So I've been running all around Kansas with my mom and grandma visiting family, courhouses, libraries, and cemeteries since last weekend. Reason is that my mom has been on the computer at least 6 hours a day for the last year or so doing geneology, and now she's decided she's ready to do the footwork to find documentation. Her goal is to map our family tree within the United States in its entirety, then take a big breath and move on to Europe. For me, this has been a huge exercise in reconsidering the role of family in my life, as I haven't been to many of the towns we're visiting since I was a child. What's more, since I've been at college for the last three years, this is my longest and most thorough stint in Kansas after high school. In this last week I've learned a few interesting things.
1) The illegal immigration of Mexicans is NOT ruining existing cultures/communities/safety in the southwestern United States. Let me explain why this shouldn't seem obvious. Within my lifetime, the construction of numerous dairies, factories, and meat-packing plants in southwest Kansas has led to a sharp increase in the immigration of Mexicans (and Vietnamese) to the area, often resulting in a new demographic where the caucasian population, mainly descended from central European settlers in the 1800s, has become a minority. However, these new Mexican families come in addition to existing families whose families also trace back to the 1800s/early 1900s. In my childhood, the immense growth due to this "immigration problem" was thought to be the reason for a sharp increase in crime, gang violence, racial tension, and the general dirtiness of the cities and towns in Western Kansas. The change was not imagined. However, as I have recently discovered, the trends can and are changing.
Garden City, vying with Dodge City to be the largest metropolitan area in Western Kansas, was often a place I went with my family to get groceries, go to the zoo, go out to eat, etc. as a child in the boonies. From 1970 to the 1990s, Garden doubled in size from 15,000 to 30,000 persons. I saw most of the city's physical growth in my lifetime, and felt the spiritual change as I attended various schools in surrounding towns. When I last saw Garden City during high school, it was probably the dirtiest and poorest I'd ever witnessed it, and I have memories of classes with so little respect between students and teachers that they were nearly impossible to benefit from. The more brazen of the white population often related how poor, dirty, and crime-ridden parts of town were with how many Mexican restaurants they had. Unfortunately, in many cases, this was true.
Enter 2006. My mother, grandmother, and I stop in Garden City to stay the night after a long day of travel before visiting cemeteries in the area. To our surprise, blocks of town that were once the dirtiest have become the cleanest and most upscale, but the percentage of stores, shops, and even entire supermarkets directed at the Mexican population hasn't changed. In fact, we couldn't find a cluttered yard or wall full of graffiti in the entire city. The demographic hasn't changed. But do you know what HAS changed? The mayor under which this transformation has occurred is a second- or third-generation Mexican American who my mother remembers being friends with during her schoolage years.
I don't know what it took for Garden City to change. Maybe it was a nationwide trend against the angst, violence, and grunge of the 90s, maybe it was an increase in general wealth in the area. Or maybe it was a determined Mexican American mayor to force the old guard and the new to come to not just a compromise but a genuine mutual respect for one another's culture and values to create a multi-racial, multi-cultural city that really works.
Any way it goes, I'm finally proud to say wholeheartedly that I come from western Kansas.
2) My personal history and family tree gives a whole new meaning to the phrase of being "tied to the land." I am related to virtually every member of the Catholic Cemetary in Beaver, Kansas. No kidding. Every name that pops up on one of those tombstones, excepting one or two, is connected by blood or marriage to my family tree. This cemetery is also less than a mile away from the location of the Meyeres family homestead (my mother's biological father's family name). What's more, it's one county away from where I went to high school for four years of my life, but only after moving from western Kansas, to northern Colorado, back to western Kansas, to central Oklahoma, and back again to central Kansas. On the other side of my family, one line of my ancestors, before migrating to the U.S., apparently lived in the Tyrol region of Austria/Italy since at least the 1300s. How 'bout THAT for stubborn roots?
3) The McDonald children inheret a spirit.
