The Genealogy Machine can be you…
It was barely daylight and closer to dawn as there was no sun even on the horizon. The mission was treasure and everyone whispered, not that anyone could hear but maybe they would. The retired pharmacist had hired the gadget to find the family treasure that had been his destined retirement and the brutal demise of his father and Grandfather.
The enemy had invaded his country to bury spoils stolen from their ravishing sorties on neighboring countries. Like locust the enemy confiscated land, food and people to facilitate their scourge across the land. The pharmacist had an entire book of events backing his oral story leading up to the burying of the treasure and the killing of his Dad and granddad. All he wanted from the gadget machine was where was it buried and how deep was it.
The gadget made no noise, no lights blinked, as the invisible frequency beam designated the direction of the sought after treasure. The pharmacist, his wife and neighbors smothered the operator so he couldn’t move. The gadget finally gave up the results. The treasure never was on the pharmacist land, but it HAD been on the neighbor’s property! But it was gone now.
The dream crushing gadget had to be influence by spirits, it had an electronic malfunction, the operator had made a mistake, or maybe he had lied and planned on making a deal with the neighbor. The long trip back to town was most unpleasant but the gadget didn’t care either way. The operator explained it simply, “It is what it is, before it was!” “The only way I can change what is would be to back up to a hole and dump treasure in as the gadget does not create treasure…”
A Genealogy researcher is like the gadget. He or she peals back the annuals of time to reveal history. The census records, court documents, marriage licenses, diary doodles, and journals all write a story that is sometimes backed by pictures and oral incantations.
The story teller said he didn’t know if I had been a hog thief or a horse rustler, when pressed why, he said, “because I looked like a twin brother to his nephew!” Everyone laughed but the gadget/researcher was silent. The gadget cares not about the family story as much as your story, just any story won’t do. The gadget only registers what was, what is and when. So goes the researcher, just another gadget, picking up shreds of tales, pieces of stories from the archives, the microfiche, the leather bound records, the family Bible and the guttural grunts of ancient story tellers that take time to humor the human gadget.
A draft is sent out to all the blessed relatives even though each have their own conception of how it was,
asking for help to fill in the blanks and question marks. The report comes back burning up the old telephone lines, tears tidal wave through the elders houses as the youth claims the gadget has deemed them fatherless bastards with a mere question mark because the machine didn’t know who her daddy was. Faith is rocked because a splinter of the family doesn’t believe in divorce and their granddaddy lived in sin with a woman he never married and spawned a generation of brothers and sisters to their Dad that were never known before.
DNA shows up a child that was never claimed or known by the family while grandpa was alive, the gadget strikes again and evidence is disclaimed and lies are retold but the researcher only looks for the crevices and the news that have been secreted away for too long.
There are no secrets in the universe!
Long live the gadget, that solitary soul that is on a quest to find out who they are and where they came from.
No one can say your story better than you, so why not record it while you still have a chance. Legacytoo