Happy Friday the 13th everybody…

I was trying to track down some leads on the blogs popular searches this week, but as always, it only adds to my curiosity.  No matter whom I was looking for, my mind kept coming back to William V. Adkins.

Although it was nice to see that someone wanted my recipe for tostada de carne asada – Its not one of my favorite dishes, please enjoy it and toss me a line to let me know what you thought of it.

Here was this weeks top search list:

  • harrison howard kentucky
  • mitha pender history
  • “reuben valentine pieratt” or “reuben valentine * pieratt” or “pieratt, reuben valentine”
  • tostada de carne asada
  • “amos metcalf”

Nothing new or more to report on any of these. I’m not really in the Pieratt loop, so I’m not sure who to ask. I do know some locally, but for some reason they seem distant. If anyone should know anything more than I have posted before, please do let know.

My main focus this week was on William V and how he effects me. I know you’ll think me crazy for having a daily constant with a man born in the 1600’s or believe that he could have any impact on my life whatsoever, but some how he does.

I couldn’t be here today without him, although I’m more than equally as sure that he may never have given his lineage or me a second thought, but I’d like to think he did.

No one ever sits back and thinks about where his or her progeny will be in 100 or 200 plus years. This week, I’ve been exploring that as a possibility, or do I even dare, a probability? What I’d say to my 12th generation great-granddaughter or grandson? How would my life ever effect theirs, other than the fact, had I not come years before, he/she would not even be a possibility. What will she look like? How tall will he be? Will she have my hair color? What college will they attend? I hope in some strange way, they will resemble me, although WE will never have the moment of knowing.

A misnomer is an incorrect or unsuitable name or term for a person or thing, like when you call a guy Bubba, or Humphrey when his real name is Guy Beau, but it should also apply to those uncertain peoples names, those that came before or those that we have no idea as to what they were called, kind of like Monarch or Patriarch.

Its too funny, I got called all kinds of things, growing up, my Grandma Phebie called me Shella, she even wrote it in cards. I’m not sure what she wanted me to be called, but a rose by any other name. I answered to it; still do actually, since most of my dad’s family still say, “Shella” (Shil-lah)

My Grandma Dorothy, called Craig and Mandy… Greg and Mindy, until the day she died. She always said that the name Mindy, was her favorite name. It didn’t matter how many times that I tried to corrected her, that’s what she called them. She even wrote that in their cards, as well. Its a Grandma thing I guess. Personally, I love to be called Gram, but that’s neither here nor there.

William V Adkins/Atkinson was that person, some people insist that his Surname was Atkinson instead of Adkins, because it was common then, to add son to a father’s surname as apposed to junior or whatever, it was Adkins all the same.

I can imagine that he was called many things, by many different people. Dad or Pop by his children and Grandpa or Papaw by his grandchildren, or maybe just Pa by everyone. Various nicknames and surnames, it all adds to the confusion. I don’t know why we can’t except people’s names for whatever they choose to call themselves. We could add it to their death certificates, maybe as as waiver.

I’m sure in his day he also encountered all of the same name calling and injustices that we face today, just on a different scale. In some ways are lives are so much easier than in his day, but in many ways, worse. I love being called Mom and Grandma, I rarely ever hear my given name. Very few people feel the need to use it.

We have parallel lives, centuries apart, I do want to believe that he got up every morning and had his coffee, while sitting across the table from his beloved Elizabeth, maybe even calling her by a pet name. I call Anthony – Hun, most of the time or butt-head when it seems to fit, but all in love.

Every couple has their hard times and good times, slow times, warm and cold times, they’re ups and downs. Some simple day’s and well other days that let’s just say, aren’t worth getting out of bed for. The changes and challenges that every couple face, the same uncertainties of life, and love.

He may have had times in his life that he had plenty and times of want, but I want to believe that with all the things that they didn’t have, that they had each other.

He must have worked the fields everyday; sowing and reaping. Talking to friends and neighbors, maybe going to church, doing the everyday things that no one give a second thought. I know he must have felt the pressures that every man feels as a son, a brother, a husband, a father. How will I pay the bills, or when looking into the faces of his many children and asking himself, “How will I put shoes on all of these children’s feet?” He must have kissed boo-boo’s and doctored wounded knees; as any parent would.

This is how I see William V… as a man. One who lived long before me. It was only through his existence, that I do exist and for this I will always love and appreciate what he means in my life and in my lineage.

I will never understand all of the Native 1/2 this and 3/64ths that or how one could ever be a full blood anything, when all of those that came before us, were from so many various places and nationalities. I guess, this is why I can’t see how one race can put themselves above another or one can feel less a sense of who they are? When in fact, we’re all mingled, in decades and eon’s of family DNA from thousands of ancestors down through the years and will will continue to mingle. I bet, not that I ever bet, but if you tossed all of them one big pile, you could see that for as many ways that we are different, we are, so alike.

So, while I sip my coffee and read and study even more old paperwork, trying to see some glimpse into moments of his daily life, I want to believe that in that instance, he will live on.

I am a little superstitious, whether I want to admit that I am or not, I think everyone is, just a little, but I was raised around it and I know you’re not supposed to talk of the dead this way. I don’t think that I’m trying to raise the dead here, I’m just giving back a little love, respect and admiration to the life of someone, who gave it to me. He’s not just an excerpt from some old archive, he was a living, breathing person, whom sired a great many generations and hopefully, many – many more to come.

When you look into my eyes, you will see me and William V.
May God rest his soul.

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Superstition renders a man a fool, and scepticism makes him mad. ~ Henry Fieldingwhoo