...and a western outlaw, too!

In 1964, actor Lorne Greene recorded the song “Ringo” (from the album “Welcome To the Ponderosa”). The lyrics were spoken, and spoke of outlaws and gunfights – themes familiar in the TV westerns popular in the early 1960’s.

I didn’t know then if Ringo was a made up character or was based on a real outlaw from history.

And who would have thought that I was related to the guy?

It turns out that the storyline of the song lyrics is pure fiction. The real John “Johnny” Ringo was an enemy of Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp and his brothers, and he rode with the Clanton gang, “The Cowboys”. Cattle were rustled, stagecoaches were robbed, and there was drinking and gambling. Johnny was reported in the papers to have shot and wounded a man in a bar once, for not drinking whiskey with him. This was all in and around Tombstone, Arizona in the early 1880’s. For all that, there’s no record of his being involved in a stand up one on one shootout in the middle of the street, as is often shown in westerns.


Photo from the Wikipedia article (see below)

Johnny Ringo was found dead of a bullet wound to the head, and his death was officially ruled a suicide. There are also four murder conspiracy theories; some say Wyatt Earp shot him from a distance, others that Doc Holliday did it. Other theories involved either “Buckskin” Frank Leslie as the murderer, or a gambler known by the nickname “Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce”. For all of that, you can read the details here

...and you’ll also find more about his days in Tombstone, and his prior involvement in the “Hoodoo Wars” in Mason County, Texas (1875, I think), and his earlier life. Wikipedia also has this article.

Now for the genealogy angle. As I mentioned in my last post, the Ringo family has been thoroughly researched, and there are postings on genealogy boards online. I particularly like this comment by Jim Ringo, from Ancestry.com:

“…Was out to Tombstone, AZ in March 03 to interview with the local Newspaper, Tombstone Tumbleweed. The purpose of the visit and interview was to let people know what a nice family the Ringo's are. Not sure they bought it…”

There’s some disagreement between researchers about which is the best book on the subject. Some say, “John Ringo: The Gunfighter Who Never Was”, by Jack Burrows, others maintain that “John Ringo”, by David Johnson is more accurate. My library had neither one, but it had “The Life and Death Of Johnny Ringo”, by Ray Hogan, so I checked out and read that. Mr. Hogan admits up front there is some mystery about the life and death of John Ringo, but he took the facts he found and wrote his book “…narrated in a fictional form to make its presentation more appealing. It has been a matter of clothing a skeleton with flesh…it could have been the way he lived and died.”

Ray Hogan presents John Ringo as having more education than most around him; smart enough to stay away from some of the more extreme plans of the Clanton gang (he was apparently not at the famed gunfight at the O.K. Corral). At times Johnny would go off by himself, which was likely as much a result of his lonely, sometimes morose nature. He had few friends.

Also mentioned in the book was some years Johnny spent raising cattle. Even though he showed restraint at times, John Ringo was not what you’d call a good guy (but I suspect if you read much about Doc Holliday or the Earp brothers, you’d find they weren’t angels either). I gather that the citizens of Tombstone quickly learned who Ringo was, and knew it was wise to keep at a distance from him.

John Ringo was also a descendant of Philip Janszen Ringo (the Pirate – see my last post), but on an different branch of the family than I (I’m related to the Ringo’s through the Bird family, who married into the Yoakam family, who married into the Wingate’s). So if I’ve figured this right, Johnny Ringo was a fifth cousin three generations removed from me, on my Dad’s side.

Genealogists have told me before that it’s actually kind of fun to find a black sheep you didn’t know was in the family, a “skeleton in the closet” as the saying goes. They were right.

Pirate genealogy

I've recently - the last several months - gotten back into doing some family tree research. I've always enjoyed looking at old family photos and hearing the old family stories, and I started learning about genealogy in the late 1970's. I found out early on that my grandmother was interested in that too, and had a family tree on her side back several generations into England. My mom told me that grandma was the one in the family with the interest, and that my grandfather, the one we called Poppy, really didn't want to dig into all that. For all he knew, we'd find an ancestor who was a horse thief.

