gene pool c. 1934 (v1)

These are them. They met when one of my grandfather's ranch-sitting co-workers had a thing for one of my grandmother's older sisters and invited her along on a car trip. There was no one to stay home with Zell, so she had to come along, and ended up sitting on my grandfather's lap in the car. They were both 14. I guess one thing led to another.

Not right then, for crying out loud.

My grandfather moved to central California when he was a small boy. He always liked it there. It was big, and dusty, and in his later years he would recall the feeling he always had, of wondering what was on the other side of - that hill, right there. Very often he was free to walk or drive over that hill and see what was there. This satisfied him.

My grandmother, on the other hand, didn't move out West until she was thirteen. She grew up flitting about the woods and ponds and meadows of Tennessee. As they drove west, and came out of the plains and into the great awful dry West with the distant mountains and those little scrubby bushes that are everywhere, her eyes widened in horror and her heart sank. Where were they going? What had they done?

She's only five feet tall, but she can look a lot bigger if you corner her. Also, if our family genealogy is to be believed, she is a documented direct-line descendent of Charlemagne, via the colonial governor of Virginia. So don't mess with grandma. Click on the picture to get an alternate.