Jean Lafitte, My Invented Great-Great-(etc.)Grandfather

In order to appreciate how strange this story is, you would have to know my father. Failing that you will just have to trust me that, in addition to living most of his life as a colorful character, he was never above spinning a good yarn. The problem with that was that he didn’t realize how gullible his children (or at least one of them) could be.

This all started in about third grade when we were given the assignment to make a family tree for some dumb class in school. Who in their right mind would tell a third grader to make a family tree? I’d blame it on the nuns but I didn’t even have a nun that year. So anyway, I was sitting in the kitchen driving my mother nuts asking her about great grandparents and great-great grandparents. It was all very confusing. Finally, in that slippery weaseling-out maneuver that parent’s are famous for, she said, “Why don’t you go downstairs and ask your father?”

My father was working in his woodshop downstairs, as he was most nights. When I asked him who my ancestors were he — being the Tino that we all know and love but are dumb to trust — made me a really beautiful family tree. I still remember it. He drew it on a piece of plywood with one of those strange, flat carpenter’s pencils that he always carried around. As he drew it — making branches shooting off all over the place — he told me stories about all my ancestors. Fortunately for me I forgot most of them but one, Jean Lafitte. According to Tino, our family, or at least part of it, came up from New Orleans where our great-great (who knows how many “greats”) grandfather was none other than Jean Lafitte, the pirate. Boy, was I impressed! I couldn’t wait to tell the kids in my class! Boy, were they not impressed... Well, remember, this is the same father that regaled us for years with his Adventures-In-Darkest-Africa, all of which sounded, many years later, like the plot of Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movies.

So, anyway, for years I thought I was descended from a famous pirate. I liked that. I’m not sure when reality set in but, well, I’ve always secretly believed that reality is over-rated anyway. Years later when I first saw the foundation of Maison Rouge in Galveston I really did feel a pang of regret along with a vestigial familiarity with the home of my invented great-great-(etc.)grandfather. Later, in New Orleans, I stopped by the ruin of the Blacksmith Shop Bar (left) with the same sense of invented familiarity and loss.

What got me thinking about this is a chapter in Herbert Asbury’s The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld. I read Asbury’s Gangs of New York a long time ago. I loved it because it gave early New York a sort of feudal romance that I’d never associated with that town before. The French Quarter is even better. The chapter on pirates is the first real account of my invented great-great-(etc.)grandfather I’ve ever read. I don’t know why I never read anything about him before — maybe I didn’t want to know how impossible our lineage really was.

So, after reading this chapter in Asbury’s book, I’ve decided that my father told me the truth and it was just the intrusion of something as dumb as reality that screwed me up. I had a very famous and rather admirable great-great-(etc.)grandfather and I am hereby announcing that I am reclaiming him.

I wish I still had that piece of plywood. I know I’m related to a lot of other interesting people but the only proof of it is that board Tino drew in his shop. I suppose it’s possible that it’s still in there somewhere but I’ll probably never know. Well, one infamous fore-father is enough - for now. Ahoy, maties! Shiver me timbers.... aurgh.

Thanks for reading.