44 thoughts on “I am born”

  1. My Mother was from Brownsville, PA. She or my grandparents may have known your parents, it is a small town.

      1. Yes, it’s a bit difficult to get a passport without one of those. Getting out of the country is not as hard as getting in but still some difficulty.

        1. I got my first passport without a legal birth certificate. I had the birth certificate issued by the hospital. Back in 1976, that was good enough to get a passport. Not today. In 2002, I decided I should have a copy of my legal birth certificate. Unfortunately, my father had my first name on that document as “Jerzy” – Polish for George. Cook County would not give me a birth certificate since I had no id with that name on it. It took me two years to get that corrected.

          1. I had my name mis-spelt on my birth certificate, and my parents didn’t bother to correct it. It was only a matter of MacIntyre rather than McIntyre – I’m sure they didn’t think it mattered much 60 years ago. But nowadays with identity being a much more sensitive issue it caused me problems getting a passport, with dire threats that I had applied for a passport not in my real name…

          2. The fist time my brother and myself flew to America in 2009 from Manchester UK airport ,i had put his second name Initial because we know him by that name ,as his first name Initial on the ticket .

            So because they were in the wrong order they were not going to let him on the plane ,good job he had some bank cards that matched his passport .

  3. Yes, I suspect a birther issue here with spies and maybe military intelligence. Or it could just be you hadn’t done anything yet.

  4. “Behold, a child was born unto them.”

    Let’s see if three wise men (or women) show up in the comments section today.

  6. I was born in Spain in 1953 but came to live in the UK when I was two. I didn’t get a passport until I was more than thirty, and had a great deal of difficulty obtaining a copy of my birth certificate. When I finally received it I discovered the names on it bore no relation to the names I was using, and use to this day. I’m talking completely different!

    By then my parents were no more and so I had only a vague idea of what had happened, part of which was a difference in custom between Spain and the UK over use of names, though it didn’t explain the completely different christian name. I decided to try it on with my passport application, making it in the names I actually use, expecting all sorts of problems. In fact, it sailed through unchallenged so to this day I have a second identity I can use with impunity, though I’m not sure what I’d do with it!

  7. Were you the first born? First borns have about 10^9 pictures of them just in year one. Second borns get as many pictures as the cat. Third are lucky to have any historical record whatsoever.

        1. Same here. Very few pics of me, but lots of #2 (and #4). #2 won baby contests, which I was never going to do. Too skinny and talkative, and lacking the cute factor. (Only boys were allowed to be talkative in those days.)

  8. Re. your namelessness, maybe at press time you were still TBD. Or – (AH!) – they sent the news to Brownsville by telegram.

    In Sweden I think the law requires that the kid be named no later that 6mos after birth – in any event an interval that seemed exceptionally long. One of the techs in the lab had a kid at a relatively late age – I think she was around 40 – and they didn’t name him for quite a long time. It was kinda strange to ask about a still-nameless kid.

    1. Thinking further, your father probably excitedly sent a telegram to his brother back in Brownsville (who then relayed the info to the paper) that just said, “It’s a boy!!”

      (Luckily, the telegraph operator was competent and didn’t turn it into It’s a goy!!)

  9. I imagine your parents had still not picked the appropriate Irish-American name to go with your last name. Not an Irish name like Fergus, Kieran, Donnacha, etc. Jerry fills the bill. Personally, I like Willie John (as in McBride). He was an Ulsterman and, despite his MBE, an Irishman through and through.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_John_McBride

    1. In my neighborhood, half were named “Jimmy”; the other half were “Mickey” or “Mike.” The third half were named “Pat.” (Irish math. 🙂 )

      1. Not Irish math – you need at least four more halfs. And believe it is correct to use halfs in that context not halves. Like Toronto Maple Leafs – which is correct.

  12. I’m so proud to have been born in the same state as you (although closer to the Ozarks). Your being from the “Show Me” state might have something to do with your chosen pursuit of knowledge. Missouri is a good state to be from: they’ve got ticks, chiggers, high humidity, tornados, flooding, etc. And, they were fighting the bloody causes of the civil war several years before everyone else got into it. Carthage, the biggest town in it’s part of Missouri before the war, had only 5% of that population afterward.

  13. If you were born in a Catholic hospital in 1949 you were almost certainly baptized. This was common in Catholic hospitals in the US until sometime in the late fifties or early sixties. The hospital I was born continued doing this into the sixties unless the parents expressly instructed that no baptism be performed. Even then a zealous priest might still baptize a newborn fearing their condemnation to hell in case of infant mortality. You can probably pass for Irish Catholic.

      1. Didn’t St Paul or Peter want christians to get circumcised ?

        I won’t bore you with the joke about the man who mixed up castrated with circumcision .

  14. I was born in the Waynesburg hospital in 1950 and grew up in Washington PA. My mom was from Brownsville, about half-way between Uniontown and Washington.

    Did you live in Uniontown long enough to learn yinzer?

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