Could anyone be so desperate for a celebrity swinging in the family tree to clip this from the paper and keep it? “See that name? He was my father’s cousin!” Adolph Hitler’s finance minister—part of the family legend. And here I stand without a competent memoirist to be found.

It’s just like Grandma, here in her stuffy stucco house full of the heavy odor of burned coffee that doesn’t smell fresh even when it is, to offer such a bauble for conversation. She points out with talon-like fingers that he died in prison, among the last of the Nazi war criminals. To whom shall I send a wreath?

Why not some drug-addled rock star, floating on a Hollywood swimming pool, a cowboy hero or a Depression-era bank robber? We get Hitler’s money changer.

Maybe he was a lousy accountant, failed spreadsheet class in some German college and became loyal to a boss who gave him a chance to prove himself. Maybe his family was dysfunctional and made fun of him for being a bed wetter.

It’s all history now. I see no evidence of a Banker Gene in the family so it might all be a lie. As soon as I can escape that burned smell, the taste clinging to my throat, I’m going to just let it go.

© 2006 by Beadrin Youngdahl.