Everything’s Relative

Young Blue Eyes

As the oldest grandchild of 25, I’ve always felt compelled to be the “keeper of the flame” as far as family history and stories. I liked to get the old folks talking and take notes. My dad, Mike Brigida, told this story years ago:

Dad was born in Hoboken, NJ, in 1916. He and his brother Guy frequently played with a little boy named Frankie who lived on the block. They roamed the docks where my grandfather worked; they organized kickball games on Adams Street; they had fun with the Dalmatian in the firehouse where Frankie’s father was a firefighter; and they played hide-and-seek in the storeroom of the local bar where all the men gathered. Dad said that even when he was 8 years old, Frank Sinatra knew all the best places to have fun.

Marlene Brigida Baldwin
Keene, NH

Card Confusion

I visited the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Ind., staying a few days at a local hotel. My hotel gave me a plastic key shaped like a credit card.

My interest was locating my French Canadian great-great-grandparents Thomas Crotty and Genevieve Element in the library’s Drouin Collection on microfilm. After hours of sitting in the dimly lit microfilm wing, I learned to interpret its working sounds: the whir of automatic microfilm readers, the clunk of film scanners, and the hum of copy card vending machines.

I also could eavesdrop on the quiet conversations around me. I know it’s not nice to listen in, but someone else might be sifting through the unindexed parish records of Gaspé Peninsula, too.

A husband and wife were in the row in from of me, close to the bank of microfilm copiers. Suddenly, I heard an unidentifiable mechanic sound. “Grrrrr. Grrrrrr.” Pause. “Grrrrr. Grrrrr.”

The husband returned to his wife’s microfilm reader and whispered, “Honey, I think I just put $5 onto our hotel key.”

Cherie Bowers
Byron, Mich.