Thursday, July 06, 2006

Stuff I learned from Mom...

A couple of family things I learned from mom today..

My ancestors were Huguenots -- thus the reason my great-great grandmother was very anti-Catholic. It seems that I am a direct discendant of the group that settled in central Ohio and is still there... hmmm.... Odd that I've taught at two Catholic universities and hubby will be at one in the fall. Things change in 400 years...

My father was a booze runner -- when he was 15. Starting when my dad was 15 and continuing for several years, my grandmother on my Dad's side ran an illegal saloon on Lake Okoboji, IA. Mom said that they had a cabin on the lake and would serve booze to the "wild crowd" that would come to the lake to party and be crazy.

At the time Iowa had laws against selling booze by the glass and liquor stores wouldn't sell them enough, so Dad would run over the border to Minnesota and bring it back for the business. He did this summers for quite a while --

Dad was a local cop when he died... again, things change...

2 comments:

T-Mac said...

I guess a booze-runner is better than a booze addict.

Inside the Philosophy Factory said...

My grandpa on my dad's side also sold 120% of the shares in a Texas oil well -- funny that it never produced anything... hmmmmm