Meet the Critters #3

We are pleased to report that we have successfully synthesized a baby human

This post is part of an ongoing series, Meet the Critters, that introduces our cast of animalian characters here at the farm.

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My ever-enduring wife Rachael, having become infected with progeny several months prior, has given birth to one Elijah Graham Kearns on the Twenty-Fifth Day of the Month of November in the Year Two-Thousand and Twenty-Two.

Here they are, mere moments after parturition:

What’s In A Name

When I was a young boy I asked my mom about my name.

Me and my mom, sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

My dad is named James Robert Kearns Junior. (He goes by Rob or Robbie.) I asked my mom, “Why didn’t you name me ‘James Robert Kearns the Third?’”

She said that she wanted me to be my own person and to have my own name to go with it. So I was named “Joshua Perry Kearns.”

My middle name “Perry” had its own significance. Yes, Perry was my Mom’s maiden name. But I wasn’t named after her.

I was named “Perry” after my maternal grandfather, Hobart Augustus Perry. He went by Gus, and is shown here:

Left-to-right: My mom Sue Ann (Perry) Kearns, my sister Amanda Louise, my grandfather Hobart Augustus (Gus) Perry, me, my grandmother Nancy (Lusk) Perry, and my dad James Robert (Rob, Robbie) Kearns, Jr.

“Joshua” was just a name that my mom and dad liked. That’s the name they gave me. It didn’t have any particular family significance or higher meaning. They just liked the name Joshua.

Interestingly, the 1970s saw a massive surge in enthusiasm for the name Joshua. I’m proud to report that my boyhood during the 1980s coincided with peak-Joshua, with nearly 1.2% of baby boys being given the name.

Similarly, Rachael just liked the name Elijah (and especially its diminuative Eli).

Unsurprisingly, my family and I continue to define the trends of our era as reflected in recent rapid growth in the popularity of both the names Elijah…

…and Graham.

Where does “Graham” come from?

In keeping with our tradition of slightly cryptic middle namesakes, Elijah Graham is named after my maternal great-grandmother (my mom’s mom’s mom), Janice Lusk (McCurdy). Here she is seated at the head of the table at our house sometime in the mid-1980s.

Around the table from the left: my sister Amanda Louise, my aunt (dad’s sister) LuAnn Kearns, Granny (Flaura Louise (McComas) Kearns, dad’s mom), Janice (McCurdy) Lusk, James Robert Kearns Sr (AKA Papaw), me, my dad James Robert Kearns Jr (Rob). My mom took the photo.

She was born Janice McCurdy in 1907 to Azel McCurdy and Sue (Senseny) McCurdy, whom my mom was named after. Janice married Joe Lusk (whom I never met), and they had two kids including my grandmother Nancy Lusk who married Gus Perry pictured above. They had four kids including my mom Sue Ann Perry.

When I was growing up, to everyone in the family old or young, Janice was “Gram.” Gram was great and we loved her dearly. But she was the textbook definition of “crazy old bat.” Independent, stubborn, headstrong, kooky, not a little superstitious. Skeptical of just about everyone and everything, fairly standoffish. Loyal, strong, and as bluntly honest as it’s possible for a human to be. Irascible, opinionated, stern and strict with children and pupils - like a majority of my women ancestors she was a schoolteacher. She may or may not have been involved with some quasi-occult form of hillbilly witchcraft. Frugal, thrifty, penny-pinching, yet generous beyond measure with friends and family.

In other words, Gram was archetypally Scots-Irish Appalachian as all getout.

Gram - a quintessential West Virginia Scots-Irish matriarch.

Gram stories:

She didn’t keep toys at her house. So when we kids went to visit she would take out all her mouse traps and rat traps and set them all over the house. She’d give us screw drivers and we’d run around the house snapping the traps closed. Then she’d spring them set again and we’d run around screaming with delight snapping the traps another time. Was this a safe way for little children to play? It was the 1980s! Who cares! We loved it.

In the cold season we’d go visit her and find her wrapped up in an afghan in her house with the thermostat set on 85 or 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Family members would be peeling off layers of clothes, but Gram would be happily sitting in her armchair next to a space heater drinking brandy out of a juice glass.

She flatly refused to drive a car with automatic transmission. The cars she had when I was a kid were an AMC Pacer like this one:

and an early 80s copper colored Corolla like this one:

Even though she would only drive a manual, she had her own, let’s say special, way of operating it. She would rev the engine to around 5,000 RPM and then very slowly let out the clutch over a few blocks or a quarter mile. No surprise she had to have the clutch replaced every couple of years. But you could always hear when Gram was coming to visit! RRRRRRRRRRR that poor little four cylinder revving up, clutch pads smoking...

One time her Corolla was in the shop (probly for a new clutch) and they gave her some modern (for the time) rental with an automatic transmission and automatic seatbelts to drive home. (Readers who are old enough will remember the automatic seatbelts that moved into position on a track around the door frame when the car was started.) The automatic seatbelts perturbed her so mightily that she stormed right back into the mechanic shop and cussed them out, probably inventing new cuss words never heard before in the process. She took the bus home.

Gram died in her late 80s when I was in high school. When she could no longer cut her own grass and drive herself to the grocery store they put her in a nursing home and she lasted maybe a couple of months, tops. She was gonna do for herself, or she was just not gonna do, period. As it should be.

I am proud and happy to name my son after someone so independent, so quirky and intense, so tough and tender, so idiosyncratic, and so full of love and generosity to her family and friends. Elijah Graham is HERE, and “LOOK OUT WORLD” is right!

I’ll promise you this though: he’ll learn to drive a manual and be gentler on clutches and machinery than kooky old Gram!

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