The things that are hardly never published in the Census Records.

 It's a cold winter's morning in Southern California and this memory just popped into my head:

'' My dad used to call me 'silly potato head' as a small child. ''

The Mr. Potato Head was a plastic toy that they bought me and I used to play with it along with a dress me Betsy and a Mrs. Beasley doll from a TV show called "Family Affair", a Barbie, a GI Joe, and one "See and Say" toy where you pull the string, and it says in a scratchy male voice, "the cow goes moo".

And it just struck me that calling a child that is not a great way to build self-esteem. 

These are the legacies we are left with and fight to change because we are determined there is a better way to raise a child even though no one is provided anywhere near the number of books, lessons, or training in advance of the moment when new parents are discharged from a hospital with a newborn baby.

The fact is... we are winging it all the way until something catastrophic or bad happens.

Some of the crazy family nicknames that we take on are never recognized upon Census records and lost to time. And in my case, maybe that's a good thing.

Census Mishaps - Do you have them in your records, too?

In the 1950 U.S. Census, my great-grandfather J. Alfred Fredette is listed. But he's also dead. He could not be living at 270 Shaw Street, because he had already died by the time the census taker rolled around to the family home. So why is he listed?