re: #397 calochortus

Then there was the issue of population and bad weather leading to crop failures. My grandfather’s parents failed at farming and were “inhyseshjon” for several years. Inhyseshjon is charitably translated as “landless peasant,” and more commonly as “parasite.”

My great grandfather’s parents’ farm suffered some bad harvests, and to survive they took him to Hamburg and sent him off on a whaling ship. They got the ‘signing bonus’, he got a job at age 10, and ten years later, he left the ship in San Francisco. They corresponded, but he never saw them again.