The internet has speeded up much of the research, compared with back when all we had to look at were old papers, published books, and the census and other records on microfilm rolls, which had to be threaded into these big viewers at the genealogy library (those microfilms are still very useful, but I won't go into all the boring detail now). Not that all the information online is necessarily more accurate, but it's quicker to get to.

So about a year ago, I came across information on some Dutch ancestry I didn't know I had, on my dad's side. One of my great-to-the-eighth-grandfathers came from The Netherlands to New Amsterdam (now New York City); another thing I found out about him is that he died and was buried at sea.

And while I still haven't found any horse thieves, it looks like I found a pirate in the family today. I was looking for dates on a couple of families, to get an idea of when they came to the US, to see which individuals would likely show up in census records. I thought hey, the Ringo family has been well researched, and I haven't checked online for any information about them in months. So I typed in Philip Janszen Ringo genealogy on my search engine, and found quite a bit. One thing I hadn't seen before was a posting on genforum, from a Jim Ringo (I haven't figured out what kind of cousin relationship that would be, but we're apparently related). I won't copy the whole entry, but here's part...

"Ringo family members like to say that Philip Janszen Ringo was in the shipping business...During the period 1645-46 he managed to capture the Spanish Ship, St Antonio of Havana at the Bay of Campeachy (sp?) near the Mexican coast...Philip Ringo personally overcame by force one Manuel the Spaniard...was held for ransom at the Ringo family home...The Spanish considered his actions as piracy. The English and Dutch considered it as privateering."

I told the kids (they're all into the Pirates of the Caribbean movies)...there was much rejoicing.

01-01-10

This is just nuts, as I told my wife earlier in the day. 2010 already? When we were younger, The Year 2000 was a ways off yet, but it was something we could kind of imagine...it was on its way. Then, there was that movie 2001. But 2010? Yeah, right.

Where did the last 25 years go?

The kids spent New Years Eve with some good friends of the family, so my wife and I had the house to ourselves. We built some popcorn and watched a movie we hadn't seen in a long while, The Princess Bride. We enjoyed the quiet evening at home, and the kids had a good time at their party...stayed up until midnight even.

This morning after breakfast my wife and I bundled up and drove to the local Wally World to exchange the flannel pajamas I got for Christmas for the same thing in size XL. That, and we bought a few other things.

It's been bitterly cold all day, it may have made it up to 15. In the afternoon, I went out to sprinkle some snow melt chemicals on the worst of the icy patches, and to take the trash cans to the curb for tomorrow morning's pickup. Other than that, I've stayed in. The weather guessers say it may get down to one or two below zero tonight.

We're starting to put the Christmas decorations away, bit by bit, which always makes me a bit sad. That, and I had hoped to light the oven to bake some snack mix this evening. Our oven is tempermental about lighting, and it was nothing doing tonight.

Not much of a report, I know. But I thought it was interesting how today's date looked, using just the last two digits of the year. There will be some fun number sequences this year...08-09-10, 10-10-10, and 12-11-10, to list some obvious ones.

The New Year's Eve Evening Rambler

My last post of the year.

Christmas update, part 1

Well, Christmas Eve the power stayed on, the dimming of the lights was caused by an infrared heater cycling on. In fact, the sleet quit just a few minutes after I posted, and it snowed the rest of the night and pretty much all day on Christmas. We got five inches of snow here, and I heard mention that some parts of the metro got as much as 11. Another inch and a half fell on Sunday the 26th. That's a bit misleading if you expect I could measure 6 1/2 inches of accumulation out there now...since then, the snow's blown around some and compacted some. And Tuesday (or was it Wednesday?) it got up to 34 briefly, so some has melted. It's colder now, and it may get down to the teens or even single digits tonight.

