Category Archives: Uncategorized

All Your Letters In the Sand

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With great fanfare, the government announced recently that the 1940 census was online and searchable in its entirety, except that it wasn’t and isn’t. Two states are completely online. Rumor has it one of them is Delaware, which almost doesn’t count unless the other one is Rhode Island. I tried searching New Jersey and found only census maps that told me nothing I didn’t know because I can see New Brunswick from, well, New Brunswick’s backyard.

While I was clicking on links that went nowhere, I accidentally clicked on one that did go somewhere. The National Archive was offering some version of 1940 alien files, so I searched a very rare family name on my father’s side and got a hit. I almost fell out of my chair when it turned out the National Archive in Kansas City had some papers related to my great-grandmother. The website asked for an email with a long list of specific numbers, my relationship to the person and what exactly I wanted. Also, the public could stop by and copy these documents for itself, which seemed downright homey. I asked for copies, gave the archivist a credit card number and a couple of days ago, these documents arrived.

When filling out forms your great-grandchildren will see copies of seventy years later, please write in heavier ink.

In 2011, I put up on Facebook a picture of my father as a small boy sitting on a dock with a woman I didn’t recognize. I’d found the picture in a box and scanned it. That woman was lush and curvy and had an intricate hairdo piled high on her head. My cousin’s mother looked at that photograph and said it was this woman, whom we’ve always called Nonna. She died, as I recollect it, just about the time my sister Daria was born. The story I heard was that she was on a bus, it stopped short and she hit her head, which may or may not be malarkey. Since I have no memories of her, the picture you see on the table is the one that’s always been in my head: slim, severe, critical, unhappy. But since I have no other pictures of her, when did I see this one? And why is it so different from the one on Facebook? Are the two pictures even of the same person?

I’d like to be able to get back to the page where I found the alien file search, but I haven’t been able to find it. If you figure it out, clue me in. I have lots more Italian relatives to search for.

The Street Pass Under Your Feet

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For Pete’s birthday, we got a family membership in the American Museum of Natural History. It was kind of a lot of money for us, but we talked for years about how we’d like to go, but never did. Today, we went, just to scope out the building since neither of us had been there since the seventies and good thing! It is humongous.

DUCK! THE GIANT FAKE PLANETS MIGHT SEE YOU!


We discovered that if we take the train from New Brunswick to NY Penn Station, we can take the Subway directly to the museum. The museum has its own stop at 81st Street. The new membership allowed us to proceed directly to the lady searching bags. I don’t know what she was looking for, but she didn’t seem surprised when she found empanadas in my Angry Little Girl book bag. We sat down in the basement food court and studied the floor map, which didn’t help much. Neither of us ever got our bearings, which allowed us to stumble onto many delightful discoveries.

It must take almost superhuman restraint to make museum signs without punch lines.


The trip was very physically demanding. I nodded off on the train near Newark Airport. We cannot wait to go back.

Happen To See the Most Beautiful

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Let’s start this story at the beginning. Grandpa died. After that, it gets funnier.

I made the mistake of asking my mother how I could help, mostly because no one is used to my attempting to be nice, and my mother was confused enough to believe I meant it. She asked me to write an obituary. She seemed to forget about it until half an hour before I left work on Friday, when she called me at the library and demanded I churn one out for Saturday’s Cape Cod Times. Newspapers are not my thing, but I was pretty sure that was impossible. The paper’s website coyly kept secrets like what was required when to itself, but one thing was crystal clear: the paper charged a metric assload for obituaries, then charged online readers to read them. Suddenly I understood who I was dealing with and why. Before I left work, I sketched out a basic summary of my grandfather’s life from pages of notes Mom sent me, then I drove twelve whole minutes home and parked my car. When I got to the living room, Pete handed me the phone. Mom had just hung up with Emil at the funeral home and she wanted me to send my draft to Emil now, though I should call him first. So I called Emil, who agreed he’d read it in the morning. While Emil and I were talking, Mom called again. No, the top of my skull did not pop off, but I did tell her I would finish my draft, mail it and quit working for the evening. It happened to be Pete’s birthday and I was going to shut off my phones and make dinner for my very, very patient husband.

Emil sent back my draft with one minor correction. On Sunday, I sent the corrected draft and went about my business. Remember that bathing suit shopping? Yes, my phone rang twice and I didn’t hear it. That part is completely my fault. Also, this happened:

Mom: It’s ‘quahogging,’ with an A. You spelled it with an O. Didn’t Spellcheck fuss about it?
Tata: No matter how you type it, Spellcheck fusses about quahogging.

