2004—Jonathan! (Grandsquirt #9)

“Oy, gewalt!”

As far as I’ve been able to ascertain, the year of our Lord 2004 saw only one child born to a family of my faith in the historic¹ town of Carthage, Hancock County, Illinois. That boy, born 19 June, my Mammy’s 94th birthday, was Jonathan Anthony Olsen, third child and first son of our daughter Debbie and her husband Tony. As members and friends of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints tend to know, the old Carthage Jail is the site of the June 27, 1844 murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith by an anti-“Mormon” mob. Johnny (that’s how his dad insists on rendering it) was born just eight days before the 160th anniversary of that grim event, at the Adams Street Clinic, less than half a mile south of the jail.

“THIS hole, Mom!”