turn to wondering who lived in an old farmhouse far off the road and what the rhythms of their life were like? But I figure exposure can’t be bad – we’ve been reading books since day 1 and I’ve been telling stories too. Hopefully stories are becoming part of the rhythm of their life.

Cousins in the 1950s.

I didn’t realize quite how ingrained my commentary had become until our latest morning commute. Child #1 likes to ask if buildings we pass are historic or not (we have discussed the 50-year old threshold rule followed by those in the cultural resource field at length) and she delights in pointing out her great-grandmother’s childhood home, or the farm that used to belong to “Cousin so and so.” Child #2, both by virtue of being younger and by the sheer volume of words around him all of the time, doesn’t always manage to participate as vigorously in our discussions. (Though by virtue of lung power, his singing renders us silent.)

And an overstuffed room with an overstuffed ancestor, early 20th century.

But today, as we noted that “yes, your great-great-grandfather did build that barn in 1908,” a great and delighted exclamation erupted from his section of the backseat. Pointing with barely contained excitement, he proclaimed, “Mommy! My great-great-great-chicken lived there!”

Future storytellers.

I rest my case. Osmosis works!

(We’ll address the fowl vs human issue later.)

Tell your stories, people. Tell them again and again and again, and share what you remember. It is those stories that make love tangible and close even when the storyteller is long gone from this earth.