Family Scams in Three Parts: Part 1

I do not know what pod got hold of my mother's body and turned her into the creature she has become, but things are getting weirder by the day. Here lately she's been churning out get-rich-quick schemes on a near daily basis. The bad part? She actually believes there's a snow ball's chance in hell of these schemes working.

Exhibit A:

Mom is a genealogy nut. I used to care about family history. Now that I hear it everytime I turn around, I'm no longer interested in anyone who isn't living. I do not care if that old house was once lived in for three years by my great-great-great grandfather. I cared the first 20 times I was told. After that, I stopped caring.

In her quest to prove that our line was planted by someone other than the person we always thought was our great-grandfather, Mom has been poking around into other people's genealogies. She struck paydirt with one man who told her all sorts of interesting things about his family. One of those stories provided the source for one of her more outrageous let's-get-rich-quick schemes.

Apparently our illegitimate ancestor owned salt mines on his land. It was the only salt mine for miles and miles. The man was wealthy. During the Civil War, the Union Army came through and cannonballed the salt mines so the South wouldn't get any use of it. They wrote the man a note saying they were sorry and they would restore the value of the mine to him after the war. After the war, the man tried to claim the paper, and Congress told him, Sorry, we're sort of in the middle of a depression here, what with rebuilding all we destroyed. You'll have to wait. He never went back.

Mom's scheme is to go to Congress and demand the present day value of the mines to be divided up among the heirs of this man. She puts the value at 500 million dollars. She backs this number up with pie in the sky.

Yeah, good luck with that, Mom.

It would be funny if she weren't actually *serious* about this. After I heard the scheme run past me 5 times in about two hours, I said, "Mom, the only thing worth any money is that stinking paper from the army. As a historical document, you could auction it off and divide that up. But Congress isn't going to give you any money. We're trillions in the hole, in case you haven't noticed."

She just laughed. From what I understand, she and another cousin are still kicking this idea around with the present decendant of this man. Whenever they go to present their case, I haven't decided if I want to be there to laugh my ass off during the hearing, or if I'll hide and be glad my last name has changed.

--Virgil