Would you believe it's raining?

After almost four weeks of dryness, we woke up to the patter of rain drops on the leaves of the tree outside our bedroom. It was a welcome sound. We were getting used to the monotony of sunshine and dry weather every day. Oh well, this is Oregon.

One week from today we head east for our grand tour...Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Boyne Falls, Holland, then back to Detroit. I am not sure I am up for all the fun.

Aleene questioned why I wrote a long piece about Rosie. While scrambling through lost files of data which I used to write my first book "Luacres" I ran into a piece I published in the USBCA newsletter, about seven years ago. Rather than save it, I copied pieces of it and pasted onto the blog and finished with the final outcome. Then I threw the paper away. No need to store more junk...we have no space.

During the scramble of papers, I found the obit for my paternal grandpa which was the intended search target. There has always been an argument as to what his first name actually was. I assumed for years that it was Alvah spelled like mine because, I was told, my middle name was given to me through him. Then in a moment of confession, I recall my dad telling me it was Alvi, which sounds like a nickname, and that was his given middle name too, but he did not like it, so he changed it. He didn't legally change it, he just stopped using A as a middle initial and started using C (for Covert, his mother's maiden name.) I discovered this when we saw his birth certificate, such as it was, from some agency with a big C superimposed over the A. The cemetery where A. P. Lutz is buried has his name as Alvie. The headstone says A. P. Lutz. I guess the obit and my dad's confession wins...Alvi it is and forever more will be. Interesting.

This all comes up as a distant cousin who is older than brother Dave contacted me with some research she has on the Lutz name and referred to my grandpa as Alvin. I quickly corrected her, but she wanted to see the obit, so I electronically sent her a copy and she was happy to refer to him as Alvi.

The obit was in the New Castle News and did not give the date of his death. It gave his birthday and then said he lived 57 years, seven months and ten days. Weird again. This was in 1916. No funeral home, either. He was laid out on the kitchen table of the family home for friends to view.

Anyway, I have been researching family ties for cousin Gwenda (whose hubby is a retired minister.) She is also related to us through my mother's side, the Stewarts of Clarion County, Pennsylvania...we think. She is checking that one out. I gave her names and dates of the family members that I had going back to 1851. Of course, my dad's mother holds the record. Her fore bearers came to this country from The Netherlands in 1648. Resolve Weldron was the old guy's name. I have to admit that there is Dutch in my background. Well as the bumper sticker in Holland, MI says, "If you ain't Dutch, you ain't much."