what's your tribe?

[Dancefortwo]

I think if any one of us went back three or four generations we'd find we came from farmers. 

I believe it was three generations for me.  My mother still had relatives who were farmers when she grew up.  She learned to make dresses, quilts, pickles, jams, and applesauce from her mother, so those skills hadn't died out yet.

Yeah, my fathers father was a farmer/dentist and his ancesters were all farmers.   My father's mother's relatives were politicians and military people. General Sherman is a 3rd or 4th great uncle.  My mother's father was a railroad man and his father was a farmer.  

When I traced my father's ancesters (the Bailey family) I traveled back to the Black Plague that hit London in 1665 and the London Fire in 1666.  I looked at some church documents online and traced our family line to a 10 year old George Bailey whose parents had died either in the Fire or from the Plague the year before so he was homeless kid on the streets of London.  He was taken off the streets of London by a Quaker who took him to America as an indentured servant.  Apparently there were a lot of kids left homeless and without families after the Plague and Fire so many of those kids were used as indentured servants.  Little George Bailey worked off his indentured servitude by the age of 22 and saved enough money to buy some land around the Maryland area to farm. 

I found George Bailey's will in a Maryland historical book online.  In the will George Bailey briefly wrote about his life in London during the fire and a life long fear of fire.  The birth dates and everything jived up with the chruch records in London.  It was so amazing to find this document.  It sent chills up my spine.    The internet can sometimes be a wonderful thing.

[Vera]

Bulgaria hasn't had an aristocracy for a long time (more than 700 years) (and its class system changed even further during communism), so the grandparents of the vast vast majority of people here *were* farmers. Most people of my grandparents generation had land... and them communism came and then didn't anymore (and then communism fell and then most of us (incl. my family) had land again )

I've posted this before but what the 'eck:

[Fireball]

I don't have to go back that far. I was just there
my tribe was born of practicality. We did not pay others to fix our things, we took them apart, ruined a few and fixed more.
That was the farmer mantra, fix it, make do, adapt.
It has taken decades to un-learn much of it, to delegate.

Both of my parents grew up on farms. I've rebuilt engines, restored cars, done construction and operated non- CNC machine shop equipment, among other things. I'm also at a point in my life where delegation is necessary. No way I'm going to scrape the old roof off this place and put on new shingles, for example.

[Inkubus]

"The upper class: keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes.
The middle class: pays all of the taxes, does all of the work.  The poor are there...just to scare the shit out of the middle class."

George Carlin.

[Bcat]

I've always kind of just done my own thing. I don't really feel like I'm a member of any tribe nor do I want to be.

[Alan V]

My wife's family is their own little tribe, and does lots of things together.