Good Morning Renfrewshire

This is 36 Cowlair's Road in Glasgow, Scotland. Like the grey skies above it and the moist grass below, it is a building not unlike a million other's in Great Britain. But it is special to me.

Last week, after spending 5 days in distinctively different and markedly warmer Palm Springs, I returned home to find a post (letter) from the District of Renfrewshire, Paisley. I had written them three months earlier and included a check for $21. Or stones. Or quid. Or sheep's knuckles, I can't keep track of their currency.

I had requested a copy of my mother's birth certificate. And to be honest, didn't think I'd ever hear back. To be even more honest and perhaps a bit elitist, I didn't think they had there wherewithal to keep track of records than now span close to a hundred years ago. 

But there it was, an official Birth Certificate from the District of Provan in the Burgh of Glasgow for Isabella Samson Horne Park. Including the location of her parent's, George and Isabella, apartment on Cowlair's Road.

I never met my grandfather George, who my cousin Robert in Wales, suspects was "not a nice person." But I now know his occupation was listed as Engineer's Machineman.

From what little I know of my mother's roots, I think George might have been guilty of a little 'resume enhancement.'

She rarely talked about her family. Though often wrote airmail letters to her 5 remaining siblings back in wee bonnie Scotland. 

Isabella (later Isabell) and her sister Mary (who passed away at a very young age in a tragic Brooklyn fire) boarded the Queen Elizabeth II and came across the pond between 1952 and 1954. They were only 19 and 17 years old, respectively.

It was an incredibly brave and perhaps impulsive decision to pick up and go to the States. If not for that monumental decision I would not have won the lottery of life and you would not be reading this. And I would not be walking out the door to head up the street for my physical therapy session.

Ugh.

And in case you're wondering I AM applying for British citizenship. And then a passport. And should Trumpica continue down the path towards Germany (circa 1933) with its own Gazpacho Police, I will have an escape hatch. 

Preppers prep, Scottish Jews plan ahead.