Likes and Dislikes, continued.

We like to talk about our dead relatives.

My family spent Mother's day searching our family's archives for my great-granddaddy Fuller's hand-written recipe for Coca Cola. I've never seen it, though it is said to be written on a slip of pharmacy paper and dated March of 1931.

To many people, this isn't really worth the trouble. To us, well, we're still looking. The same way people who claim to be related to William Wallace or George Washington stick to their accounts of, "My great great great great great uncle fought under Robert E. Lee, we're related because........."

Our ancestors are our claim to fame. By telling people that our family history spans more than a few decades, we affirm our own beliefs that we come from something greater than the cookie-cutter houses we grew up in.

Of course everyone's family goes back, way back. But knowing your family's history- having written records like in a Bible suggests that your family was worth recording.

Those old, crisp pictures with writing on the back- lead for sure, and in a script that cannot be replicated by those educated by pencils that were over one inch in diameter and the paper with the dashes in the middle of the lines- those are history. They have names written on them- Albertus, Estelle, Carrie Nell- that tell who you are and whose you are.

Maybe having a hand-written recipe for Coke isn't much. In our defense, a Georgia native who could read and write in the 1930s is quite impressive. Many people talk about the huge houses that their grandparents live in and the Cadillacs that sit in the driveway with 8 miles on the odometer. Others would reference the guy who sold his recipe for Dr. Pepper a few weeks ago for over $100,000. Whoever's side you take is irrelevant, because everyone in our family believes like hell that we will find that damn paper and *never sell it*.

My great-aunt Leesie lost her mind a while ago, and gave a silver tea service and a monogrammed walking stick belonging to Lyman Hall, signer of the Declaration of Independence and our ancestor on daddy's side- to the Salvation Army. The person who bought those for roughly $5 will never know that the monogram is that of the 12th governor of Georgia. They will never know that some of the only tangible history of our family now belongs to them.

Either way, we know it happened, and we love to name-drop (or product place? in reference to coke). Ancestry is definitely a southern LIKE.