Janice Williams Loves Austin

My immersion into the genealogy continues, so when I contemplate what to write about here, I am stumped.

Back when I was in high school, I was a founding member of the High Plains Genealogical Society in Canyon (my hometown). Me, a couple of people in their 40s, and a LOT of people over 60, loved genealogy and we formed a group to study it and discuss it. I learned at that time that listening to ANYONE talk about how they’ve been looking for great-great grandpa and how he was in this place in 1840 and then he just disappeared, etc. etc. was the most boring conversation ever.

I equate doing genealogy, for me, like reading a really good novel. I am totally caught up in it and know a lot about the characters and can’t wait to get back home and read the story. But, I can’t go around telling everyone about the novel I’m reading and try to get them to understand the plot and the characters. I might get away with telling a short little scene from the novel, if I can tell a good story, but I wear my welcome thin if I go back to that same novel too often for my conversational content.

So that’s where I am with my genealogy. I get excited when I find a gravestone in findagrave.com that helps me find someone’s actual death date or their wife’s name. When I look through pictures that I have owned for years and even have names on the pictures and realize that THIS picture is of THIS person that I’ve been examining, it makes me happy. When I send an email to someone I found on the web that appears to be related and they give me one tiny bit of new information and I know that we share a common ancestor, I feel accomplished. [okay, when those relatives put me on their mailing list and I start getting an “angel forward” or a “look at this, it’s so cute video” every day, I’m not quite so happy]

Since I am determined not to bore you with the daring and exciting tales of the Cunningham family (and they truly were daring and exciting people), I will show you a mystery. This tintype was in a box of old photos in the family. Photos almost exclusively of family members. But the tintypes are unidentified (she didn’t write on them like you can on photos) and this one is one of the most interesting and curious. What did the person on our right DO to the person on the left to cause him (or someone in his family?) to do this to the tintype? I’ve seen lots of photos where someone is cut out of the picture, but I guess that couldn’t be done with a tintype so this is what you did back then. [now I want to go study up and see when tintypes predominated….see how this genealogy leads into all sorts of queries?]

That’s the term we figured applies to me… lover of genealogy. Actually, I think Mark came up with “genealoholic.” But since I only get into it THIS intensely for a short period each summer, I apparently am just a binge genealoholic. But I am obsessed, clearly. I skipped my gig at the Spoke last night to stay home and get deeper into the research. And it is paying off. I’m finding lots of new information that I will take to my reunion in two weeks.

But I have seen some great music in the last few days, and some, uh, not so much. Great music, for sure, today with the Andrew Nafzinger Trio at Jo’s Coffee on South Congress. Jim Starboard on drums (and I had just met him Thursday playing with Idgy Vaughn) and Lindsey Greene on bass. Very nice instrumentals of classic country hits, western swing, and more. A very pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon if it hadn’t been quite so popular. I want it all… no line, great coffee, fabulous music, beautiful setting, no crowd. I guess three out of five is the best I can get.
Earlier in the week I did see the 80 Proof Band for the first time at Hill’s Cafe. I almost went back on Saturday night to see them again, but that genealogy thing got in the way. They were very entertaining and worked hard at what they did. Also saw Bleu Edmondson that night. I saw him a few months ago with Ray Wylie Hubbard at KNBT’s Roots and Branches show in New Braunfels. I think I prefer him solo/acoustic. His show seemed to drag on a bit without much variety or surprise.
Thursday the threat of rain kept a lot of people away from Shady Grove. If it had been up to me I probably would have canceled the show. But it wasn’t up to me and, lo and behold, the rain ceased. It was a beautiful, humid night. Idgy Vaughn started things off and it was wonderful. I had never seen her live, but had loved her CD when it came out a year or more ago (more, I guess, those radio days are getting further and further back there). She has some great songs and a really clear strong voice. And she started her set with the words (spoken) “This is a song I wrote about killing my boyfriend.” Or something like that. That certainly grabs your attention.

The Derailers were the headliners and I’ve seen them a dozen times or more and they just keep getting better. It frustrates me when someone (I won’t name names) bemoans the fact that Tony isn’t part of the Derailers anymore or that the Derailers “aren’t the same.” No, they aren’t. Usually people say that when they haven’t seen the Derailers in several years. I do think it took a little while for the Derailers without Tony to find a comfortable place and regain that mastery of the stage that they had. But they did it a LONG while ago and they just keep improving. With Sweet Basil McJagger beating on that piano, Chris Schlotzhauer keeping it country on the steel, Scott Matthews always looking cool while keeping the beat, Ed Adkins adding to the rhythm on bass and solidifying the vocals, and, of course, lead man Brian Hofelt entertaining your socks off, the Derailers are a totally different group than they were. I loved them then, I love them now. I don’t think we could have had the same sort of show after the day of rain if it hadn’t been someone so fun and upbeat. The crowd was small–I’m sure a lot of people assumed it was canceled–but they really got their entertainment.

