The Vokouns of Chicagoland

 Ranger Rick says, "kids, don't play with fire in the woods." Careful kids, you could choke on the smoke. My son is taking European History. His friends have taken to calling him "Hapsburg" because he is a German Catholic. That is probably the single nerdiest nickname I can think of. By the way, the Hapsburgs were the primary monarchy of the Holy Roman Empire in Central Europe during the Middle Ages and they play a major role in Bohemian history. I'll talk about them another time. But I tell you this nickname in order to ask is that really the best that a bunch of smart-mouthed teens can come up with? When they have so much to work with here?  (Don't worry, I'll get to the raccoon.) This post is about going through life with a name like Vokoun. For those of you reading who were not saddled with a weird, mispronounced name blessed to carry on the unique family heritage, you may not fully grasp the lifelong quandary of how to respond when someone says...

Bored? Looking for a good read? There was a magazine published at the turn of the century called Park and Cemetery . Unfathomably and to the dismay of mausoleum enthusiasts, it didn't catch on as it was and folded after 5 years. That didn't stop a more macabre-sounding successor American Cemetery and Cremation from launching. Apparently this magazine was far more readable and relevant because it's been around for 90 years. I work at a hospital. I was thinking I ought to order some copies for our waiting area. The administration is really struggling to address staffing problems and, like any good employee, I am always trying to find ways to be helpful. Bohemian National Cemetery I have no idea if the Bohemian National Cemetery in Chicago was ever featured in either magazine but it is on the National Registry of Historic Places. Nearly 120,000 people have been buried there. You take a virtual tour here . (I'm going to include some photos in this post so that you can get ...

I think the Godfather I and II are two of the best movies I've ever seen. In this scene, Robert Deniro playing a young Vito Corleone is shown sitting on tenement steps in New York with his young family (Carmella, Sonny, Fredo, and Michael if you've seen the films) having just arrived from Sicily. Vito is struggling to find work on the docks to feed the family and pay the rent. He hasn't yet turned to a life of crime. Their story really resonates with me when thinking about our immigrant story. But the films wouldn't be so powerful without the compelling characters. I started out without knowing the characters in our story. I knew the name of my great grandfather and grandmother, Rudolph and Lydia, and I knew that they had siblings but I wasn't sure how many. One of my most significant puzzle pieces came from this obituary that I found with the help of some very nice ladies at the Czech and Slovak American Genealogy Society of Illinois  This is from the Denni Hlastel...

Every good story starts with a fish.  Except Shakespeare, and Dickens, and Jane Austen but they're all English. This is an American story. The great American novel is Moby Dick . Actually the whale is an aquatic mammal, and the novel starts with 'Call me Ishmael', and I'm no Herman Melville, but we start this literary masterpiece  niche blog there nonetheless. We shall see if this turns into a saga (thinking of every high school kid who slogged through Moby Dick wondering if Melville was paid by the word) or a little novella. If the former, I'll try to keep it more interesting that everyone's favorite in classic literature. I don't ultimately know how this story will end because I continue to make new discoveries. But I already have a lot of material so hopefully you will enjoy it as much as I do. So the fish in our story is a perch. The perch a freshwater gamefish. Some things to know about perch are that they are found throughout Europe in rivers and lake...