Where I come from

My parents raised me, the youngest of three competitive sons, in the steel-soaked town of Pittsburgh, PA. I come from a traditional white, Republican, Protestant, western European family. I know the birthplaces and birthdates of all my grandparents. I know the same for all eight great-grandparents and all sixteen great-great-grandparents. My family rooted itself in the Northeast starting in 1620 and ending with the arrival my Irish Catholic great-great-grandparents in 1870. It is this heritage that I carry in my blood.

My parents raised me, the youngest of three competitive sons, in the steel-soaked town of Pittsburgh, PA. Every time we drove downtown, I smelled egg as we passed the rusty "still mills" as Pittsburghers pronounced it. We lived on the far side of the Industrial Revolution -- Pittsburgh, its power waning, but not yet usurped by steelmakers from the Far East. A culture whose inexorable demise was waiting to pounce.

I come from a traditional white, Republican, Protestant, western European family. Like the town of PIttsburgh itself, we are a rapidly diminishing breed, even in our home country -- in short, our power waning and yielding to the colorful diversity reaching our shores from every direction, Indian, Oriental, Asian, African, South American, Latino. With vitriol equal to or surpassing that of any other Angry White Man, my parents have sought comfort from Fox News and Sarah Palin as they seek to restore their lost magnificence in their golden years.

I know the birthplaces and birthdates of all my grandparents. My Irish Catholic grandmother, Mary Gallagher, married my English Protestant grandfather, August Barlow. All hell broke loose and ended with her death four months before reaching thirty. My Irish Protestant grandmother, Georgianna McKean, married my English Protestant grandfather, Harold Wood, and they lived happily ever after, until she died of tuberculosis two years before reaching sixty. When I came into the world, there were no grandmothers to greet me, only widowed grandfathers.

I know the same for all eight great-grandparents and all sixteen great-great-grandparents. My parents made certain that we knew where we came from, that we knew who their grandparents were, and there grandparents. My father had a lot more discipline in the family tree, which is why ours is shaped like an L. Mother's tree only goes back to great-great-grandparents, but Dad's goes back seven generations.

My family rooted itself in the Northeast starting in 1620 and ending with the arrival my Irish Catholic great-great-grandparents in 1870.  I suppose this means something, but what it means to me and to my parents might be two different things. For me it's the knowledge that pioneer blood flows in me. For my parents it's the knowledge that their forebears, not those of the "illegal aliens" of late, created the United States from the ground up.

It is this heritage that I carry in my blood. It's all good and it's all bad. I'll take what I have, neither complaining nor bragging. I'm the sum of all my ancestors. Plus myself.