That’s Frances Lucas Daingerfield (née Frances De Long Lucas, 1885-1930), Ann Daingerfield Zwicky’s grandmother on her father’s side, known as “Fan” or “Fanny”. Her gravestone:
(To keep the players straight, I’ll refer to Ann’s Father as Keene and his father, the elder James Keene Daingerfield, as JKD.)
Now for two Fan-and-JKD stories.
The first story is a simple one, about JKD (who was a lawyer in Lexington KY) learning to drive. JKD was strong-minded and impulsive, not a good driving student. Early on in the lessons, he managed to do something that women used to do in old cartoons: drive right through the garage wall.
After that, Fan did all the driving.
The second story is a bit more complex. JKD was walking on the street in Lexington, near his law office, when he spied the town bore, Miss Annie Edge, up ahead of him. He crossed the street, hoping to avoid her, but she spied him and caught his eye.
“Yoo hoo, Keene”, she fluted, “I saw Fan this morning.”
“Did you?” JKD barked back, “I slept with her last night.”
That shut the woman up, for that day, anyway.
[I never asked Keene how people negotiated the naming issue in his household, with a Jr. and a Sr. — though I grew up with the same issue. It seems that for a lot of people, they were both “Keene”, just as my dad and I were were both “Arnold”, and the referents got worked out from context (though my mother, regrettably, tended to call me “Junior” a lot of the time).]
Another JKD story in a little while.
January 15, 2012 at 9:17 pm |
Re the whole same-name issue: my father’s father was Donald Grey Lusk, and my father was Donald Grey Lusk Jr until he was adopted at age 10 by Robert Donald Lowry, thus losing the Jr and becoming Donald Grey Lowry, called Don. His stepfather was also called Don. My brother was named Donald Grey Lowry Jr , and called Grey to keep things clear. Grey died at 37 but there is a nephew (son of other brother) named Grey Lowry, though not the third. But it’s disconcerting.
January 15, 2012 at 10:27 pm |
from Éamonn McManus on Google+:
January 15, 2012 at 11:46 pm |
[…] Arnold Zwicky's Blog A blog mostly about language « Fan […]