Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Five Fun or Different Facts

This week, Randy Seaver, on his blog Genea-musings, has given us this task:

1)  We all find "fun" or "different" information about ourselves, our relatives and ancestors in our genealogy and family history pursuits.  What are five "fun" or "different" facts in your life or your ancestors lives?

2) Tell us about your five fun or different facts in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.  

1)  My aunt, Elizabeth Reed (1909-1967), was a public health nurse and Director of Health Information for the State of Florida from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s.  In this capacity, she traveled the state giving instruction and lectures concerning various public health topics.  She leavened these talks with her monologues, amusing and absorbing vignettes satirizing or dramatizing a variety of sorts of people.  There was one in which she portrayed a hospital volunteer chatting with a patient, giving an earful about the food, the doctors, and the administration.  At the beginning of her talk, she would obtain a volunteer (or sometimes, a conscript) to play the part of the patient, tell them, "Now, you just sit there and look intelligent," and turn to talk to another individual on the dais, leaving the "patient" somewhat embarrassed and the audience laughing.  Then she would begin the monologue.  In another, she played the part of an old grandmother consoling her tearful teenage granddaughter, weeping over a boy.  She was a fine actress.

2)  My maternal grandpa was a great punster, and the rest of the family had to keep up.  My father's family had a good sense of humor, too, but my father was baffled by the punmanship and humor of his prospective in-laws.  He, trying to make a good first impression, asked my grandma what he should call her:  Mother Reed, Mrs. Reed, Mary?  She wasn't particular, and the question mildly vexed her.  "Call me anything!" she blurted out.  "Call me 'Charlie.'"  This morphed into "Chollie," and that is how we always knew her.

 

3)  My husband went through Coast Guard Officer Candidate School, gaining his commission in January of 1971.  The uniform he and his classmates wore while in this training was a bit odd.   He and some other officer candidates were on liberty, and went to a movie.  Sitting next to my husband was a young Navy enlisted man.  He kept giving my husband and odd look.  As the house lights came on after the movie ended, the young sailor looked again at my husband, and in his bafflement about this odd uniform, he asked my husband, "Sir, what are you?"

4)  My father was a great storyteller.  One of his stories involved a Navy carrier task force at sea.  One of the destroyers saw another ship go off course and come across its path.  The bridge crew summoned the captain, who had retired to his quarters for the night.  The captain came onto the bridge in his pjs and robe.  Immediately assessing the situation, he instructed, "Everybody remain calm!  Don't panic!  Be calm, like me."  Then he gave his orders:  "Two toots on the rudder; right full whistle." 

5)  One Christmas during the economic downturn of the 1970s, we were broke.  We'd been able to get our two children a few small gifts.  We could not afford a Christmas tree, and resolved to do without.  Christmas Eve came, and my husband could not stand it.  We had to have something.  We had a raintree sapling in our yard.  The very large raintree in the back yard had spawned it, along with myriad seedlings that we just kept under control by mowing.  My husband brought the sapling indoors in a pot, and set it in front of the windows in the living room.  Then he went out and cut a dozen or so ligustrum branches.  He brought those, and with tape and twine, secured them to the trunk of the raintree sapling. Laughing ourselves silly, we decorated the scrawny "Christmas tree."  It made our uncomfortable economic situation bearable that year.