I took a lot of pictures this week, and I planned to transfer some of them from my camera to the computer earlier in the day, to post here. But that didn't work for some reason, and I'm not sure what I was doing wrong. So for now, allow me to back up to late November, and show you a few older pics...

Lights!



It was a reasonably temperate day the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, when I finished putting up my outside lights and tested them.

A few days after that, we had a visit from my Sister and Brother-in-law. They gave me the address of a good friend of theirs who lives on the Kansas side, and who is seriously into decorating.



This display really has to be seen in person to be fully appreciated.



This is an actual show or program, computer controlled, synchronized to music which is broadcast by a low power FM transmitter to your car radio. There was the effect of motion; different segments of the tree would change color in synch with the music, at times a star on top of the tree appeared to spin, there were "leaping arches" around the tree, the lights outlining the roof would change color and so on. Planning for this year's display started months in advance, and I understand there is a group of people who put on these elaborate displays in different locations all across the country. My Brother-in-law helped set this up in October, and mentioned a big, thick three ring binder with page after page of detailed instructions, and custom made wiring tagged with numbers or letters to keep the assembly in the proper order while hooking it all up.

By the numbers:
5 - days to set up and test
14 - minute program
47,000 - lights.

More Christmas stories and photos to follow. Also, I plan to start January with a few blogs with some highlights of 2009 - things I should have posted months ago but somehow didn't get around to.

For now, have a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year! And remember...it'll be 90 years before we have two zeroes together in a year again. I don't know what that bit of trivia does for you, but there it is.

The Christmas Eve Evening Rambler

This has been a pretty good day, I managed to get everything I had to get done, done. And at a reasonable pace, too.

Only one problem. The much anticipated Winter Storm began to make itself known right at 4:30, when we were going to leave for the 5 PM Christmas Eve candlelight service at our church. Right as my kids were getting into the car and I was about to close the garage door, the sleet began in earnest (it had been raining on and off all day).

I don't like snow, but I'd take a foot of it over any amount of sleet any day. My wife and I hadn't gotten in the car yet, and we looked at each other and briefly discussed the pros and cons. We decided we'd stay home and have a last Advent devotion instead. After an hour and a half of sleet, who knows...it might be difficult to walk from church out to the car, much less drive home.

That's been three hours ago, and even though this is supposed to change over to snow any time, I still hear sleet hitting the window. Four to Eight inches of snow predicted...and while four isn't that uncommon, eight is pretty rare around here. At least we haven't lost power yet.

Well, I really shouldn't have typed that last bit; the lights just flickered. I've already rounded up candles, flashlights, and batteries. This could get interesting.

Years ago in similar situations, adults would joke about too many kids praying for snow. But I wonder if kids do that much these days.

Anyway, If any of my readers are traveling in this mess tonight, you're in my prayers. A safe and Merry Christmas to you.

(Man, that was kind of loud...something bigger than sleet just twanged off a window or the siding. Tree branch, maybe. Hopefully nothing big.)

Think I'll shut this down now.

Return of the Lyrics Game - three songs

I've been meaning to get back to this for quite a while. Recently I heard one of these on the radio, just thought of another lyric out of the blue for no apparent reason, and was reminded of another when I looked over my music list project.

Hints: three different decades, two genres (in other words, two of these songs you might hear on a classic rock station, the other you won't). And as always, it's more fun to guess if you resist the urge to "Google".

So here they are, in no particular order:

#1:
"Every day when I get home from work,
I feel so frustrated, the boss is a jerk,
And I get my sticks and go out to the shed..."

#2:
"He didn't say much, he kinda quiet and shy,
And if you spoke at all, he just said "Hi"..."

#3:
"I have never met Napoleon,
But I plan to find the time,
'Cause he looks so fine upon that hill,
They tell me he was lonely, he's lonely still,
Those days are gone forever..."

Can you guess? Let the game begin!

