Well, we discovered you probably should try this on a weekday, on a warm day, on a work day. Not on a Saturday, on a cold day, in the middle of the afternoon.
We had to go to Algadones for new glasses (I lost my good ones somewhere and have been running on an old prescription) so on the way back, we cruised 8th Street - "Hey, it's Tio Juan's!" "Oh, look - it's El Toro Meat Market!" "There's Juanita's!" But none were packed with customers, the workers looked cold and miserable, and we couldn't find El Navarita, with its good Seafood Cocteles.
So we settled for Tio Juans. No tortas, no tacos, only cocteles. Shrimp? Octopus? Combinacion? O Todo? We ordered one with everything and one with shrimp and octopus. We couldn't tell the difference. They were $6.00 each, more than I expected - or $8.00 for the large. (But then I looked at Kirk & Ed's descriptions and Juanita's large is $11.) They were delicioso. Lots of shrimp, lots of octopus, served in an ice cream sundae kind of glass, with seafood juice (? whatever that was), clamato juice, fresh squeezed lime, and tiny chopped cucumbers and onions. But then he tried to charge us for a large one each - I'm not sure they were worth that.
We'll do this again - maybe Tuesday when we go back to pick up the glasses it will be warm and mid-day.
I found a blog with a recipe for the campechanas - seafood cocktails - but it doesn't have the octopus/calamari in it, which could be added. It does have oysters - good idea.
http://armidacooks.blogspot.com/2006/07/campechana-version-20.html
1/5/08
1/4/08
Genealogy Libraries - My Faves
One of my newsletters had an inquiry to readers recently asking about favorite or best libraries for research. Several of my favorites were listed, which pleased me.
The big ones are a gimme, so I won't even comment. I was raised in the Intermountain West and had grandparents living in central Utah. I've been in the SLC Family History Library since I was a child - I love it when people talk of their yearnings to go there.
http://newfamilyhistory.googlepages.com/home
My husband and I visited the Allen County, Indiana library on one of our trips through the state - we didn't spend near enough time there, but I wanted to see and breathe it. Now they've remodeled - I guess another trip is called for.
http://friendsofallencounty.org/otherdb.php
My favorite cousin is an historical biographer in his spare time; a history professor by paycheck. He's been one of my best instructors on how and where and who when researching. He introduced me to the National Archives - I've actually leafed through the original pay records of Gen. Pershing from 1917 in Northern Mexico during the campaign against Pancho Villa. Now that's a goosebump.
http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/
Preble County, Ohio - It helps the ratings when I have old dead relatives in a place - and find data on them! But Preble County also had one of the primo librarians in the country - she died in an accident just a week before we were there last. The community was in mourning. I don't know how they are doing now, but their record collection is terrific on western Ohio; they were the first library I encountered that would allow you to browse the original document images when you searched on-line; they were helpful, courteous and kind!
http://ohpreble.ohgenweb.net/
El Dorado County Historical Museum - In the late 1990s I became a victim of the Clarksville / Mormon Tavern Cemetery - in a fun way. I met a terrific old gentleman whose family was buried there. He told me the family stories and I decided to publish them - just a little booklet of a few pages and photos, with stories. And then... and then... I met two ladies at the historical museum (Sue and Suzy) who told me to get real. Turns out they had data, information, newspaper clippings, court records, cemetery records, church records, old journal records - we identified names of scores of people buried in the cemetery. They had done some background on who they were and where they came from; I did some more. Eventually, the California Genealogical Society published the book and I still get inquiries about it. http://www.cagenweb.com/eldorado/cemeteries/clarksville.htm Last year an Eagle Scout candidate coordinated with an organization of search & rescue dogs and pinpointed the graves more accurately. http://www.k9forensic.org/ Wow!
http://www.co.el-dorado.ca.us/Museum/index.html
Maysville, Kentucky Historical Museum - again, records of old dead relatives. The people here were extraordinarily nice and helpful! I went away loving them all. And they have more data than even I could copy. I must return; they are very near the Ohio River and the town was badly flooded a few years ago.
