Thursday's Theme - Birthday

Since today's theme is birthdays, I thought I would repost something from a couple of years ago. It illustrates how the world has changed. It is the story of my father's birthday, or birthdays, as it was. One of the interesting chapters from the history of the Sneeds in America involves my grandparents, Walter Sr. and Meryl Sneed. My name is a derivation of my grandmother's name and may also be the origin of the name of a famous actress. My father was Walter Sneed, Jr. My grandparents were married in October of 1923 in a small village in central New York state, which is the traditional home of the Sneeds in America. Their marriage was a hastily arranged affair, after young Meryl was found to be "with Sneed", as they say. This was a major deal in central New York in 1923, so the young couple was sent to live with relatives in Holland, Michigan, where the exact date of their marriage could be concealed from nattering naybobs. Young Walter Sneed, Jr. came into the world in March of 1924, with his brother Roger born 13 month later, in April of 1925, also in Holland. In 1927, while the boys were still young enough not to know when they were born, the family headed back to New York and once more settled in, living with both Walter and Meryl's mothers, all together in the same house. Since everyone in town knew or could find out the date of Walter and Meryl's wedding and compare it to the boy's actual birthdays, the birth dates were adjusted forward to legitimize young Walter's birth and to keep Roger the younger of the two. Walter Jr.'s new date became July 15, 1924 and Roger's shifted to August, 1925. These remained their birth dates of record throughout their school years. The word of the parent was good enough for school officials in those days. My father's real birth date was in March, and I am not sure how or even when his official birthday, that we always observed in March, moved back from July. Maybe it was when he graduated from high school and had to have he birth certificate to go to college or later join the Navy. It's all very murky. Sometime in the early '70s, I came into possession of a family Bible that had a detailed record of many of the milestones in the history of the Sneeds in America. One of the items recorded, was the wedding of Walter Sr, and Meryl Sneed in October of 1923. I thought long and hard about the implications of this before finally calling and asking my mother if she was aware of this fact. She told me that I was to never tell my father what I knew...ever. My father, she said, would be ashamed about this revelation and I was not to embarrass him. She also said he had no clue about the deception of his parents. In retrospect, that was clearly impossible. We had different sensibilities in the old days. My father was a proud man and lived most of his life putting up a false front for the world, because he never really thought he was good enough. He couldn't bear a chink in his finely crafted facade. I said nothing to him about my discovery. Years later, maybe a decade ago, my brother Earl and I were speaking to my uncle Roger one evening in my father's kitchen. Dad was in the living room watching TV. While kicking around the history of the Sneeds in America my uncle said, "You know that your grandmother was knocked up when your grandparents were married, don't you?" My brother and I stared at one another in stunned silence, in part from the utterance of the forbidden fact and partly from his choice of phrasing. I told him that we knew but that our mother had threatened us if we ever told Dad because he would be embarrassed if he found out about his parents deception. Uncle Roger looked at me and then my brother and said, "Do you two imbeciles think he's a moron? Of course he knows." Then he shouted, "Hey Junior, when was your school birthday?" "July 15th." my dad responded. Then he went back to the TV. This how it was in our family. We spent so much time covering up our Sneedness that we often confused one another. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky