Charles Bentley: The Leap, from Fox Hunting (1828)

"She ultimately came to carry even her trauma well."

Caroline (Carrie) Pat Bounds, my paternal grandmother, was nobody's notion of aristocracy in action, though her ancestry strongly suggests aristocratic blood. Belief in the supremacy of aristocratic ancestry seems to be similar to believing in white supremacy or any inheritance-based privilege. These were stories concocted to encourage acceptance of other than democratically-elected rulers. Science suggests that genius does not run in families, though enough examples convince most that it certainly must. I swell with pride when I imagine my German genes giving me an advantage. As the history of paternal hierarchies demonstrates, good governance was never inheritable; neither was good sense. Each generation brings certain privileges and deficiencies into play. Very little's ever decided on day one.

The environment one's raised in might better determine later successes and failures, but ample stories suggest that almost anyone can overcome nearly anything in this life. It might be best for me to presume that all my forebears suffered from some trauma-related disorders, for Lord knows if nobody else does, just how traumatized almost everyone's early life was then. They were just kids coping the best they could, just like we were. Between stillborn siblings and disappearing mothers, few were spared the worst this life calls upon us to bear. They bore their burdens, but they were doubtlessly profoundly influenced by them. Some were angry, and others were withdrawn. Some never found happiness, while others seemed to spontaneously spawn it wherever they showed up. Remember, our country and culture were founded and nurtured exclusively by people in somewhat desperate need of serious psychotherapy, and their results seem to show it.

Carrie might be considered a slut in today's parlance. Married at twenty-one to a small-town pharmacist, they produced a daughter three years later. They divorced six years later after she found herself pregnant by my paternal grandfather, Nicholas Daniel Schmaltz, who at the time was a promising baseball player on the town team and the scion of perhaps the wealthiest man in town. Nick's dad bundled them off from Mt Angel to St Helens, Oregon, a town a safe hundred miles away from curious eyes. They returned more than a year later with a son remarkably mature for a newborn. This practice was common among Catholic families in those days. Couples with a first child conceived out of wedlock were quickly married and then shipped off to someplace away from prying eyes to return about a year later with a one-year-old "newborn."

Carrie and Nick would two years later bring my father, Robert Clancy Schmaltz, into this world, a young man destined to experience at least his fair share of worldly trauma. Two years later, she divorced Nick to marry her third husband, an auto mechanic whose shop had been just down the alley from her house in Scott's Mills, Oregon. Nick had been set up by his dad, owner of a considerable farm supply store in Mt Angel, a German-speaking enclave of German-Ukrainian refugees in the beautiful Willamette Valley. Nick would manage the Scotts Mill satellite store, while Nick Senior would manage the main one. This arrangement lasted only briefly, as Nick preferred frequenting taverns over working. My dad and his big brother would end up living with Nick Senior in his big house across from the massive Mt. Angel Catholic Church and attend parochial school there; his mom off somewhere, and his dad reportedly disowned and took a job as a traveling paint salesman.

I can't say what sorts of trauma Carrie was fleeing from. For all I know, Nick was abusive. I know that his father was what I might call a strong personality. He would eventually disown all but one of his children for infractions like marrying out of the faith or, having married out of the faith, divorcing soon after that. I will plumb the probable sources of Nickolas Senior's rage in later stories. This one's intended to introduce Caroline (Carrie) Pat Bounds. Her father had come across the Oregon Trail at twelve, losing his mother in transit on the Applegate cutoff near Drain, Oregon. He would lose his first wife in their fourth child's stillbirth and father eight children total, all but that one surviving childhood. Little suggested his aristocratic heritage, either.

To find the high-born, I have to follow some matrilineal tracks, do some back-and-forth switching, and some definite leaping. This Fambly's history might rely upon some fantasy to reveal its aristocracy, a definite danger when aspiring to associate my low-born self and my Fambly with the high-born. Still, royalty was never immune to sneaking along alleyways to carry on with a neighborhood mechanic. Carrie became a decent mother and grandmother once her youthful wildness left her. She ultimately came to carry even her trauma well.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Fambly, #PureSchmaltz