Nothing wrong with your mom’s folks....except treating your dad like he wasn’t good enough....being rich and with a fancy name is a nice gig
Being able to transcend all money classes if one is rich or from rich is crucial to being a bit more rounded.
We did pretty well in WWII with a lot of input from that class.
Good post...you are spot on that real upper class folks know Megan’s mom’s family beer fortune is too new and western and would recoil at her thinking she is a blue blood....there are no real bluebloods west of Chicago and all the southern ones lost their money 150 years ago..
The Bushes and Walkers are Blue though....very.
Money can’t buy name. It takes time to build all that.
Its been a while since I even considered my roots like that.
It was always fun to be “from the wrong side of the tracks.” We used to vacation at the “estate” in northern VT on a lake. I always got along better with the farm hands, and learned more from them than I did the family. When competing with the local girls, they would end up with my brothers and I and laugh at the rich cousins and their “fancy ways.”
My grandfather was a good guy— a Norwich grad (one of many in a long line—hence my “name”) and did his time in the Army. He made “his” money in firearms production in WWII. Went back and forth between here and England a lot.
My family owned a good junk of prime property in Vermont since the 1860’s. One relative invented a cap for whiskey bottles that made his riches. The same guy invented a form of the safety pin that was used during the Civil War. Finally, his kid was a true carpet bagger (not our finest moment!) He was a gambler and overall degenerate. He lost a lot of the cash, which his kid made back at the turn of the century in real estate.
That was something like six generations ago. My mother now lives on one of the last lots of that estate. It has been handed down and divided over those generations—and her part is still valued in the high six figures dollars. The value of the original estate must have been enormous for the time.
You should have seen my wife’s face when she found out that the property would become ours—and what it was worth. Divided by the number of my siblings, it is still a six figure inheritance, but I am in no hurry to get it. the taxes in that area have gone crazy—jut because it has a nice view.
My whole family has always been into their genealogy and who we are related to: Famous poets, Declaration of Independence signers, huge colleges have their name, etc. I often wondered what THOSE people would think of the pasty, bland, offspring most of my cousins are. They would probably slap them upside the head and tell them to get a job.
When I became a corporate success at a pretty early age you should have seen how I was welcomed into their world. It made me sick to my stomach. I have more in common with the folks that built the empire than those that suckle off from it now. You should have seen them when I cashed it all in to start my own business. Not quite a carpet bagger, but I think I have his spirit.
The use a pretty graphic analogy: I have the pedigree to be in the best shows. But, I would rather hang out outside the pound, where the cool dogs are.
So, the whole “Blueblood” thing just makes me chuckle.
What is more funny was when I was in my twenties, I would watch the TV with my mom. When the news came on, she would look at the Ambassadors and Governors, and what-not and tell me what A-holes they were when they were kids.
So, Meghan can think she can play, but she won’t EVER be in “the club.” Unless she is entertaining out back or cleaning the dishes, or changing the sheets in the rooms. But don’t fret—some of those folks made pretty good change for their loyalty and closed mouths.