It was a quiet weekend at home for me, the first in some time. The rain delayed, giving me a chance to do some of the yard work I haven’t been able to get to before. And I made at least a token effort to clean the house (I might mention that I love the Swiffer Wet Jet. This is the mop I’ve waited for all my life. I’m sure it’s environmentally evil, what with chemicals and throw-away pads and all, but I’ll just keep it as my personal iniquity, until the EPA pries it from my cold, dead hands).
Sunday evening I drove down to Rochester (Minnesota, not New York. The place where the original Mayo Clinic is) to meet some distant relatives. Two shirttail cousins and their wives. One of them comments on this blog, but I’d never met him personally before. He’s here on vacation. We shared family stories, and I slipped into Lecturer Mode, explaining at length about Norwegian history, naming customs, and immigration patterns, among other things. In spite of that, they paid for my dinner.
I got from them yet another version of how our family acquired the British name, Walker. This one says the change was made at the urging of a local banker in Iowa, a relation by marriage. He is said to have told my great-grandfather’s brother he ought to change his name to “get ahead” in America. He then picked out Walker himself, because it sounded vaguely like “Kvalevaag,” the name of the farm this ancestor had come from.
So now I have three different versions. I’m not sure what conclusions to draw from all the disinformation. Maybe the Walker brothers were spies, and this was all deep cover.
We wondered about another odd circumstance, that although the two brothers weren’t many years apart in age (my great-grandfather was the younger), and although these two fellows I had dinner with are roughly in my age range, we have a full generation difference in our genealogies. In other words, while my ancestor is my great-grandfather, their ancestor (his brother) was their grandfather. In fact, their father is still alive. I guess a couple young marriages in my family tree account for the differences.
Anyway, I had a jolly time, and if they read this, here’s my thanks.
My wife danced around the house last week after she bought her first Swiffer. I was rather stunned to see a cleaning implement prompt such outpourings of joy.
Loren, you clearly have never had to wrestle with a mop and bucket on a regular basis.
Speaking of family names, my own has two possible origins. It comes from the old Danelaw region of England, so we’re not sure if it’s old English or of Danish extraction. It happens to exist in both languages.
If it is of Danish extraction, it means “short.” If it is of Old English extraction, it means “bald.”
I’d be bothered by that, except that one often reads of great warriors in the sagas who are “…the bald” or “…the short.” In any event, I don’t know any among my kin who are accustomed to taking much by way of abuse.