Stories From The Fam: Did I ever tell you about…

my Dad's family?

I never knew my paternal Grandparents. My Grandfather died before I was born and my Grandmother was already pretty infirm when I was born. She died when I was very young. He was an inventor and a welder. He reportedly invented the clam gun, but never filed a patent. She was a bitch. I know that sounds mean, but I never met anyone who actually liked her.As you already know, I am half Sicilian. But, my Dad’s father was a Volga German.

In the mid 1700’s Catherine "The Great" decided that her Russian peasants could use some civility. She drafted a manifesto, offering land, no taxes and no conscription to any civilized people who were willing to move to the prairie lands of Russia.

My family was among those who set out on the journey. Most people didn’t survive the trip and many died soon after they arrived. This tragic experience resulted in a people who are defined as, robust, committed to hard work and direct. (For those of you who know me, enough said. Is it possible that they were all Virgos?)

Unfortunately for Catherine, things didn’t really work out the way she had planned. Those that survived, set up self-sufficient German villages in Russia and didn’t interact at all with the local people. This is best explained by the following passage from Russia by Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace:

"The object of the Government in inviting them [the Germans] to settle in the country was that they should… exercise a civilizing influence on the Russian peasantry in their vicinity. In this latter respect they have totally failed to fulfill their mission. A Russian village, situated in the midst of German colonies, shows generally, so far as I could observe, no signs of German influence. Each nationality lives more majorum, and hold as little communication as possible with the other. The muzhik (Russian peasant) observes carefully – for he is very curious – the mode of life of his more advanced neighbors, but he never thinks of adopting it. He looks upon Germans almost as beings of a different world – as wonderfully cunning and ingenious people, who have been endowed by Providence with peculiar qualities not possessed by ordinary Orthodox humanity. To him it seems in the nature of things that Germans should live in large, clean, well-built houses, in the same way as it is in the nature of things that birds should build nests; and as it has probably never occurred to a human being to build a nest for himself and his family, so it never occurs to a Russian peasant to build a house on the German model."

Then, in the late 1800’s, things turned to shit. The Germans started fleeing like rats from a sinking ship. Where did they go you ask? Why, Portland, Oregon, of course! Ok, so that is an over simplification of the story. If you want a more detailed story go here. But, the lion's share of Volga Germans did end up in Portland.

Apparently my family was more of the “hangers on type” because they didn’t bail out until the early 1900’s, around the time another famine hit and the Portland-Volga-Germans formed a relief society to get their people out. That picture up there is my Great-Great Grandmother, who came over in 1904. She was 58. My Grandfather was born to her son, part of a split generation, in Tacoma Washington in1910. He was “An American!”

He was trained as a welder in a sawmill. He did very highly skilled fine welding and was therefore often “loaned out” to other places for his welding skills. On one occasion, my grandfather was working at the local military shipyard, with an instruction manual and an armed guard to prevent “the dirty German [read terrorist] from turning the page and stealing military secrets”. He was an American, but he had German-speaking parents. My favorite part of the story is that he was actually illiterate (yeah, fuck you GWB and the-like).

My Dad says that I would have had anything I wanted, had he known me. He often told my Dad and his brother that they would be in rags, if only they had a sister. Unfortunately he died before I could become a princess. In those days, sawmill workers used the belts as a form of transportation. Tragically, my Grandfather, was riding the belts when he fell into the chipper. Half of his body was destroyed and he had a heart attack during the experience, but he lived. My father came home, on leave from the USN, and ended up going AWOL, before multiple heart attacks finally killed his father. He was sent to a red-line marine brig and demoted, but he was with his father until the end.