I also went out on Friday night on a “busman’s holiday,” as my mother called it. Mark and I are out seeing music or working with music or performing music (well, he does) on a daily basis and we had a rare night off together, so we went to see music. We went out to the Nutty Brown and saw Alpha Rev. Mark had seen them open for Big Head Todd and the Monsters at the Whitewater Amphitheater a week or so ago and came home impressed and said we needed to go see them. We had a great opportunity come up with them playing at the Nutty Brown, which is such a beautiful venue with a great menu and chairs and tables! Old people like us appreciate the chairs and tables. Mark swears Alpha Rev sounds a lot like Pink Floyd in their formative years. I can’t judge them on that, but I can say that it was incredibly crafted music. With violin and cello, keys, bass, drums, and guitar, they put out a lot of different sounds. I would find myself looking around the stage trying to figure out where certain sounds were coming from, they were so unusual. I don’t know where you put music like this into a category. It is “rock” but it isn’t the Rolling Stones or Metallica. It isn’t Bruce Springsteen and it isn’t . . . Well, it isn’t anything I’m familiar with, but if Mark says that it has shades of Pink Floyd, I am sure he is right. Mark said I didn’t need to feel that I had to write about Alpha Rev in my blog, but I do like to write about musicians that are hard-working and have a goal and a style. I’d rather write about that all day than write about guys that miss a soundcheck and are more concerned about how much free beer than get than they do about what song they will play when they take the stage. The band Alpha Rev and their sound man (who Mark praised highly, too) deserve the success they are finding.

Today is my sister Mackie’s birthday. Isn’t that the greatest girl’s name ever? You’ve never known anyone named Mackie, have you? Easy to remember, easy to pronounce, maybe some misspellings along the way, but a great name. Short for Macqueline (yes, like Jacqueline). And she was born on this date way back when. Today she has gone to see the new Batman movie and spend a night at a fancy hotel. I didn’t wish Theo, her husband, a happy birthday on Wednesday, but he is celebrating, too. Happy Birthday, Theo! I called Mother today to wish her a “happy birthday of your daughter” since she was a big part of all of this. This is my favorite picture of Mackie. Maybe this is when I began my love of the accordion. That’s Maisie on the right. Sweet girl. I’ve never noticed before that Mackie has a big cookie in her left hand. What a great childhood. You’ve got your cookie and your accordion and your big dog and your mittens and hat and sweater and your swing in your own backyard. And you’ve got a mom that thinks that that is worth a picture.

Happy Birthday Sis!

I have some mosquito bites and I don’t know when I got them. Maybe watering the lawn at 11:55 on Sunday night. But it made me think today about the commercials that are missing from television. I suppose it is very difficult in this day and age to decide where to put the advertising budget. Used to it was radio, TV, magazines, and newspapers. And billboards, I suppose. Now you’ve got a zillion TV and radio channels and internet and on and on. But where are the OFF! commercials we used to see every single night on television? Remember those horrible commercials where the guy sticks his arm in the glass box of mosquitoes and lets them eat him alive? Yuck yuck yuck. I’m not saying I miss those commercials, I’m just wondering what happened. OFF! still exists and I still use it (well, not enough, obviously, since I am scratching today), but I guess they’ve found a new way to get your attention.

Every year at about this time I become engrossed in a project. I love history and I love genealogy and I do research year ’round on my family. But when my BIG family reunion is on the horizon, I get deeply involved and that is all I can think about for a few weeks, before and after. That’s where I am right now and what I’m doing when I’m not writing here. I am the “keeper of the tree” of our family and I’m doing my best to update it with some new babies and spouses, plus look on the web for missing members of the family, too. This family reunion is different from what most people think of when they think reunion. For most people, a reunion is a gathering of your grandparents and their descendants, so you are with your aunts and uncles and first cousins, for the most part. Maybe you include the brothers and sisters of a grandparents so there are your parent’s first cousins, too. But this reunion is the Cunningham family and it is all of the descendants of my great-great-great grandparents. They had 12 grandchildren and 110 grandchildren, so in 1908 the reunion had 158 people attend. The reunion has been going on since 1888 or so, every August, in the the heat of the summer (a time when the farmers could take a day off) they gathered by a pecan grove and a creek to eat barbecue and visit. The tradition carries on, despite the invention of air conditioning. We still have about 200 people a year come to the reunion, but on our 100th we had over 600 there. I sort of expect this year’s reunion to be smaller with the price of gas, but we will see. Unlike my other reunions that are gatherings of closer family, my closest family members will be the kids and grandkids of my mom’s first cousin and the son of my grandfather’s first cousin (are you following all of this?). Mostly it is people that are so distantly related we don’t even figure it out, we just attend, visit each year, and love one another because we have that shared heritage.

If my writing is sporadic, this is why. I started doing genealogy over 30 years ago and I discovered that it is like reading a fascinating novel with lots of plot twists and exciting stories. It is enthralling and I want to get back to it and immerse myself in it—but no one else cares about it, really. Okay, some o