(no subject)
more research work on dead relatives i've never met.
a few years back i had an office job which included a lot of free time. i got an account on ancestry.com and tirelessly traced my family back to their pre-yank points of origin. it was pretty fascinating. i filled in lots of gaps that will never be detailed to me. i never met my grandfather, and i felt self-conscious asking my grandmother too many details about her past (though i generally didn't have to as she held forth frequently) because it always felt like there was the unspoken preface, "since you're going to die relatively soon..."
anyway. there is one particularly interesting character in my family, and that is my grandfather. 2nd generation american, full german, endured severe abuse at home and ran off to the navy at 15 or 16, forging whatever necessary documents to get in. after a couple of good years of good work (did you know you can get your ancestors' military records with relative ease from the government? you can.) he goes AWOL, apparently to spend some time with some woman. that doesn't work out and he decides he wants back in the service, so he changes the spelling of his name and enlists. the navy is fooled and lets him in. this is during WWII now and he's somewhere in south america working on some sort of tanker that i don't remember anything about. around this time he's in a bar fight and has a chair broken on his face, knocking his teeth through his upper lip and making it necessary for him to wear a full mustache for the rest of his life. this bar fight situation was apparently a pretty regular thing for him. after a couple of years the navy unravels his little web of lies and he is discharged - dishonorably.
i don't know what happens after this, but he marries some woman in phoenix. they apparently split, because a year and a half later, my grandmother gives birth to my dad. after that, there are all sorts of colorful details of his life. his olympic drinking habits, constant compulsive cheating, fights, scenes, he is rich now and has a few private planes, some fancy homes, a few businesses ranging from roofing to hardware stores to agricultural partnerships with my grandmother's brother, new cars, more fights, etc. my grandmother hired private investigators to spy on him. one charming anecdote involves a p.i. arriving at the family home to fill my grandma in on his movements. my grandfather arrives home as she and the p.i. are standing in the driveway and punches him in the face.
he's an interesting character to me because he's the classic asshole arrogant self-important rake. i will admit, he was foxy. he was incredibly snobby and dressed like some sort of italian gangster. other familial anecdotes detail things like a planned double dinner date with another couple. my grandfather took one look at the other man, who arrived in some standard slacks and collared shirt and informed him that if he planned to dine out with dale benz, then he had better go home and put on a goddamned suit.
anyway. he divorced my grandmother and left her with little more than tuition for parochial school. i have letters he wrote to her demanding to know what the reason for my dad's surly attitude was on visits, what was with low grades, and that she had better stop opening his mail before she forwarded it on to denver, where he had moved with his new family and new children. he died of a brain tumor when my dad was 16. years later my grandma ran into the man who had been their family doctor in the 50s. they got to talking about dale and the doctor remarked about the tumor. my grandma asked how he knew about that as he had not been in touch with them late in my grandfather's life. the doctor was incredulous, told her that my grandfather had been diagnosed with that tumor in the early 50s. when asked if he wanted the operation, his quote was, "fuck it," in the negative. he blew it off. it had grown so large at the end of his life that he was essentially crazed. irrational, violent outbursts. he'd come home from work and leave the car running in the garage with the lights on. he took a saber down from over a fireplace and chased his third wife around the house with it. most importantly, he wasn't "there" to notice when his accountant embezzled his entire fortune. when he died, my dad received a tiger's eye ring, and that was it. everything was gone by the time the will was read. one of my uncles received the brass nameplate from his desk, the other received a money clip, and my aunt got nothing.
so anyway, i was looking at the county recorder's site today and entered his name on a lark - tons of scans of documents ranging from the 40s to the 60s - mortgages, lawsuits, articles of incorporation, life insurance policies. my dad investigated these and found that his first wife, the one from whom we wonder if he ever bothered getting a divorce, is still alive and living in prescott. violet benz, aged 95. i want him to contact her but i can tell he'll need some convincing. i assume their parting was bitter, but it has been a while, no?