http://www.rootsweb.com/~kymcm/
The big ones are a gimme, so I won't even comment. I was raised in the Intermountain West and had grandparents living in central Utah. I've been in the SLC Family History Library since I was a child - I love it when people talk of their yearnings to go there.
http://newfamilyhistory.googlepages.com/home
My husband and I visited the Allen County, Indiana library on one of our trips through the state - we didn't spend near enough time there, but I wanted to see and breathe it. Now they've remodeled - I guess another trip is called for.
http://friendsofallencounty.org/otherdb.php
My favorite cousin is an historical biographer in his spare time; a history professor by paycheck. He's been one of my best instructors on how and where and who when researching. He introduced me to the National Archives - I've actually leafed through the original pay records of Gen. Pershing from 1917 in Northern Mexico during the campaign against Pancho Villa. Now that's a goosebump.
http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/
Preble County, Ohio - It helps the ratings when I have old dead relatives in a place - and find data on them! But Preble County also had one of the primo librarians in the country - she died in an accident just a week before we were there last. The community was in mourning. I don't know how they are doing now, but their record collection is terrific on western Ohio; they were the first library I encountered that would allow you to browse the original document images when you searched on-line; they were helpful, courteous and kind!
http://ohpreble.ohgenweb.net/
El Dorado County Historical Museum - In the late 1990s I became a victim of the Clarksville / Mormon Tavern Cemetery - in a fun way. I met a terrific old gentleman whose family was buried there. He told me the family stories and I decided to publish them - just a little booklet of a few pages and photos, with stories. And then... and then... I met two ladies at the historical museum (Sue and Suzy) who told me to get real. Turns out they had data, information, newspaper clippings, court records, cemetery records, church records, old journal records - we identified names of scores of people buried in the cemetery. They had done some background on who they were and where they came from; I did some more. Eventually, the California Genealogical Society published the book and I still get inquiries about it. http://www.cagenweb.com/eldorado/cemeteries/clarksville.htm Last year an Eagle Scout candidate coordinated with an organization of search & rescue dogs and pinpointed the graves more accurately. http://www.k9forensic.org/ Wow!
http://www.co.el-dorado.ca.us/Museum/index.html
Maysville, Kentucky Historical Museum - again, records of old dead relatives. The people here were extraordinarily nice and helpful! I went away loving them all. And they have more data than even I could copy. I must return; they are very near the Ohio River and the town was badly flooded a few years ago.
http://www.rootsweb.com/~kymcm/
1/3/08
Finding Family
Seems like I turn over a new leaf every so often, and there - in hiding - is a new relative. Most of them previously unknown and undiscovered by immediate family. My son gives me a bad time about turning up with all these new people.
My latest - now follow along - is the daughter of the half-sister of my husband's mother's younger sister's first husband's first wife... not exactly a close blood relative, but "related" in some sense of the word - I call them Kissing Cousins ("KC") when they turn up.
The background: KC's mother and father had arranged to meet with half-sister "Nan" and her husband Peter, an RAF pilot, in the summer of 1945 at Bath, England. They had seen each other recently in London. Nan and Peter never showed up. They never heard from Nan again, but kept looking. It was wartime... it was England... Mary and husband were trying to get all the ducks in a row to emigrate to the States... Nan may have gone to Nairobi... she and Peter divorced...
Current Status: Last year - 60 years later - just months after her mother Mary's death, the "KC" found some true cousins - children of Nan and Peter. She has talked with them by phone and corresponded. It is a crusade for KC to find her missing aunt, but it is spectacular fountain of information for Peter's kids - both from his marriage to Mary and his next marriage to Kay, which produced four children. Peter died when the youngest was just 3 years old. The children knew very little of him. And now this stranger has popped into their lives with names of grandparents and cousins and aunts.
