It’s Saturday night and Juliet and June are watching some horrid reality TV while I am cruising around Google looking up Lester Buckingham’s family history, or as much as is documented on the internet. There isn’t much, but I do discover that not only Lester’s father disappeared in 1979, but also Lester’s uncle, his father’s brother who moved West with the family when they migrated. Also, there is an article that is archived from the local Mendocino paper about Lester’s mother—apparently she didn’t retire from teaching but was fired because she slapped one of her students in the face when she caught him cheating on a test. Other than that, there’s not much on the internet about the California side of the Buckingham family. There are a whole bunch of articles about the Buckinghams of Appalachia in local papers there—and they are not a savory family. It’s hard to know how closely related any of these Buckinghams are to Lester but there is a bank robber Buckingham, a child molester Buckingham, a Buckingham who murdered his wife and kids and another Buckingham who was arrested for prostitution. Of course, I am only searching for Buckingham + nefarious keywords, so I’m sure there are a lot of very decent Buckinghams over in Appalachia as well, but who is interested in them, right? (:
In any case, can't fault Buckingham for having bad apples in his family--you can do a search of my last name and find killers and drug dealers and villains galore--a few of them my close cousins, in fact. That's how it goes when you come from a working class family like mine--when you grow up in a poor part of New Jersey!!
Anyway, my eyes are bleary from staring at the computer screen all night. I’m going to go watch reality TV with my wife and child and relax. Good night.
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