Thanksgiving -> Advent -> Christmas

Seems like it’s been difficult to sit and write lately, and I’m not sure why. It is a busy time of year, but I’m not as busy as a lot of people I know. Maybe I’m not satisfied with what I have in mind before I get to the keyboard and I hope to come up with something better, so I tend to put it off.

It’s best then, to sit down and just begin. In fact, I’m toying with the idea of starting the year with a post a day, no matter how slight. Well, more on that if it happens. Stay tuned!

So to catch up, we had a small, quiet Thanksgiving, just the five of us with daughter number two home from college. My son ushered for the Thanksgiving service, then we returned home to a good early afternoon dinner and family time. We had turkey and other traditional side dishes – cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie and the like; all on the good dishes. But we didn’t knock ourselves out over-preparing each and every possible thing, the goal being to keep the stress to a minimum. I had the good sense to not interfere with the cooking, and after dinner I did dishes. The rest of the afternoon and evening we relaxed. When it got dark, I turned on our outdoor Christmas lights, and after a while turned on the TV to watch the ceremonial lighting of the Plaza lights. I suppose you could ask for more, but I’m not sure why.

I had been keeping my eyes and ears open for comments on thankfulness. I got an email from a friend, somewhat of a lengthy but good list. Here’s a few that resonated with me:

“I am thankful…

…for a lawn that needs mowing, windows that need cleaning, and gutters that need fixing because it means I have a home.

…for all the complaining I hear about the government because it means that we have freedom of speech.

…for the parking spot I find at the far end of the parking lot because it means I am capable of walking and that I have been blessed with transportation.”

And I especially took note of this one:

“I am thankful…

…for the lady behind me in church that sings off key because it means that I can hear.

And I appreciated what Cousin Mike had to write on his blog about Giving Thanks, and…well, click here, the whole thing’s worth reading.

Now, on to the first Sunday in Advent, November 29. When I saw the Advent wreath, I made a point of saying to my kids, “Happy New Year”, being as that day marks the beginning of the Church year. The thanksgiving theme was repeated in the first two verses of our Epistle Reading for the day (1 Thessalonians 3:9-13):

“ 9 For what thanksgiving can we return to God for you, for all the joy that we feel for your sake before our God,
10 as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith?”

That stuck with me the whole service.

Advent is a special time of preparing our hearts as we approach the celebration of the birth of Christ, a time that will reward us if we’re not in such a rush that we ignore it entirely.

A friend of mine has blogged a series of 13 posts on his journey from his early memories of Christmas as a boy, to his current celebration of a scaled-down, Christ centered Christmas. Most of his entries are short, and if you click here, you’ll go to his last post where you can link to each of the previous 12 posts. His Advent comments start with his seventh post, but I found it worthwhile to read them all in order starting with the first; perhaps you will too. I couldn’t have put it better.

I got out our Advent wreath and candles late, the second week of Advent. Hopefully next year I’ll be organized from the first, well, it’s a work in progress. I do enjoy lighting the candles and having a devotion…there have been years where I’ve skipped that entirely, I’m sorry to admit.

And as for the Christmas decorations, I guess I decorate more than some and less than others. I do get a great joy out of decorating, especially putting up the lights. For what it’s worth, I guess my personal rule of thumb going into this season is:

1. Keep the faith – don’t neglect gathering as believers.
2. Decorate as much as you enjoy, but if you start to stress out, stop. It’s good as it is.
3. Shop early, not the last few days…definitely not Christmas Eve.
4. Keep the Christmas meal simple, sandwiches, finger food and snacks, a few simple desserts. Don’t make it a lot of work (unless your family has a tradition of a big gathering and feast that you all enjoy – your mileage may vary, as they say).
5. Relax, enjoy, make memories, and take photos to look at later, if you wish.

Well, I’m in more of a writing mood now, so it’s likely I’ll post again before Christmas (though probably on other topics). But in case I forget, I’ll say it now. I hope and pray you all have a blessed, fun, stress-free and safe Christmas season.