Beyond the FlamesWhen I was a sophomore in high school, my grandmother lived with us. She was fascinated with all things British. She was watching Queen Elizabeth's 25th Anniversary (1972?) on TV.
She pointed to the screen and said, "Look! Your cousin is on TV."
I saw some kind of parade so I looked closely at all the faces in the audience and didn't recognize anyone.
"Where?"
"Right there, Prince Charles. He is a distant cousin of yours."
I asked her to explain it and she tried to tell me about so-and-so being married to someone who was something to someone... I couldn't follow any of it.
But I thought, "Wouldn't that be cool if true? Hey Cuz, can you loan me a couple million pounds?"
I did a little bit of research and found that all of the Royal Family have their family histories well-documented. Their genealogies are public records and easy to locate. All I had to do was document my family history and find the connecting link.
I researched my family tree over the next forty years and can document over 4,000 people as relatives dating back to the late 1700s. All of our family hails from England. The Royal Family are actually German and moved to England around 1915 courtesy of King George. So no link to the Royals. Sorry, Grandma.
When I was researching my family, I did a series of interviews with my grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, etc. The idea is that you get their stories down before they are no longer available. Over the years I amassed boxes of photos, vital records, magazine and newspaper articles, wedding notices, death certificates, and maps. I became the unofficial family historian and archivist. Family members would ship me boxes of all kinds of mementos to add to the collection, and every piece added a little more information to the family story.
In the 1930s, my grandparents lived outside of Vaughn, New Mexico. It is a small cattle ranch community near the middle of the state.
My grandfather learned meat cutting from his father. He was a butcher all his life. He opened a small market with dry goods and custom-cut meats.
My grandfather's favorite holiday was Independence Day. Each year he would drive down into Mexico and fill the truck with fireworks. My grandmother would stay home and mind the store, so my grandfather would take one of the kids with him. But he had a rule, they couldn't ride along until they were ten years old. There was only enough room for one passenger up front, so the kids took turns.
My dad turned 10 in January of 1947. He was so excited that it was his turn to make the trip. He said he didn't sleep for three nights and had his bag packed a week prior. They left in the middle of June. Neither of them remembers the exact date, but it was in June.
The trip was uneventful and my dad slept most of the way to the Mexican border. That sort of annoyed my grandfather. The point of having a copilot was for someone to talk to and help keep him awake while he drove.
They got a motel room for the night and the next day went to pick up the fireworks. The supplier had just filled a big order for another client, so didn't have as much on hand as in previous years. After loading the truck with fireworks, my grandfather took my dad on a tour of the town, ate a lot of authentic Mexican food, did some shopping for souvenirs, and went back to the motel for the night.
The next morning, they packed their bags and got an early start heading for home. The truck overheated a couple of times on the way back, so they took frequent "potty stops" to let the engine cool down. They were well into New Mexico and the sky got dark. A storm had blown in from the West and the sky kept flickering with lightning. Then the rain hit.
The rain was coming down so hard that the headlights barely lit up the road ahead. The wind was blowing hard, but my grandfather pushed on. He said he knew the storm wouldn't last. He said storms like that "blow themselves out." And just like that, the rain eased up.
My dad remembers looking at the side of the road to make sure his driver stayed on the road.
He yelled, "Stop! There's a man there."
All they could see was a pair of boots near the edge of the road. Someone was lying in the ditch. Grandpa stopped the truck, and they raced over to help. The man was injured and said he couldn't walk any further. They helped him into the truck and got him comfortable.
He was wearing gray-green coveralls that had some strange symbols on the sleeves. He was carrying a satchel that looked like it was made of canvas. He was injured on his side but the bleeding had slowed down. He was still soaked in blood, so his injury was no small matter. Grandpa got back on the road, heading for the nearest doctor.
Grandpa was worried the man might pass out, so he kept asking him questions.
"What is your name?"
Ronald Olson."Were you hit by a car?"
No, I was in a crash."We didn't see any vehicles. What happened?"
I'm a pilot. I crashed.His voice faded out and he fell unconscious.
My grandfather knew the man was in shock, and stopped at the veterinarian's house. He didn't want to risk trying to make it to a hospital. The vet took a quick look at him and they carried the man inside. The vet told my grandpa that he would treat him and keep him stable until an ambulance arrived. With nothing more they could do my grandfather and my dad got back in the truck and went home.
The next morning after breakfast, Grandpa told the boys to unload the truck and put the fireworks in the metal shed out back. The girls joined to help, not wanting to miss out on being first to see Grandpa's haul of this year's fireworks. One of the boys found the satchel and brought it to my grandfather, asking what to do with it. Grandpa didn't recognize it, but my dad chimed in that it belonged to the man they picked up the night before. Grandpa took it and put it in his office at the back of the store.
According to my grandfather, he took the satchel back to the veterinarian's house to return it to Mr. Olson. The vet told him that the injuries were serious, so the ambulance took him to the hospital in Albuquerque. Grandpa returned home and put the satchel in his office for safekeeping. There was limited telephone service in those days, so he couldn't just call the hospital and leave a message. He figured if it was important, the man or maybe a relative would come by to claim it. No one ever did and this issue was quickly forgotten.
