Tough morning, since the Salts were out of shape due to strange dreams. Not nightmares, or t least not exactly. They reflected some of the wild discussion that commenced the new week that is likely to produce controversy and emotion about the events to come in this unfolding historic year.

They were framed by the decisions to come this week from our Supreme Court, which led to some side-bar analysis of electoral procedures in the last three general elections, and news about apparent preparations for the one impending. To defuse the emotion, we turned to a generational discussion about the pages of genealogy that Vic had received from a dear cousin. It had been on two action lists for two generations and was finally complete.

At least the compilation was complete, since the data had been collected at least thirty years ago about events that are said to have occurred nearly three hundred years ago.

It was remarkable material he handed around the picnic table at the morning Production Meeting. He said the neat handwriting was the feminine inscription of an Aunt who had collected family information dating back to the first family arrivals in North America, sometime around 1730. It had been compiled as part of a women’s organization called the “Daughters of the American Revolution.”

For admission, proof needed to be submitted for an ancestor’s participation in the Revolution against King George III. There was no partisan context to it, though the notion of rebellions is once again a topic of conversation, and the subject of discussion veered from the time of George Washington to what caused people in Scotland to take a long voyage across a perilous sea to a new home

That led to a discussion of the Scottish Border Wars across what had once been Hadrian’s Wall, constructed to separate the savage Picts of the north from the Romanized Britons to the South. The Romans had begun their departure in 383 AD when the usurper Magnus Maximus pulled down south way from the troubled Border.

DeMille put down his mug of Chock Full O Nuts to remind us to call it the “Current Era,” due to secular sensitivities, inclusion and equity issues.

That led off into other areas of discussion, so we agreed to return to Roman issues unlikely to cause disturbance. We settled on the curious numerals that began long columns of names, dates of birth and demise, and places where those lives had been lived.

The meaning of the Roman numerals at the top of the columns was unclear at first, until Splash had a flash of insight. “They are the number of generations of Vic’s family that have been in the Colonies, described in Roman numerals!”

He passed the paper around so we could all be on the same sheet of music, so to speak. Sure enough, the Scots who debarked in Philadelphia in 1730 were “Generation I.”

There was a mild flurry of animation as we tried to equate the last numeral across the top of the old sheet. It was “VII,” or the one in which the woman who compiled it had been a member. They are all gone now, replaced by ours, which we decided to pencil in as “Gen VIII.”

That was a moment of triumph while Rocket rummaged for a pen to add columns on the page since we realized there are two more columes that should be included, since they are already alive. Our kids, now nearing middle age, would be “Generation IX.” Their kids, already active, would be the tenth generation in America.

That would be the real “Gen X,” according to the Roman scheme of things.

We call that the one after the Boomers, which has no assigned numeral. We called the “X’ers” as the preceding the Millennials, which actually would be the tenth in Vic’s family.

It is too complicated to keep the names straight, since we Boomers ex’d out our millennium years ago, and “Gen V” had handled the one before that with aplomb.

We will just go with “Gen X” for the grand kids, you know? It would go nicely to fit with what they are likely to confront in what “Gen 7” might have called “X the Unknown!”

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