Grandmother does all the genealogy in our family. That is the way it has been since I can remember. Even when any of the rest of us have had an idea or a lead on some sort of ancestral information, we gave it to Grandma. By right of forfeit, she is our family genealogist.
And that seemed just right, because she has always been old. It has always seemed to me that being old was the primary qualification of a genealogist. At least, all of them that I have known were.
Except for Michael Quinn. Mike and I were best friends when we were growing up in Glendale, Calif., and later we roomed together at college. It wasn't until we were living in th same, small domicile that I realize how strange Michael really was.
While I avoided my studies, he attacked his with a passion; while I looked on college as a convenient means of escaping the discipline of family and home, he was concerned with something he called an "education"; and while I looked on my free time as a magnificent opportunity to become involved in bacchanalian revels, he looked forward to spare moments he might spend on his genealogy.
I mean, we were 18! And here he was doing what Grandma did, and he seemed to enjoy it. It defied all explanation.
Well, there was some explanation: he was strange. There was something unnatural about a person who sequestered himself among records of the dead, when he could have been happily squandering his time among the living.
So one day I confronted him. I was concerned about his welfare, and my own. I wasn't sure what was going on inside him, what sort of strange obsession controlled his thinking. For all I knew, I was risking murder in my sleep. So one day, after he had just turned down an invitation to go get a cherry-lime freeze (cherry-lime), I put it to him:
"What is it that is so terrific about all this junk?"
He looked at me with what I can only describe as wonder. "Junk?" he repeated. "Yeah, junk. Just look at this place. You've got group sheets, and histories, and 'letters of inquiry,' and birth certificates, and christening records, and a dozen other kinds of junk spread around this place so that it feels more like a tomb than an apartment. And now, now I've just invited you to share with me one of the truly significant culinary experiences of life - a cherry-lime freeze - and you're telling me that you would rather stay here with this junk, and try to push the whole thing one generation further back; which is going to mean more junk."
"Junk?" he said again, slightly shaking his head. And I knew that I was going to have to get a freeze by myself.
And for all these years, I haven't really understood. Grandmother came to visit us while we were in England, and all she really wanted to do was to get down to Plymouth, "where all our folks came from." She made it, and came back with stories of how "thrilling" it was to be there, to stand in the churchyard where they were buried, find their names on the weathered stones, scrape away the moss and groom their graves. And I couldn't really understand.
Oh, I could see how that was better than sitting in a room surrounded by paper and research: England is England, even for a genealogist.
But I had no sense of enthusiasm for the things that she was excited about, no feeling of importance.
After two weeks, Grandmother went home. And now, when she talks about England, she talks about Plymouth, and the churchyard. "That was the best part of the trip. That made it worth it."
Which makes some sort of sense. She's old. And genealogy is the sort of thing old people do, even when they are in England.
But Michael Quinn is my age, lives down the street from me now, and still does genealogy.
Of course, Michael is a little strange. After our undergraduate days together, he went on to geta Ph.D. in American History from Yale. You see what I mean? But there are more and more people like Michael in the world. Alex Haley, with his book Roots, has turned genealogy into a national pastime. And it makes me wonder, a little. I mean, I am the normal one, Michael strange, I'm sure of that.
But next week there are going to be thousands of people coming from all over the world. They are coming here for the World Conference on Recods. My Uncle Rod, my mother, and thousands of others; everyone a genealogist of one sort or another. Some of them will be staying with me.
And a lot of them aren't that old. Just folks, like we are; only they're interested in genealogy, excited by it. They are coming all this way to learn how to do it better, why it's important, and to swap stories about Plymouth and the churchyard.
I mean, sure: I'm the normal one. Still. . .
