The Peripherals

 
  In the world of genealogy, many people concentrate on their direct ancestors, those who are the DNA-contributors to their current condition. In this instance, 'direct' would be one's father or grandmother and not an aunt or great-uncle. Often, however, those 'indirects' are where you discover your connections to Presidents and winners of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, so we don't ignore them. As you can see from this example, there are usually two direct ancestors per generation and over time this gets very large, even overwhelmingly large. 

Over time, there are other connections you come across in your research, the people and things that may not be related to you by blood at all. These are what I refer to here as the 'Peripherals'. Anyone who has done genealogy for a while has run into such marginal characters, bit players who keep cropping up, just tantalizing enough to look into. They're not absolutely necessary, but they seem to add something to the context, like when a cook adds spices to the stew.

Some such factoids are so marginal they practically fade away. Things like our milkman's name which was Wally. Wally the Milkman. Or that the doctor in North Miami who took a mole off my forehead was named Dr. Peppercorn. Bert Peppercorn to be specific.

All right, I've set this up long enough, time to get to it.

One such Peripheral in my life may have played a fairly significant role. You see, I don't know how my parents met. I had decades to uncover this tidbit, all I had to do was ask. But this is one of those woulda/coulda/shouldas that didn't happen because I was too dull or unconscious (see previous posts) to just ask the simple question. Such is the bane of all late-blooming genealogists.

Back in the 1940's, people did not have online dating apps on their smartphones. Any Millennials out there reading this (really?) probably just passed out. But it's true. My parents were not the church-social or hospital-volunteering types, they did their socializing in bars. Hey, that's the way it was, deal with it. At least if you saw a person in a bar, you knew they weren't Photoshopped. What you saw was actually a living human. Not like when they tried to jam Oprah's enormous, misshapen head onto Ann Margaret's body. Ain't happenin'!

Miami, Florida in the 1940's had a lot of bars, I mean a LOT. It has a lot of bars now, too, but proportionately it was almost silly how many they were. My father, Leon, was a connoisseur of bars, places like the Doghouse, the Hide-Away and Jimmie's Blue Room, names that I heard growing up. My mother, Sophia, on the other hand found a place she liked and concentrated her energies there, not exclusively, but to a large degree. Yes, she went to the Park Avenue 'Stuff' and the Bottlecap Inn, but mostly it was the Betty B.

The Betty B.

My mother was working for the von Neida family who lived on Normandy Isle on Miami Beach for the winters and back to St. Paul for the summers. Here's the von Neida winter home in 1938. When she was off, my mother would occasionally travel the couple of miles on the 79th Street Causeway to the Betty B. Actually, 79th Street was called Everglades Boulevard in those days and the Causeway was put there to get people from the beach to the Hialeah Race Track, so the buses ran regularly.

The Betty B was originally the Betty Jane but there was probably some huge corporate takeover (yeah, right!) and the name changed. It was located just on the Miami side of the Causeway at 700 NE 79th Street. I went back to visit it, but it's a boat sales lot now. It's rare for things in Miami to stay the same for very long.

By a freakish coincidence I DO have photos of the real Betty B! Quite a few, actually. More, in fact, then there are of me growing up. Well, there you go. That's my mother, Sophia, second from the left. I don't know any of the other characters, but the well dressed gentleman with his arm around my mother looks strangely like the evil Nazi from 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', you know, the one whose face melted.

The Betty B was an open-air bar. In Miami! It had a westerly exposure, so in the afternoons, the sun would have beat in there like a blast furnace. Maybe they closed for a siesta, maybe they all snuck around back. I know it would have been too much for me and I was born in Miami. In this photo taken from NE 7th Avenue, the sun is already turning the ketchup to jelly. I've speculated that the cloth piled up on one of the bar stools there is hopefully some sort of canvas sun block they hung up, but I can't be certain. That's my mother sitting on the left being blinded by the sun.

My Uncle Richard, for whom I was named, also frequented the Betty Jane/Betty B. He also worked for the von Neida family. Here is Uncle Richard with Betty Jane Rickard. Hmm, 'Betty Jane'? Could this be the Betty Jane for whom the bar was originally named? I don't know, but rest assured I'll keep researching. He cuts quite the dashing figure here, huh. I hope his spine was okay.

That fence of signs espousing various beers like Old Bohemian is protecting the bar-goers from falling into or driving into Little River which is right behind the sign. Those are Australian Pines showing in the distance in this photo. They were often planted along canals and rivers in Miami.

Now that we're established the geography of this Peripheral, next time we'll discover the human Peripheral who may have played an important role in my family's events. Stay tuned, there are lots more non-essentials where these came from.
 
  

Conscious Conscience

I'm afraid this post might annoy some people but that's what I do so I can't help myself. My theme today will have to contradict one of my favorite people, Thomas Jefferson who is only one of the greatest thinkers EVER!

Sorry, Tommy.

And I really do think a lot of him. I carry my camera in a black leather bag that I bought at the Library of Congress in Washington. The inscription on the bag is one of my favorite Jefferson quotations: "I cannot live without books."

Apparently, he could for a little while at least. After the original Library of Congress was burned during the War of 1812 (thanks, Britain), Jefferson sold his entire library of 6,487 books to the United States to start a NEW Library of Congress.

It is no accident that the main building of the Library of Congress is called the Thomas Jefferson Building.

So it pains me to contradict one of Jefferson's most famous writings, that "... all men are created equal..." Sorry, but they're not. Not even if you throw women in there, too.

One cannot simply select someone at random and have them play linebacker for the Green Bay Packers. Most people would be killed during the first play. Not just because of the missing years of experience and training, but they just wouldn't be physically capable of that kind of punishment. If it were me, it wouldn't be my helmet that comes off, it would be my head.

The same is true of advanced mathematical thinking. Some people can perform such specialized cognitive leaps and stretches and others... can't. One branch of humanity is not necessarily better than the other, just different. But certainly not equal.

You can't just pluck someone out of a crowd and make them the leader. I've actually seen that tried and the results are usually a dismal failure. To be a good leader, you need empathy, strength and well... for lack of a better word, leadership. Arrogance, bluster and bullcrap can get you by for a while (I proved that), but you can't fool everyone forever.

But before some of you gentle readers respond by saying, "But Jefferson was saying men are equal under the law." Yeah, right. That's why some people can steal ten million dollars and get six months of house arrest and another person can steal groceries for their starving family and get thirty years of hard time. Give me a break.

We know enough about genetics now that we know our DNA has an awfully lot to say about what we're going to be like. Eye color, propensity toward certain diseases, muscle density, etc.

But I believe the most important differentiating factor among humans is their level of conscious development. Are we conscious of what is going on around us? Are we conscious of the future results of our actions? Are we conscious of the impact that our words and deeds have on the lives of others?

I'm convinced that there have been times in my life when I have been completely unconscious. Living, working, sure, but living life like a goldfish. Three minutes at a time, with nothing in the past and looking barely beyond my footsteps.

I like to think that I've improved, but who knows. I like to think that my consciousness breakthrough came when I finally realized I was unconscious, but perhaps I'm still not conscious.

For the sake of honesty, Jefferson must have known he was exceptional. He must have seen instances in his life where others thought to present themselves as his equal and known that they weren't. I have seen these pretenders, those wishing they were something they are not, annoyed by the success of others in doing things they could not.

Jefferson could have shot such men down with an offhand turn of phrase, but instead, he chose to embrace them. He included them and all of the rest of us. We are all equal because we can all exploit the gifts we have as long as we are conscious of those gifts we have and those we do not. By such writing, Jefferson proved that he was more than equal.

See? I told you this post would annoy you. Yay!