CYCLE

It's Father's Day and while climbing the Family Tree
last night I wondered how Dad would have reacted to
some of the things I've found on the climb. He was a
country boy who went to war who decided to stay in the
city when he came home(although technically he stayed
in the suburbs by his folk's standards it was the city).
He never finished high school and was a blue collar
worker all his life, most of it as a glazier. And here
it turns out that some of his ancestors were among the
leaders of the first towns in Massachusetts,and possibly
he could be related to the royalty of Europe.

He also has some drunks and scoundrels among his family,
at least by Puritan standards.

I could hear him muttering "idjit" as I read about
John Barnes. Dad wouldn't care that John was rather
infamous as a drunk, but he would have shook his head
in disgust that John was killed while apparently petting
his bull and the bull petted back ...with a horn. Any
sober farmboy would know better.

The irony of some of the things I've found amazes me.
I've lived all unknowing in a town (Marshfield) where
several ancestors lived and died,gone to college in a
town (Bridgewater) founded by others, hiked in a third
where other ancestors lived. Now my nephew will be
attending the London School of Economics for a semester
this fall: back to England where we came from.

It strikes me as a turn of some grand cosmic cycle.