It Pays to Watch Reruns

I spent the last week visiting my Mom in Alabama. We had a good visit and enjoyed spending time in the pool. The visit was a surprise, so we did not have many things planned for our week since Mom still had to work. We did take a day trip to Hurricane Mills, TN to visit the home of Loretta Lynn (I will probably blog about that in a separate post), other than that it was really about hanging out and enjoying the family.

On Friday night, we sat down to watch some tv and I put on the rerun of Who Do You Think You Are? on NBC, with actor Steve Buscemi. Of course, I had already seen the episode, but I wanted my family to watch it. Knowing it is not a show they would ever turn on to watch by themselves.

Let me tell you, I did not fast forward quick enough through the commercials so that my step-father could watch the show. Every time he asked a question, I would pause the tv so that I could give him a proper answer. He thought it was the coolest thing ever as Steve was looking at the death record on his ancestor.

Lets rewind a few days, early in the week I had taken my step-father on the computer to ancestry.com and we did a bit of digging in his family. Nothing to serious, I had a small tree already together for him. It was from a few years back when he was trying to find his parents ship records from Ellis Island. The record had not been available online, and I was able to find it on Ancestry.com. Anyhow, we spent a good hour on his tree, took it back another generation and I now have a new family to play with when I decide it is time to do some research. We had found a death index from his great-grandfather and I told him we could order it to find more information on the family, but he was not interested. So I dropped it.

Fast forward back to Friday night, as Steve is reading his ancestor’s death record and my step father was ever so intrigued, I told him. We can order your great grandfathers, remember we found the index. He was still not interested. But he did think this whole process is cool.

As a newbie, he had some great points in the show that all of my genealogy friends would appreciate, “how do they know it is his ancestor, there is no proof in what they show us.” I absolutely love that he understood this. I did tell him that other people are doing the research and they know before it is put in front of the camera. We just do not get to see that part.

To end the night, I was told that it was really a good show and he wanted to know when it was on tv. I was so excited to tell him that right now NBC is showing last seasons episodes and there is a new season in the works. I cannot wait to let him know when it starts up again.

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