re: #127 The Sanity Inspector

Erm, may I suggest we share some genealogy stories? For instance: I have one ancestor who was a North Carolina dirt farmer in the early 19th century. I suspect that he was illiterate, because his name is spelled differently for every census he appears in. Apparently, he just said his name, couldn’t spell it, and the enumerator just wrote it down the way it sounded to him.

There was once an orthodox Jewish immigrant to New York who lived on the lower east side. His name was Sean Ferguson. People would occasionally ask him how he came to have such a non-Jewish name.

His story was very simple. After a really long boat ride, he came to Ellis Island and went through a battery of physical examinations and questions. He was extremely tired, and when he was asked to give his name, he replied in Yiddish, “Ich hob schoyn vergessen” (I just forgot), and the officer wrote down “Sean Ferguson”…it’s better to hear this joke rather than read it.