The McDonald side of my family has some Native American blood, but it has been a serious matter of debate just how it got there. Since we can't prove it, some members of my family have been keen to jump to the conclusion of rape, but after doing much geneology, my mother notes that marriage between European settlers and Native Americans is a lot more common in my family tree than previously thought. Anywho, while chatting back and forth with my grandmother, my mother mentioned for some reason or another that one morning in Stillwater, OK, she looked up from her bed and was startled to see a homely-looking Native American woman staring right back at her from her bedside. She didn't say anything or try to commute a message, and my mother never saw her again. Now, my mom normally doesn't believe in ghosts or other such phenomena (this is one of only two times she ever thought she saw anything of the sort), and she said that if the apparition could be explained away she would accept the explanation. However, she says that if it indeed was a ghost, then she felt it was just a spirit of the land that she just happened to encounter on the fly, rather than a being that sought her out on purpose. Well~
Upon hearing this, my grandmother had a story to relate. Her father, my Great Grandfather Alfred "Jack" McDonald who died a couple years ago in his late 80s was for a time moved to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to stay with his daughter Peggy. Grandpa Jack, as we called him, was always the sharpest member of the family, and also the most popular and controversial. The reason for the controversy is not that he ran from the police carrying alcohol over the Missouri border during prohibition (which he did), but that, while the oldest son, i.e. inheritor, of the family, he was also an illegitimate child of an Irishman who we're having a hard time tracing geneologically. While a lot of the family is jealous because they think he inherited a lot more money and land than he should have (although he insists that when asked he always stretched the truth to make them think it was more than really existed), he was always more proud of his Native American heritage on his mother's side than anything else left to him, and said as much.
Despite his dark horse vigor and general naughtiness, Grandpa Jack succumbed to the ravages of old age, but no one came to his house to support him. Rather, they forced him to move around, staying everywhere from retirement homes to his children's house, at which point he ended up in Oklahoma City. While there, Grandpa Jack was extremely distressed to discover that he was losing his mind, and said as much to Aunt Peggy. She asked him why he thought so, and he told her that there he saw a little woman in the room with them. Aunt Peggy had recently lost a daughter to cancer and immediately thought of her, but upon inquiring further found that the woman Grandpa saw was "dark skinned," and that, like my mom, he didn't recognize her.
There are a variety of explanations for this. When they saw the woman, both my mother and great grandfather were going through stressful, even depressing times in their lives in which they both thought the world had turned its back on them. My great grandfather wanted nothing more than to spend his last days in the home of his childhood but was denied that and was also daily being betrayed more and more by his own body. My mother had just gotten screwed over royally in her divorce proceedings by my dad's lawyer, the intimidating and corrupt former DA (another story entirely) and lost most custody rights to my sister and I. My mom might have been dreaming. My grandpa might have been losing his mind. But I thought the romantic coincidences were interesting none-the-less.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So if any of you have time to go back to your family's home and look up your roots, I suggest the experience. You never know what you'll learn.
1) The illegal immigration of Mexicans is NOT ruining existing cultures/communities/safety in the southwestern United States. Let me explain why this shouldn't seem obvious. Within my lifetime, the construction of numerous dairies, factories, and meat-packing plants in southwest Kansas has led to a sharp increase in the immigration of Mexicans (and Vietnamese) to the area, often resulting in a new demographic where the caucasian population, mainly descended from central European settlers in the 1800s, has become a minority. However, these new Mexican families come in addition to existing families whose families also trace back to the 1800s/early 1900s. In my childhood, the immense growth due to this "immigration problem" was thought to be the reason for a sharp increase in crime, gang violence, racial tension, and the general dirtiness of the cities and towns in Western Kansas. The change was not imagined. However, as I have recently discovered, the trends can and are changing.
Garden City, vying with Dodge City to be the largest metropolitan area in Western Kansas, was often a place I went with my family to get groceries, go to the zoo, go out to eat, etc. as a child in the boonies. From 1970 to the 1990s, Garden doubled in size from 15,000 to 30,000 persons. I saw most of the city's physical growth in my lifetime, and felt the spiritual change as I attended various schools in surrounding towns. When I last saw Garden City during high school, it was probably the dirtiest and poorest I'd ever witnessed it, and I have memories of classes with so little respect between students and teachers that they were nearly impossible to benefit from. The more brazen of the white population often related how poor, dirty, and crime-ridden parts of town were with how many Mexican restaurants they had. Unfortunately, in many cases, this was true.
Enter 2006. My mother, grandmother, and I stop in Garden City to stay the night after a long day of travel before visiting cemeteries in the area. To our surprise, blocks of town that were once the dirtiest have become the cleanest and most upscale, but the percentage of stores, shops, and even entire supermarkets directed at the Mexican population hasn't changed. In fact, we couldn't find a cluttered yard or wall full of graffiti in the entire city. The demographic hasn't changed. But do you know what HAS changed? The mayor under which this transformation has occurred is a second- or third-generation Mexican American who my mother remembers being friends with during her schoolage years.
