We are still in a holding pattern here. The weather is nice enough except for the wind. Its warm enough that I can cut back on the amount of firewood that I am burning, but not so warm that I can work on my tan.
I know very little about either side of my family. My father broke away from his relatives at a very early age. His was not a happy childhood at all, and I always understood that he was a bit ashamed of them. My Mother however was a different story, but other than her brothers and sisters which were scattered far and wide, I really never had much exposure to any of them. I was able to spend a week or so at my Grandparents farm each summer. However they were in their 80's the first time I remember them at all.
You have to understand that this was in W.Va. 60 some years ago and times and travel were different than what we know today. My father was a Methodist minister with a circuit of churches that he tended. The most money that he ever made in one year was $4,000. dollars, and most of our food was either grown by us or fell to one of our rifles. My Grandparents lived only a 100 miles away, but over the back roads of rural W.Va. it was a torturous 4.5 hour drive. I can clearly recall that my father had a $20. a month gas allowance that was supposed to cover all our trips. So going to Grampa's was not a regular thing.
I loved it however since it gave me new areas to explore and ponds that I could fish in. There was a couple of first cousins that I fell in youthful love with as well. All my brothers and sisters were gone by the time I was 10, so I spent a lot of my time by myself. This was not a problem for me at all and I spent most of my time "perfecting" my hunting and stalking skills.
Somehow I developed the belief that my father was 1/4 Indian, which seemed a bit romantic to me. He was quite dark and tanned with a deep copper color. For years I took pride in that thought, and I polished my "woods craft", at every opportunity. That pride however suffered quite a blow when I was assigned to Klamath Falls Oregon as a new State trooper, and I got my first view of the Klamath and Modoc Indians. They were just not at all impressed with me and did not resemble my version of the "noble Indian". I reasoned that although the Eastern Indians were marked by a seriously bloody history, that they would more likely fit my imagined role that had marked my childhood romantic imaginations.
You know how it is when you look in the mirror, and the image that looks back at you doesn't resemble the one in your head? Well quite likely there is no one in the entire world that knows me, sees the "me" that I think resides in my body.
Now I am the last of my line. There will be nothing left of my line when I am gone. I don't have a problem with that. However I began to wonder if my impressions from over the years had any basis in reality. I had grown up believing that I was a mixture of Penn. Dutch, Perhaps some French Canadian, and of course Indian. Now I knew from having to invent a email address that there are a whole slew of hill billy's in W.Va. Kentucky and Tennessee, with the name of Larry Cottrell. Not Lawrence- Larry, which I took to be Hill Billies, since a more worldly parent would use Lawrence rather than the normal nickname of Larry.
So I decided to get one of the DNA tests to see just what I was made of. Since I am not likely to do anything that a DNA test could be used in prosecution, I felt rather foolish, but safe enough to continue. I of course was quite sure that I would find that I was the child or one of the rather more fierce Eastern Indian tribes.
Imagine my surprise when the results came back- I was 99.9 percent European. Of that I was 97.8 Northwestern European. Of that I was 54.5 percent English and Irish. The rest was Scandinavian, German, France, Iberian, Sardinian, Jewish with a tiny smidgen of Sub-Saharan African. I also found that I had more Neanderthal variants than 86 percent of their customers. What a hoot! The only part that bothered me at all was the report that I was 54.5 % English. I have always considered myself an "Anglophobe", and now I are one!
As you know my driving thoughts and actions have always been Falconry. Most of the published works concerning it were by English men, who to me seemed to be so hemmed in by tradition that it drove me crazy and to do every thing that I could to prove that they were unable to think for themselves. My successes at that may be another story, however that we could discuss some other time.
I did find it quite entertaining that all those different girls who accused me of being a caveman weren't wrong after all, just terribly discerning.
Photo's by Karen.