Little rumors of Nan's existence pop up in family stories. Someone recalls seeing her in a grocery store in Iringa, Tanganyika Territories after the divorce... Someone says she was married again, but he might not have bothered to divorce the prior wife... Someone thinks she may have had more children... There are clues, but no body.
I find it incredible that no one bothered to document anything in the family. I'm compulsive - it must be on paper somewhere. How could they not ask their mother about details??? and then remember them??? But they didn't. They apparently didn't even know for sure if their dad was in the Army or the RAF, let alone where they lived and what happened to their half-siblings' mother. And now Kay is dead also. How sad. Perhaps the KC will eventually put the puzzle pieces together and at least be able to say where Nan died. Maybe not.
Nan and Peter were married in the UK, Kay and Peter in Africa; children were born in the UK and in Africa and again in the UK, some settled in Canada and the U.S. The challenges in finding records at all has been time consuming and frustrating. None of the families are close and clingy - barely to the Christmas card stage - so communication has been difficult.
I pushed my husband's family into some documentation of their parents' early lives - fascinating lives in Poland, Russia, Iran, Palestine, East Africa and finally the UK, Canada, the US and Australia. Mum and Kay had been closed-mouthed about the details - the War and its effects was still painful to talk of, even after all these years. The third survivor of the six children died when he was in his 50s. But the children, grandchildren and now great-grandchildren had no idea of what a victory it was for any of them to have survived, until we wrote up some of those stories.
My latest - now follow along - is the daughter of the half-sister of my husband's mother's younger sister's first husband's first wife... not exactly a close blood relative, but "related" in some sense of the word - I call them Kissing Cousins ("KC") when they turn up.
The background: KC's mother and father had arranged to meet with half-sister "Nan" and her husband Peter, an RAF pilot, in the summer of 1945 at Bath, England. They had seen each other recently in London. Nan and Peter never showed up. They never heard from Nan again, but kept looking. It was wartime... it was England... Mary and husband were trying to get all the ducks in a row to emigrate to the States... Nan may have gone to Nairobi... she and Peter divorced...
Current Status: Last year - 60 years later - just months after her mother Mary's death, the "KC" found some true cousins - children of Nan and Peter. She has talked with them by phone and corresponded. It is a crusade for KC to find her missing aunt, but it is spectacular fountain of information for Peter's kids - both from his marriage to Mary and his next marriage to Kay, which produced four children. Peter died when the youngest was just 3 years old. The children knew very little of him. And now this stranger has popped into their lives with names of grandparents and cousins and aunts.
Little rumors of Nan's existence pop up in family stories. Someone recalls seeing her in a grocery store in Iringa, Tanganyika Territories after the divorce... Someone says she was married again, but he might not have bothered to divorce the prior wife... Someone thinks she may have had more children... There are clues, but no body.
I find it incredible that no one bothered to document anything in the family. I'm compulsive - it must be on paper somewhere. How could they not ask their mother about details??? and then remember them??? But they didn't. They apparently didn't even know for sure if their dad was in the Army or the RAF, let alone where they lived and what happened to their half-siblings' mother. And now Kay is dead also. How sad. Perhaps the KC will eventually put the puzzle pieces together and at least be able to say where Nan died. Maybe not.
Nan and Peter were married in the UK, Kay and Peter in Africa; children were born in the UK and in Africa and again in the UK, some settled in Canada and the U.S. The challenges in finding records at all has been time consuming and frustrating. None of the families are close and clingy - barely to the Christmas card stage - so communication has been difficult.
I pushed my husband's family into some documentation of their parents' early lives - fascinating lives in Poland, Russia, Iran, Palestine, East Africa and finally the UK, Canada, the US and Australia. Mum and Kay had been closed-mouthed about the details - the War and its effects was still painful to talk of, even after all these years. The third survivor of the six children died when he was in his 50s. But the children, grandchildren and now great-grandchildren had no idea of what a victory it was for any of them to have survived, until we wrote up some of those stories.
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