I don't know what it took for Garden City to change. Maybe it was a nationwide trend against the angst, violence, and grunge of the 90s, maybe it was an increase in general wealth in the area. Or maybe it was a determined Mexican American mayor to force the old guard and the new to come to not just a compromise but a genuine mutual respect for one another's culture and values to create a multi-racial, multi-cultural city that really works.
Any way it goes, I'm finally proud to say wholeheartedly that I come from western Kansas.
2) My personal history and family tree gives a whole new meaning to the phrase of being "tied to the land." I am related to virtually every member of the Catholic Cemetary in Beaver, Kansas. No kidding. Every name that pops up on one of those tombstones, excepting one or two, is connected by blood or marriage to my family tree. This cemetery is also less than a mile away from the location of the Meyeres family homestead (my mother's biological father's family name). What's more, it's one county away from where I went to high school for four years of my life, but only after moving from western Kansas, to northern Colorado, back to western Kansas, to central Oklahoma, and back again to central Kansas. On the other side of my family, one line of my ancestors, before migrating to the U.S., apparently lived in the Tyrol region of Austria/Italy since at least the 1300s. How 'bout THAT for stubborn roots?
3) The McDonald children inheret a spirit.
The McDonald side of my family has some Native American blood, but it has been a serious matter of debate just how it got there. Since we can't prove it, some members of my family have been keen to jump to the conclusion of rape, but after doing much geneology, my mother notes that marriage between European settlers and Native Americans is a lot more common in my family tree than previously thought. Anywho, while chatting back and forth with my grandmother, my mother mentioned for some reason or another that one morning in Stillwater, OK, she looked up from her bed and was startled to see a homely-looking Native American woman staring right back at her from her bedside. She didn't say anything or try to commute a message, and my mother never saw her again. Now, my mom normally doesn't believe in ghosts or other such phenomena (this is one of only two times she ever thought she saw anything of the sort), and she said that if the apparition could be explained away she would accept the explanation. However, she says that if it indeed was a ghost, then she felt it was just a spirit of the land that she just happened to encounter on the fly, rather than a being that sought her out on purpose. Well~
Upon hearing this, my grandmother had a story to relate. Her father, my Great Grandfather Alfred "Jack" McDonald who died a couple years ago in his late 80s was for a time moved to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to stay with his daughter Peggy. Grandpa Jack, as we called him, was always the sharpest member of the family, and also the most popular and controversial. The reason for the controversy is not that he ran from the police carrying alcohol over the Missouri border during prohibition (which he did), but that, while the oldest son, i.e. inheritor, of the family, he was also an illegitimate child of an Irishman who we're having a hard time tracing geneologically. While a lot of the family is jealous because they think he inherited a lot more money and land than he should have (although he insists that when asked he always stretched the truth to make them think it was more than really existed), he was always more proud of his Native American heritage on his mother's side than anything else left to him, and said as much.
Despite his dark horse vigor and general naughtiness, Grandpa Jack succumbed to the ravages of old age, but no one came to his house to support him. Rather, they forced him to move around, staying everywhere from retirement homes to his children's house, at which point he ended up in Oklahoma City. While there, Grandpa Jack was extremely distressed to discover that he was losing his mind, and said as much to Aunt Peggy. She asked him why he thought so, and he told her that there he saw a little woman in the room with them. Aunt Peggy had recently lost a daughter to cancer and immediately thought of her, but upon inquiring further found that the woman Grandpa saw was "dark skinned," and that, like my mom, he didn't recognize her.
There are a variety of explanations for this. When they saw the woman, both my mother and great grandfather were going through stressful, even depressing times in their lives in which they both thought the world had turned its back on them. My great grandfather wanted nothing more than to spend his last days in the home of his childhood but was denied that and was also daily being betrayed more and more by his own body. My mother had just gotten screwed over royally in her divorce proceedings by my dad's lawyer, the intimidating and corrupt former DA (another story entirely) and lost most custody rights to my sister and I. My mom might have been dreaming. My grandpa might have been losing his mind. But I thought the romantic coincidences were interesting none-the-less.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So if any of you have time to go back to your family's home and look up your roots, I suggest the experience. You never know what you'll learn.
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