On Monday morning, I discovered an ominous email from the newspaper and that Grandpa’s obituary was not online. I pictured myself explaining to my nearly hysterical mother that her father’s obituary was not in Monday’s paper and I panicked. The office hours started at 8:30. At 8:31, no one picked up the phone. At 9:01, no one answered the phone. I responded to the email that insisted I had not met unstated criteria: the address of the funeral home and my address. The address of the funeral home was in the obituary. My address? What the fuck did the Cape Cod Times need my address for? I sent a withering response and waited.

And waited. Finally, we exchanged a few more emails filled with tasty adjectives and credit card information. I never actually swore at the woman. No, really. Instead, I called the funeral home.

Tata: Hey Emil. It’s Domenica LongItalianLastName. Do you have any close relatives who work for the Cape Cod Times?
Emil: No.
Tata: Any close friends? Distant cousins? Unwashed brothers-in-law?
Emil: No. Why?
Tata: You’re sure?
Emil: I’m sure!
Tata: Good, because they are VERY BAD PEOPLE. I am preparing to curse their ancestors.
Emil: What happened?

I told the briefest possible version of this story.

Emil: That’s terrible!
Tata: Emil, this morning I have uttered many very bad words.

Later, it turned out this conversation earned me the Mourner of the Year Award and my mother’s perplexed approval. I didn’t see that coming.

When I knew for sure the charge would clear and the obituary would print, I worked up maximum nerve, called Mom and confessed.

Tata: …and it’ll run tomorrow.
Mom: That’s okay. Everyone on the Cape already knows.
Tata: Fine, but I’m not un-cursing any ancestors.

When it was all said and done, the obituary was simple and faithful to the stories Grandpa told and Mom had the foresight to write down. If I’d had more time, maybe it would be different, but I can’t say it would be better.

AUSTIN NICKERSON WALKER, 99

HYANNIS — Austin Nickerson Walker, 99, of Hyannis, on February 27, 2012. He was born August 12, 1912, to parents Austin A. and Agnes Gardner Walker on a family farm on Mary Dunn Road and graduated Barnstable High School.

He married the late Gladys Holway in 1938; they welcomed a daughter in 1940. Austin enlisted in the Navy in 1943, serving with the Seabees in the Aleutian Islands and on Okinawa during the war, in the reserves for five years and on active duty in North Africa during the Korean War; he also sailed with the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.

In civilian life, Austin worked for Hood Milk Company, Corcoran Plumbing and Heating Supply Company and in hotel construction and maintenance for over thirty years. He had been the sole surviving charter member of the VFW Post 2578.

Austin and his brother Edwin, deceased, were avid lifelong fishermen and enjoyed clamming and quahogging. Austin loved flying and traveling, but he was a true Cape Codder with an incredible memory for people and places. He found something in common with everyone and always had a joke at the ready.

Austin is survived by his daughter [Mom] and son-in-law [Tom], five grandchildren, ten great-grandchildren, two great-great-grandchildren and many, many friends.

Services will be at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, March 7, at [Emil’s Efficient] Funeral Home, Hyannis. Burial at [La la la la la] Cemetery, Hyannis, will follow.

No one ever called him Austin. Everyone who didn’t call him Dad or Grandpa called him Ozzy. My favorite photograph of him was one Dad took when my brother Todd was about three or four, so about 1970. We were fishing for sunnies at Mary Dunn’s Pond when Todd’s attempt at casting went awry. Dad took a picture from an elegant distance of a patient grandfather carefully prying a fishing hook from the back of a little boy’s shorts. I wish life had treated him better. He was a genuinely lovely person.

Clearly A Case For Cornflakes And Classics

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Siobhan: Holy crap! It’s snowing!
Tata: Where…where are you?
Siobhan: Bridgewater. Why?
Tata: Because here it’s sunny and windy.
Siobhan: You would not believe how much snow is on my windshield!
Tata: Maybe you have your own weather now. It wouldn’t be unheard of. Think back: did you call the Chinese place and order a frozen microburst?

As soon as we swore to be mortal enemies and hung up on each other – our customary sign-off – I observed what looked like a very sunny blizzard on the street in front of my house and clear blue sky in my backyard. So naturally I wondered if my house was approaching the speed of light and how much Dramamine I might need for that.