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David Mitchell
Well, I guess it's time for me to reveal the correct pronunciation of my last name - with apologies to John Jackson, Johnny Scheaufele, Nina Osborne, Mary Ann (Nolan) Thomas, Tommy Swain, and Dave Barbour (and any ohter OLPers on the forum that I may have forgotten). Sorry I kept this from all of you.
The name has roots in French Canada, with several long locational modifiers,
But we can stick to the short version - Michelle.
Voila!
(I was told some enlightened great, great forfather - about 4 or 5 generations ago - re-branded himself "Mitchell" and along with his improved English, was thereafter hired for a higher paying supervisory job in a lumber mill in northern New Hampshire. French speaking cousins in Montreal were not amused)
I'm going to keep this going - I think it gets kind of fun as it continues.
Then same forefather went and married some little orphan girl from Ireland and moved to Burlington, VT. They had kids, including a son (my dad's father) Albert, who as a teenager used to skate across Lake Champlain to their rich aunt's house and pick up a lalrge bag full of Christmas presents for his silbings, then skate back home to Burlington with the gifts. Theye were rather poor and had few Christmas gifts of their own.
In 1903, grandpa Albert answered an ad in a national newspaper for a job, selling men's clothes in the (long ago closed) Boston Store in a far away place called Columbus, Ohio. He moved all the way to Columbus and took the job. After the Boston Store closed, Albert got a job at the "Union" department store in it's original building on North High Street, just a few blocks north of Broad and High. There he sold men's suits, shirts, ties, and accessoriesout for almost 40 years.
My dad explained to me how "The Union" always kept their workers on low pay scales. When times were good, they put the staff on a set hourly (low) wage. And when times were slow, they switched them to commission - so they could never really get ahead in life.
But my Grandma Margaret (the poor little Irish orphan) invested a couple thousand dollars in some lots over on Ackerman road and made a "killing" (about $5,000) so they were able to move from their home on 10th Ave (or 11th?) to an upper class neighborhood on 42 Acton Road. They had 5 kids - Dad was the "middle" kid.
As it happens, I went to work for "The Union" myself in the months between my (deliberate) flunking out at the University of Denver and my enlisrment into the Army - late fall and Christmas season of 1968. I had an interview with some guy in the downtown store who asked if by any chance I was Albert Mitchell's grandson. When I told him I was he said "you're hired" and abruptly closed his file. He had known grandpa Albert when he was a young "stock boy" years before.
So they assigned me to the Men's department at Northland shopping center, where I met my new department supervisor, an older man with a pencil mustache and bright scarf in his suit pocket. He also asked me if I was related to Albert Mitchell. When I told him He was my grandfather, he went off about how he was trained as a boy by Grandpa Albert in the old downtown store and how fond his memory was.
He explained the Grandpa Albert was so well liked and trusted that mothers would sent their teenage sons on the bus alone to "go ask for Albert Mitchell" because they knew he was so trustworthy that thye could send them alone without accompaniment, and know that he would sell them just the rigth clothing, and never try to oversell them with more than they needed.
I spent my three months trying to honor a grandfather I had never seen, but for whom I had gained a good deal of respect.
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