Often when I tell people I’m interested in family history they take it to mean genealogy. I’m not interested in that at all. I have three Mormon cousins, (my father’s brother Jerry’s wife Merilyn is Mormon) who have eighteen children between them, to take care of that. I don’t believe in an afterlife where we’re all together in this form of relationship for eternity.
It’s the stories
No, my interest is in the stories. In fact, I never cared for history until I got to college and realized that it was more than names and dates and kings. I discovered that it was about movements, art, religion and technology (yes, technology was a factor even during the Renaissance and at Cooperstown we studied folk technology). I studied architectural history, the bible as history, the history of the decorative arts (form does follow function), popular culture, and the history of the American landscape. I guess what I studied is now considered American Studies.
What is strange is that when I went to my interview at the Cooperstown Graduate Program Frank Spinney, the Museum Studies instructor didn’t want to accept me into the program because I hadn’t studied early American (Colonial) history. I had to take a class in Colonial American history in my final quarter at CAL. I did take a seminar on Colonial Latin America. I really felt that was far more pertinent to a native San Diegan than learning about what happened in the thirteen colonies.
Great professors
I had some great instructors at CAL. One of my favorites was Larry Levine. I took a few classes from him, my favorite being the popular culture of the 1930′s where we saw a movie each week-Sullivan’s Travels and It Happened One Night and read Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Another was Bob Abzug who taught my thesis seminar (my thesis was on bathing). Bob is now at the University of Texas, Austin.
My visit with J.B. Jackson
A favorite class was J.B. Jackson’s History of the American Landscape. I enjoyed it so much that although I had almost no interaction with him during the class (it was a huge lecture with T.A.s) I looked him up when I was in Santa Fe in 1994.
I had heard that he lived outside of Santa Fe. I looked in the phone book and found the town where he lived. I went there and stopped at the local museum. After telling me that he’d probably be in the same clothes he wore in the early ‘70′s, the museum director told me where he lived and called him to tell him I was coming. Jackson was preparing to give his papers to the College of Santa Fe and was writing about what the history of the American landscape was and had lots of questions for me as a student of his. I spent a wonderful afternoon with J.B. Jackson talking about gardening, landscape, and life. He died a year or so later so I’m glad I had taken the time to spend with him.
Discovering social and cultural history changed my life. It made me appreciate that everything is history and that we are all a part of it. Family, food, objects all make up history and that’s why I went to a history museum program at Cooperstown.
Comrades and Chicken Ranchers
One of my favorite books is an oral history of the Jewish chicken ranchers of Petaluma, CA, Comrades and Chicken Ranchers, the story of a California Jewish community by Kenneth Kann, 1993 (order the book)
They moved to Phoenix with their four children after my grandfather developed TB. My grandmother’s family pooled together to raise the money for the travel expenses. Much of the money was from a life insurance policy on my grandmother’s brother who had recently died. The story my father’s cousin Reine tells is that the policy had lapsed, but my grandmother’s brother-in-law who worked for the insurance company got it reinstated.
All in a name
I never called my grandfather anything but Grandpa, although my grandmother was Lizzie. People often just called him Pop. The thing with his name is that when his brother Izzie heard he was so sick he’d probably die the brother took his name of Irving. My grandpa then became Irwin, because there couldn’t be two Irving Goodwin in the same family. It was so confusing that no one used either–he was Grandpa, Pop or Mr. Goodwin. Grandpa (the only one that I knew) lived to be 76 and died in 1971 after coming home from jury duty.
Grandpa in hat standing next to his brother Izzie/Irving.
back row: Rozzie, Jerry, Irving, Grandpa, Lizzie. Front row: Robbie and Donnie.