Tales of your ancestors.

Discussion, in general

Re: Interesting Ancestors/Relatives

Postby skooma » Wed Feb 22, 2017 5:55 am

It's the real things that are connections we've shared a sense of, and met people related to, that are interesting; when I was young and gorgeous I ran into a few guys who told me all about their fancy family connections, and they couldn't have made themselves seem more dull. No money or the world giving fucks in my case. The closest thing would be that my Dad's Dad was cousin to Will Rogers, on the Cherokee side, and that means more because Dad loved his work and always called him "cousin Will." The same grandfather was also a cowboy before he settled down (and I still have gargantuan bullhorns to prove it). So considering where I started, I like to think I have Route 66 in my veins.

Grandfather on the other side was half-breed and "passing"; he became a preacher, taught himself Greek and Latin and wrote, in those languages, what were described to me as a huge amount of theological or philosophical tracts, before he had a change of mood or something related to the whole passing deal, and burned all of it. So I just got to hear later all about how much everyone regretted having refused to learn "the Indian ways", because they were rebelling.

The thing that strikes me though, is how overlooked women are in all this. My Dad was unhappy about the way life/the world prevented his mother from pursuing her interests more, and on the other side, biomom was born, as a late accident, in '32; my aunts who were grown by then, were fascinating, cool, and hysterical. I'm so glad I met them, but their lives were defined by marriages and men. What I can go on about for hours, is how amazing they were, and what I learned first hand as a kid, about their world.

I'm always very proud of my Dad too, for being active in the Civil Rights movement, including before it technically existed. The stories I've heard from family are amazing and wonderful, and some of the things I've seen are too, just don't want to go on that long. After that, I just don't care (again, no money or anything).

An uncle drove for Greyhound, so I might be related to Morphine (skooma, Morphine, so obvious). What ever happened to her anyway, and what's up with the confusing usernames?
  • 8

Skooma seems the type of person to chase me down and force me at gun point to receive their encomium with good graces. ~Jack Road

* I got caught in the crossfire of one of skooma's fucking frisbees ~Sister Morphine
User avatar
skooma
TCS Necromancer
TCS Necromancer
 
Posts: 669
Joined: Fri Nov 21, 2014 10:21 pm
Location: Stuck in your door
Show rep
Title: The Lightning

Tales of your ancestors.

Postby DoglovingJim » Tue Mar 05, 2019 5:15 am

[Mod Note: I merged your post into this existing thread. -IamNotCreepy]

We all had ancestors otherwise we wouldn't be here, a day ago I was discussing with someone about his family history and it was very interesting so I figured that I should make a thread for it.

So yeah, if you have interesting family stories ranging back from your own history or even hundreds of years before feel free to pass them on here.


To start in terms of family history I guess a lucky statistic is that not one of my relatives died during the winter war while many served (heck all the blokes of age did), so we are unkillable until proven otherwise. Heck my existence is a strong reason to have faith, I shouldn't exist since there were too many cases of luck that ensured the Jim you know and loathe/love popped out as a screaming baby.

Elder "Jim" (not his actual name) was something like a combat medic, and his life was just luck after luck. For example he had a grenade thrown at him so he threw it back but the damn thing liked him so much that she didn't go far enough and instead started rolling back down after him, in desperation he started rolling down too to try and beat the clock but it was too fast. That grenade wanted him and he figured he was dead right then and there. That grenade got her wish and bumped into him with a kiss, in confusion to heaven being a Finland fighting the full might of the USSR he opened his eyes and picked the grenade up. She turned out to be a dud, fake as a Kardashian.

Another time I remember a story that his group was attacked by one of those soviets with a machine gun and the guys on both sides of him were killed instantly but nothing hit him because the gunner moved it too fast. He dropped to the ground and in the dirt started shooting blindly hoping to at least take down someone before he would ultimately be gunned down, eventually the shooting stopped and when the silence got too deafening he got up and checked it out. Around the main gun were several dead, turned out the machine gun got jammed.

