Question: Do you have a favourite story or legend about our family?

Megan: I have a few...

These just concern people that are dead now. The living generations has so many- I'll have to think carefully before I can choose definitive ones...

I always liked the story about Grandma coming to Canada. They had fake passports and were on the last boat that made it to Canada before the war broke out. They were in steerage- just like Jack Dawson in Titanic- The ship captain had orders to turn back, but he didn't- instead he dropped the passengers off at some place in Newfoundland. It must have been terrifying for all those people. This also supports my wacky theory that we're really Jewish. I know it's a just a wacky theory, but anyway...

Sometimes when Koreans winge that they had the hardest history and we just can't understand them from our Brady-Bunch perspective, I tell them about Grandma's Grandma, who was crushed to death in a cattle car on the way to siberia in the 1930's. I think that's interesting. It also supports my Jewish theory.

Dad saved a guy's life once in the war. He was tangled in a parachute and the airplane was on fire. Dad was tangled with him, so was kind of forced to save his life. But he DID do it...

When Dad was in India, one of his father's friends had a monkey. He was ordered to shoot it and was crying when he shot it.

Dad used to have to knock his shoes for scorpions when he was a little boy.

Dad's father used to have a girlfriend that he'd meet down at the public garden plot.

Grandpa saved somebody's life during a flu epidemic- I don't know what country he was in...He heard banging on one of the coffins that were stacked up and he opened the coffin up, the guy was fine...

Grandpa and his friends beat up a guy who was a wife-beater once. He hated anyone hurting a weaker person.

Grandpa saw his father die. His father prided himself on being able to break horses. He was training a team of horses and he lashed their reins around his waist. The horses bolted and dragged him for miles. Grandpa was just a little boy, and there was nothing he could do.

Dad wanted to go to highschool, but his parents couldn't afford the busfare to the next town, so he had to go and work at a department store when he was 14.

Did you know tht Nanny Jones was an illegitimate child? She somehow ended up as an army brat.

Did you know how Dad got his name? They were living on Stonecutter's island in H.K. Dad's Dad was drunk of course and didn't really want to have anything to do with the baby that was being delivered. He had to think of a name, so he chose the name of the bloke that he was getting pissed with. Of course Nanny Jones didn't have any say in the matter...

Did yo know that Grandma's Mother committed suicide? She walked out the door of her S. Vancouver home, down to the log booms on the Fraser, walked accross the log booms and jumped in.

The more you talk about it, the more interesting it gets.

Alex:

The one that I remember off the bat is Dad's story about the Night Hawk box: the wooden box that we had to put all our toys away into, or this mysterious bird called the Night Hawk would steal them! Ted was so little that he believed the story when Dad told it, and he got all upset! Poor kid.