Re: Ya ta-hey Clay the Knife Maker

Posted by Bill Gann on 20:17:05 02/08/06

In Reply to: Re: Ya ta-hey Clay the Knife Maker posted by GSupt

Well there is more or less a Texas and a California side to the wild Gann Clan. One side is church going, hard working, salt of the earth folks, and the others ran off to become rich, famous movie stars.

My father, and young Clay's grandfather grew up along with seven siblings as migrant cotton pickers. They had little or no formal education, and often no shoes. My mother taught my father to read.

They hunted with slingshots for birds and squirrels, and were great fishermen or they would have starved. One year someone accidentally spilled lamp oil in the flour barrel, and they all remember the year when biscuits tasted like kerosene.

Their formative years were spent in worker's shacks, and they never set their bare feet on land they owned until they grew up and left that joy,

The great family secret was the Choctaw blood. Native People's social status was only one notch on the social totem above Blacks and one below white trash.

Some parts of our family actually married back into various Indian cultures in Texas, Oklahoma or New Mexico. But they still lied about the Choctaw blood, claiming Chickasaw or even Cherokee.

I have an uncle that was a one-armed preacher in Sweetwater, Texas. He lost his arm in a cotton gin. I was doing family history and was all over the Indian heritage. He took me aside when I visited his church and explained all this,

"Now Billy, don't be talking up that Choctaw stuff round the congregation. You see, the Choctaw intermarried with the slaves, and they's some of the blackest Indians they is."

Since there wasn't much reading and writing most Ganns are great story tellers, preachers, or tall tale tellers.

This did make some of us famous, as cousin Ernest K. Gann wrote some great books. And Paul Gann really helped Howard Jarvas screwed up California public funding.

And, what, you might ask does any of this have to do with Death Valley? It does indeed. Read the story I ve posted called Gann s move to California. Enjoy the desert journey.

Ganns Cross The Mojave

Follow Ups:

Re: Ya ta-hey Clay the Knife Maker - GSupt 08:25:27 02/09/06 (1)
- Re: Ya ta-hey Clay the Knife Maker - Bill Gann 16:40:53 02/09/06 (0)
Re: Ya ta-hey Clay the Knife Maker - E.C.Gann 22:40:16 02/08/06 (1)
- Re: Ya ta-hey Clay the Knife Maker - Bill Gann 23:02:19 02/08/06 (0)

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