Small World

This is the kind of story I love to hear, love to tell about too, for that matter.

I got a telephone call yesterday from my good friend and neighbor a few doors up the street from me. My life-long friend, Shirley!

She's a very upbeat, VERY bubbly person, rarely without a smile and always a friendly word to whoever she meets. Her youngest sister, Kate, is the same age as me and Kate and I have been friends for as long as I can remember. Kate's my oldest friend in terms of how long she and I have always been "best of friends" but I tease Shirley that she is my "oldest" really close friend since she is 8 years older than Kate and I and Shirley and I have, over the years, evolved into becoming very strong, close friends too.

But I digress. (I know, what the heck else is new, you're probably saying.)

Shirley had to call and tell me that she'd just had a phone call from her older daughter, Kathy, who lives somewhere down in the Philadelphia suburbs - don't know which town, just know she lives down in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Kathy had called because she couldn't wait to tell her mother what had happened to her at church yesterday. She said when it was time for the "Prayers of the Church" during which the minister prays for everything and anything, one of the things he mentioned was that a parishioner there had requested that the members of this particular church offer prayers for the family of Erling Young, who'd passed away earlier this week.

When Kathy heard that, her immediate thoughts were "Now, just how many people can there possibly be with the name of Erling Young?" Because their minister had given the name too of the party who requested this prayer, after the services, Kathy walked up to the lady and asked her where she'd been on Saturday.

THe lady was a bit surprised at Kathy's question but she answered her by saying she'd been to a funeral in Lanse, PA at the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church to which Kathy had then informed her that church just happens to be her home parish! Imagine the look of surprise on the other lady's face to learn that this young woman -who she'd seen at church but didn't know a thing about her -was from the area in central Pennsylvania where her ancestors had lived years and years ago!

Shirley, true to her form, told me she could hardly wait to get off the phone with her daughter because she HAD to call and tell me about this, knowing me as well as she does, she just KNEW this was the kind of story I would really revel in. And you know what? She was right!

Ever since I got interested in researching the local history of the township where I've lived almost my entire life, I've become fascinated too upon transcribing old newspaper reports and especially old obituaries to learn what families are interconnected as well as how many folks I've read about in these old newspapers I've been researching have roots back to the ghost town about a mile or two down the road from my home.

You're all probably familiar with the game made popular several years back "Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon" (or a name similar to that in case I have a word listed incorrectly there.) Well, since doing this research I have developed an opinion that if you talk to people and get them to dig back in their families' roots far enough - maybe 8 or 10 degrees is needed to play my game - you'll very often find a link there back to this little ghost town that only really existed for roughly 30, maybe 40 years tops, just before the turn of the century and shortly thereafter.

It's something that never ceases to amaze me what a small - very small -world we do actually live in ya know!

Think about that awhile now and mentally try to track back where your ancestors - especially if they were Swedish or Slovak and came to this country in the late 1800's and perhaps were coal miners - that quite possibly they too may have a link to this little ghost town near to my home.

It could happen you know and you might just be surprised at learning where you ancestors once lived, what that area was like then, what it's like now.

All things that truly do fascinate me.

Now, with that song "It's a Small World Afterall" playing like a big old earworm in my head, I'm off to the kitchen to try to figure out some type of meal to feed the family for supper tonight.

Any suggestions are welcome in that department too!

Roots Connection

Today was really an exciting day for me. I finally - after roughly eight years of e-mailing with this lady - got to meet her. And, what's more, she came to my area in a fairly round-about method too. Plus, she brought three friends with her.

This lady - by name - is Anneli Andersson and she is from Mellerud, Sweden. I've communicated with her for close to eight years now - having been "introduced" to her, in a manner of speaking, by my buddy, Jeff Feldmeier, who lives up in Allen Park, Michigan. Jeff is the friend who organized the impromptu walk two weeks ago this coming Saturday while he was here for a little visit, down to Peale, the ghost town about a little over a mile from my home. I'm finally one up on Jeff now in that I have actually met our correspondent friend, Anneli.

Through Anneli's help as a family tree researcher, she sent me by e-mail, church records from Sweden through which I was able then to trace my grandfather Eld's family back to between 1600 and 1642 or so in Sweden. So meeting her today was quite a thrill for me.

