Aha. After I wrote about Sherman Malcolm below, I decided I would check the US Census for his name and perhaps find out other information. Gee, I wish Mother were alive  because I could call and tell her Sherman was born in Edgar, Illinois in March of 1865 and Sara was not his first wife. He married a lady named Alice in 1893 and she died in 1903 in Frankfort, Indiana. I don’t know if Grandma knew this. I feel like I need to go to the cemetery and exclaim, “Mother, you are not going to believe this!”

His full name was Peter Sherman Malcolm and his father was John Riggs Malcolm and his mother Mary Elizabeth O’Hair. Sherman was named after his grandfather and his father, John, was named after his grandfather.

He showed up on three public family trees, one of which was a Fowler tree. Grandma’s mother was a Fowler.

See where curiosity can take you.

Whoever thought Sherman Malcolm would be mentioned on a blog in 2011. He may have known my mother existed since she was born a year before he died. It’s a complicated story because I have bits and pieces, and as far as I know, Grandma and Mother only knew little bits.

Sherman Malcolm was married to my Great Great Aunt Sara. She was Grandma’s father’s youngest sister; it was if my great  great grandparents had two families – three boys and  years later, three girls. Wesley was the oldest and my great grandfather; Sara was the youngest and only four years older than my grandmother, Wesley’s daughter. Both girls, my grandma, Jessie, and my great great aunt, Sara, went to college and became teachers.

Grandma married first and eventually Sara married Sherman Malcolm who was an Encyclopedia Britannia salesman. They traveled around the country and Sara kept a journal – about which I will talk later. Every now and then they would come and vacation at my grandmother’s.

And Sherman would go ice fishing. Grandma liked the name Malcolm and gave the name to her son as a middle name.

Then things get fuzzy.

Sara and Sherman got divorced and she got a job in the Veteran’s Administration in Washington D.C; we speculate his health failed and he was in the VA Hospital. She mentioned in some notation somewhere about going out to see Sherman; perhaps the divorce was to allow her to be free to improve her fortunes.

I am not organizing this well, but at least I will get it out now – maybe I’ll smooth it out later.

When Sara and Sherman were married, she handed out large pictures of herself; Sherman thought it funny and handed out little pictures of himself. Today, in a box, I found a set. (I don’t know how I know this, but I do; I suppose it is one of those little pitchers have big ears things.)

And, a couple of days ago, I came across this: **

He died two days after Christmas. Twenty-one years later, I would be celebrating my first Christmas. A few months later, Sara would come to Grandma’s with her second husband, who she called L.D., and she took a lot of pictures of me that summer I turned one. We had homemade ice cream on my first birthday and apparently some rock salt got in the mixture. There must have been some joke about it because for a good part of my life I would hear references to L’D. saying, “I guess I’ll have some more of that salty ice cream.”

Well, you’ll get to know Sherman and Sara as I go through her journals again. They had their picture taken in bathing suits in The Great Salt Lake by “the Kodak man” dontcha know. Perhaps that photo will turn up as well.

For right now, we’re going to step into the Foo Bar,  grab some Cokes and Diet Cokes and raise up a toast to Sherman Malcolm.

P.S. Woo raised her glass and said, “To Sherman, may the fish always find your hole in the ice.” We all stared at her.

** A picture of the funeral home found at this LINK.

I fell asleep during Mega Pythom vs. Gatoroid and missed the part where the two heroines were eaten by the creatures that championed. There are too many movies in this style. And, when I think about it, I never watched the King Kong and Godzilla movies. I have to take that back; my dad and I did take Quentin to Godzilla 1985 matinee in South Bend. Quentin sat on his lap. That was a good afternoon.

However, the movies that earned me my reputation include the one about a brain transplant – a beautiful model is mortally injured so her brain is put into the body of a plain looking woman who is in a brain dead coma; the one where the Chinese tunneled under the Pacific; a film with an aging Dana Andrews as a scientist who starts a crack in the earth by aiming a rocket downward on the the launch pad.

I must return to my roots and stop padding my resume with these my monster is bigger than your monster flicks.