Up from the DAR

My father-in-law tells this story: he and his wife were attending a gathering of the Bean descendants in America. This was her interest, not his, for she was a Bean by her father’s mother (“I’ve also got a little bit of Pennsylvania Dutch in me,” she notes). The fellow running the gathering was taking a long time waxing about the Beans—this famous Bean did that, and that Bean was famous for this, and so on and so forth. “But my golly,” father says, “the way I figured it not one of those Beans could’ve had more than a drop of blood from the first Beans. Yet, there they were, braggin’ like they were pedigreed” (“Oh, Walt,” my mother-in-law moans at this point). “Anyway,” he continues, “we were leaving, and I said to myself, but loud enough to be heard by all of ’em, ‘I’d sure feel a lot better if there was even just one horse thief back then.’ ” He grins and chuckles; Frannie moans again, “Oh, Walt.”

His attitude about ancestors—in particular the hagiography of tracing and saluting them—is delightfully skeptical, markedly American. In this country if you talk about anybody more remote than your grandparents, or mention, with specifications, your origins in another country, or, worst of all, hang some plastic coat-of-arms on your wall near the entryway, then you invite being called a snob. This is no place for extended filial piety. Hereabouts, nobody’s better than anybody else. Harry walked around the block in Independence, Ike was put in a plain Army casket, and Jimmy carries his own bag onto the plane. And we are allowed to refer to them that way. Groucho Marx acted for most of us when he mocked the opera that night with all its pretentious patrons, blue bloods who must have known the middle and maiden names of all their forebears. If they had told Groucho that their ancestors had come over on the Mayflower, he would have asked them where had they parked their moving van. Of course, these puncturing attitudes are a consequence of our deep affection for “democracy” and “equality,” as those ideas are casually defined.

MJ

About the Author

Michael James Barton

My father-in-law tells this story: he and his wife were attending a gathering of the Bean descendants in America. This was her interest, not his, for she was a Bean by her father’s mother (“I’ve also got a little bit of Pennsylvania Dutch in me,” she notes). The fellow running the gathering was taking a long time waxing about the Beans—this famous Bean did that, and that Bean was famous for this, and so on and so forth. “But my golly,” father says, “the way I figured it not one of those Beans could’ve had more than a drop of blood from the first Beans. Yet, there they were, braggin’ like they were pedigreed” (“Oh, Walt,” my mother-in-law moans at this point). “Anyway,” he continues, “we were leaving, and I said to myself, but loud enough to be heard by all of ’em, ‘I’d sure feel a lot better if there was even just one horse thief back then.’ ” He grins and chuckles; Frannie moans again, “Oh, Walt.”

His attitude about ancestors—in particular the hagiography of tracing and saluting them—is delightfully skeptical, markedly American. In this country if you talk about anybody more remote than your grandparents, or mention, with specifications, your origins in another country, or, worst of all, hang some plastic coat-of-arms on your wall near the entryway, then you invite being called a snob. This is no place for extended filial piety. Hereabouts, nobody’s better than anybody else. Harry walked around the block in Independence, Ike was put in a plain Army casket, and Jimmy carries his own bag onto the plane. And we are allowed to refer to them that way. Groucho Marx acted for most of us when he mocked the opera that night with all its pretentious patrons, blue bloods who must have known the middle and maiden names of all their forebears. If they had told Groucho that their ancestors had come over on the Mayflower, he would have asked them where had they parked their moving van. Of course, these puncturing attitudes are a consequence of our deep affection for “democracy” and “equality,” as those ideas are casually defined.