During the winter war bodies were frozen like logs, and they'd stack them up like walls on the side of the roads. In happier terms after the war a man spotted elder Jim on the street and he was amazed after being introduced and recognising this stranger. During the war he found this man laying on the dirt with his guts spilled everywhere like an all you can eat buffet for vultures, elder Jim quickly packed his guts up back inside him (along with all the mud and debris that it was covered in) and moved on figuring he wasn't going to last but at least he looked a bit prettier. However that guy was made of tougher stuff then that, ended up surviving and having a family. Something to think about when we see people dying from little cuts getting infected.

Anyway that's all I remembered for now, if others find interest in this thread and provide some stories of their own I might make some additions as they come to memory (e.g, Hungarian revolution of 1956 and Jim's ancestors dog stories).
  • 7

Image

Edgar Cabrera wrote:HOLY SHIT GUYS, IT'S DOGLOVINGJIM!!! HE'S HERE!!!

skoobadive wrote:It's the legendary DoglovingJim! Ohboy, this must be the greatest day of my life!

Cracked.com wrote:Initially, his interest in animals was "primarily a sexual attraction," but as he grew older, he also "developed the emotional attraction." We guess we could call what Jim does ... dog-lovin'
User avatar
DoglovingJim
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 2798
Joined: Mon Jan 12, 2015 12:07 am
Location: No block of land is going to tie Jim and his dogs down.
Show rep
Title: Manly Man

Re: Tales of your ancestors.

Postby IamNotCreepy » Tue Mar 05, 2019 2:10 pm

Your war stories reminded me of something else I wanted to share.

My grandfather served in the Navy during WWII. He was on this pretty obscure little boat called the [url]USS Indianapolis[/url], aka the Ship of Doom.

After getting hit by a Kamikaze attack at Okinawa, the ship returned to California for repairs. Fortunately, at this time my grandfather got off. The ship also picked up something special.

After major repairs and an overhaul, Indianapolis received orders to undertake a top-secret mission of the utmost significance to national security: to proceed to Tinian island carrying the enriched uranium (about half of the world's supply of uranium-235 at the time) and other parts required for the assembly of the atomic bomb codenamed "Little Boy", which would be dropped on Hiroshima just a few weeks later.


But then, tragedy struck.

At 0015 on 30 July, the ship was torpedoed by the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-58, and sank in 12 minutes. Of 1,195 crewmen aboard, approximately 300 went down with the ship. The remaining 890 faced exposure, dehydration, saltwater poisoning, and shark attacks while stranded in the open ocean with few lifeboats and almost no food or water. The Navy only learned of the sinking four days later, when survivors were spotted by the crew of a PV-1 Ventura on routine patrol. Only 316 survived. The sinking of Indianapolis resulted in the greatest single loss of life at sea, from a single ship, in the history of the US Navy.


If all of this sounds familiar, it was memorialized in this great speech from Jaws:



Captain Charles McVay was later court-martialed as a scapegoat. They said he should have made certain evasive maneuvers to avoid the Japanese torpedoes. After being convicted, he ended up committing suicide.

In the 90s though, he was eventually posthumously exonerated, partly thanks to the Japanese commander of the ship that sank the Indianapolis, who testified before Congress that there was nothing McVay could have done to avoid the torpedoes.

McVay was later portrayed on-screen by both Stacy Keach and Nicolas Cage.

The crew came off a little better by just recently being awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

Although my father had already been born at this time, it is interesting to consider what could have happened if my grandfather had not gotten off in California.
  • 5

User avatar
IamNotCreepy
TCS Admin
TCS Admin
 
Posts: 1521
Joined: Fri Dec 18, 2015 5:00 am
Location: Inside the "Cone of Uncertainty"
Show rep
Title: Chasing after the Wind

Previous

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 23 guests

cron