Another very good local friend of mine - who just so happens to have been my high school typing teacher too - and I were on hand this afternoon to meet Anneli and her three cohorts, who have been in this country since April 28th doing family tree research seminars in how to find your ancestors in Sweden. So, before they came here, they had been in Minneapolis, MN; Rock Island, Ill and Jamestown, NY - all three places pretty much notorious for having a very heavy concentration of people whose ancestors came here from Sweden.

Yesterday, a lady who lives in Kane, PA called me as her daughters were going to bring her down here today so she could see and talk to Anneli again too - she'd already met her before when she had taken a trip to Sweden some years back. So those three ladies were also at the local truckstop with my former teacher, Janet Rydberg Larson, to meet the four Swedish travelers and start the process of showing them around this old hills for the next three day!

A member of our church here, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, of Lanse, PA - Joan Larson Fetter and her cousin, Mary Kaye Larson Gurbal had agreed to have the travelers at Joan's house for supper this evening and they also invited the three ladies from Kane to join them. After they finished dining and chit-chatting a while, they called me and I went up to show them how to get back to the truckstop, etc. But before doing that, I took them up to the cemetery for our church, then we stopped at the location where the old Nebo Lutheran Church used to stand (it was struck by lightning 40 years ago this month and burned to the ground in virtually a matter of minutes.) From there, I took them down to my house but pointed out to them where the other Swedish Lutheran Church in Grassflat - Emmanuel Lutheran - had been until about 1952 or 1953 when the members of Emmanuel joined forces with Nebo Lutheran and formed First Lutheran of Grassflat and we all then attended services in the building previously known as Nebo Lutheran Church. After that church burned to the ground, our parish joined up with Gustavus Adolphus of Lanse to form the church we now have which is Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Lanse.

While we were up at the cemetery, the four visitors branched off and each took a quadrant of the cemetery, walking through, taking photos of various headstones and markers based on names they knew from their research in their particular area from Sweden. I was tagging along with Anneli and it was amazing to watch her as she would spot a name that she recognized as being pertinent to the area of Sweden (Dahlsland) where she is most known for her research. She was like a little kid in a candy store - so excited to see this name or that one -all familiar to her and envisioning that person's family tree in her mind's eye while photographing that person's final resting place. It was quite an interesting experience for me to watch her and how she just "knew" this or that person and their family. Just amazing.

Tomorrow, we will have a luncheon at a small local restaurant - Jim and Charmaine's - with hopefully 20-25 locals who want to meet these people, perhaps learn a bit about their ancestors and those too who aren't of Swedish descent necessarily but who are interested in meeting them to share their knowledge of this little village where I live (Grassflat) and the adjacent villages around here as well as a couple folks who were actually born in the Ghost town of Peale and lived there for a while before it finally gave it's last gasp when the last residents - the "Duddie" Folmar family -moved out of there in 1957 or 1958.

And yes, I did get a few photos today of our "group" and will do that some more tomorrow and Saturday too - especially when I have the group for supper at my house Saturday evening. Just hope I can pull together a meal that turns out A-ok for me. I'm definitely not a gourmet cook and usually can do a fair-to-middling meal but I am not accustomed really to "entertaining" or cooking for other than my family with the exception of "pot luck" dinners at church when I can fix a casserole dish - which is more my speed too -as opposed to a regular meat, potatos, etc., meal which this is going to be. Cross your fingers, shake the rabbits foot and above all, prayer that I don't burn everything, ok?

And also, I will post the photos from this visit at a later date for all of you to see too!

I'm gonna cheat a bit here today and post the Bushisms for a couple days since tomorrow - who knows if I'll even have time enough to make a post, much less read all my "Favorites," check out my e-mail and read the CDT online before I head out to spend some really quality time with someone I've long wanted to meet along with three of her friends - some really special people now part of my life from Sweden!

Thurday, May 10, 2007
"I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein." - Washington, D.C.; May 25, 2004

Friday, May 11, 2007
"I think it's important to bring somebody from outside the system, the judicial system, somebody that hasn't been on the bench and, therefore, there's not a lot of opinions for people to look at." - On the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court; Washington, D.C.; October 4, 2005.

And, for Saturday/Sunday - May 12/13 2007
"Let me put it to you this way, I'm not a revengeful person." -Time Magazine, December 25, 2000.