Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri
Katy is represented by
Rachelle Gardner at
WordServe Literary
Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net
Recent Posts
- Some Things, You Know
- Ticking The Boxes
- Happy Ninth Blogiversary to ME!
- NaNoCryMo
- Predictability? Don’t Count On It
- It’s That Time Again!
- Losing It
- Acutely Not That Funny
- Coming To Terms With Writing Terms
- Another Great Conference!
- Catching Up Again, Or Still?
- Crazy!
- If Doug Had Seen This Movie Of Me As A Baby, He Might Not Have Ended Up With Chatty Katy
- I Can’t Believe We’re Finally Here
- Why I’m Always Glad To Have Written
Syndicate
E me at katy @ ngenius.com
Plunkett and Podge
If I hadn’t lost John McKenna—albeit temporarily—I never would have found Plunkett McKenna. And if I hadn’t found Plunkett, well, I’d have never met Podge McKenna.
John McKenna of Kilsyth, Scotland, a man I found on the Internet, has turned out to be my second or perhaps third cousin. You tell me: he is the grandson of my grandfather’s brother. We kept up pretty well online for a year or so, and then he told me that he was going to be moving to the Inverness area. He gave me his new email address, a precious commodity to my way of thinking, the occasion of which prompted my computer which contained that information to utterly and forsakenly die.
About a month before we left for the old country, I decided to search the World Wide Web until I found John McKenna again. I hummed a few bars of “It’s A Small Web After All” and hoped for googling success. I almost got lucky, too. I found a fellow’s business site. He looked like I remember my John looking, so I emailed him.
He said, Sorry, I’m not your John McKenna. Have you thought about trying the online UK phone book? So I tried it, to absolutely no freaking avail. But somehow I found a man named Plunkett McKenna, who advertises online as a tour guide specializing in County Monaghan, and focusing even more particularly on all things (and sites) McKenna.
I emailed Plunkett and he agreed to meet Doug and me on a certain day in Emyvale, County Monaghan, a town known as “McKenna Country.” Plunkett couldn’t possibly make up for the loss of John, but I figured meeting him might provide links to other branches of the family.
He likes to help people with their genealogical puzzles, he said, so I offered a few details about my father’s family—the only few I knew.
He wrote back in ten minutes flat. “Strange that your grandfather Bernard drowned in Scotland. My great-grandfather Bernard drowned in Scotland, as well.”
I wrote him back in ten seconds flat. “Did your great-grandfather perhaps father a child, who would be your grandparent, before moving from Ireland to Scotland?”
Five seconds later came the reply. “No. My Bernard McKenna married and raised a large family in Ireland. But when he drowned, the family received a letter from the priest in Scotland stating that the old man was known to have two families.”
Yikes! I’d imagined a lot of stuff about Grandpa Bernard, but it never occurred to me that he might be a bigamist. Were Plunkett and I related also, and how exactly do you refer to a “cousin” who’s from the “other” family your grandfather had in secret? The correspondence died off after that brief exchange, and I didn’t hear from Plunkett again until I arrived in County Monaghan and dialed his cell phone.
By then, I was ready for anything. Even a man named Podge.
Katy,
You look so much like my Canadian Cousins, Mary and Patrica.
Talk soon.
{Plunkett)Posted by Plunkett McKenna on 01/23 at 08:34 AM
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