Well, although the Keidel family site at MyFamily.com is a great hit, some of you have requested that I NOT discontinue publishing THIS ‘zine. Of course, I also realize that many of you, not being Keidels, weren’t invited to joins us on that site. My offer still stands. I’d be pleased to sponsor anyone as an honorary family member if they wish to access our family site. So, what IS new with us? Well, to follow up from the last issue, Breezy had her 3rd birthday! Although she is actually 12 years old, her leap year birthday comes around every four years! I called her on the 29th and we chatted a little. She was looking forward to getting her ears pierced that day. I guess it’s a rite of passage thing!

Thanks to the MyFamily site, I finally got an updated picture of the lovely Barbie and her baby: Nolan Bryce Reittenbach D1331-3. Remember, I had complained about having only dated pictures. She was lovely then and seems to have only improved with age! Oh, yeah! Thanks to our new family site, I also finally got to see Lisa Keidel-Odom, Tommy Lee’s elder daughter.

---

Celebrities and Banknazis!

Again I tried to put my rapidly rusting 1986 Chevrolet Celebrity station wagon out to pasture. I had found another vehicle whose payments I could afford. I almost bought a 1996 Dodge Caravan, a vehicle ten years younger than my rust-bucket. My Celebrity would have served as the down payment and the tax and licensing fees. My car budget is between $200 and $250 per month. The payments on the Dodge would have been $165, leaving room for increased insurance fees! Alas, the bank nazis are still hung up about that bankruptcy we had five years ago! They also will not give a straight coherent reason WHY that should influence my repayment capacity TODAY! Five years ago, we were living on a two person income, albeit my share was only my VA disability award. When my wife became ill and needed a major operation, her income stopped! My VA check barely covered the rent! We were evicted and forced into bankruptcy protection. NOW, I am receiving my Veterans Administration AND my Social Security disability awards. The mortgage company loaned me a ton of money to purchase our new home and I have no problem paying off my mortgage and still have funds left to eat, buy gas, Internet, etc. - all without relying on an income from my spouse! I spoke to the decision making loan officer by phone. He sounded like a petulant kid. Had I been there, I would have had to fight an urge to kick him in the balls!

So, the new car deal nixed, I needed to fix the tie rod problem. Had I not done so, the wheel could have come off while we were driving along! The tie rod and lube/oil change came to $262, killing my vehicle budget for the month. I have found a FANTASTIC mechanic in John Schaeffer of Tri-County Sales in Sidney, NY. The car runs great! He inadvertently fixed more than I had authorized, driving the price way beyond my budget. Realizing this, he forgave me the extra debt!

The next problem that will need to be dealt with is the fact that the brake shoes on my rear are down to the rivets and will start making grinding noises soon! My new alternator (my third!) is cranking out too much voltage and will kill my new Die Hard (my fifth) before too long. And my muffler isn’t muffling too well anymore! So, my Celebrity’s nickel and diming me continues! Can’t afford to retro-fit the air conditioner and can’t do anything about the rust holes! Yet, it looks like the old gray mare has to make yet another major trip. Willy and I are planning to drive to Turkey Run, Indiana to attend a BBQ on the 4th of July. On the way back, we’ll have time to stop off and visit with some of the other Keidel branches. So if any of you live near our route and will be home after the 4th, let me know. We are tentatively planning to swing into Michigan as well. We would like to visit with the D-Branch folks; we haven’t talked to Tommy Lee face to face in ages. Yeah, not since 1994! Damn, how time flies when you’re not really having fun!

After one of those tremendous snowfalls you saw pictured in the previous issue, my next-door neighbor from down the hill, drove his atv with snowplow attached and plowed out my driveway! He labored for over an hour in the COLD! Did a great job, too! He did this without ever having met me! He stopped in afterwards and I finally got to meet him. I had long admired the exquisite deck he had built himself on a house much like ours. No doubt he could give me pointers when it came time to build something similar on our abode. Meanwhile, Willy and I were able to get the car out and do our grocery shopping and stock up on groceries and essentials. Good thing, because about a week later it snowed worse than it had before! Willy wound up with a lot of canceled school days!

One morning last month, he awakened me before 6 AM and asked what was going on down the hill. There must have been more than a dozen vehicles with flashing red lights stopped further down the road, opposite new friend Russ Heesh’s house. The wind must have been going the other way, as I heard no sirens nor smelled any smoke! Russ had been at work and his daughter out of town when their home caught fire about 4 AM and burnt to the ground! The dogs he kept in a kennel were lost to the fire. That great deck is the only thing still standing!

[

Little wife and big son finally came up to see us. Unfortunately they only stayed for a few days. Ha-Yo finally got meet our grand kids! Stepgrandma Ha-Yo hit it off great with little Rachel! She is the little girl Ha-Yo always wanted!

We had a great visit! Go to my "Public Room" Click This and access my filing cabinet. I post all my latest pictures. Check out Rolls 001 and 002. Click on the radio buttons to the left of the file names for information about each picture.

Kellie Sawvel D1323 posted this picture on our MyFamily.com board. It immediately drew fire from Mark Keidel N137, who, I suppose, found it objectionable. A debate of sorts ensued, with both sites proffering different points of view on hunting and predator control. At some point, Mark offered a misunderstood parody of a "Far Side" comic strip, which was countered with MORE dead animal pictures from the D-Branch and a pulling out of the family site altogether by Mark!

Mark, although his website professes to be the official Keidel Family site, does not represent ALL of the N-Branch. His pulling off the N-Branch Family Tree information is detrimental to all!

Folks! We are not the Hatfield and McCoys! We are ALL Keidels. We are FAMILY! I have not yet been able to establish a connection for all the branches yet, but somewhere there IS a link. We have more in common than not! Look at the pictures of YOUR ancestors. Do you see a resemblance to some of the individuals in the other branches? I do! Sitting with Tommy Keidel D132, a few years ago, was like sitting with my father as I remember him from when I was a kid. Of course, my father didn’t have the beard and long hair Tommy has, but his mannerisms, high forehead and facial features were uncannily alike. And consider the HUGE F-Branch! This came about when I found the link between three separate branches and was thus able to join them. Let’s not fight among ourselves. It’s OK to have different viewpoints on things! Our site at MyFamily.com can and should be OUR forum to share pictures and ideas with the rest of the Keidels. There is room for ALL viewpoints which may be discussed here in a hopefully civil fashion. Certainly we can agree to disagree! It is my hope that this effort will expand our family base and foster visits and other interactions in the future. Hey! It’s NICE to be able to stop in and visit with FAMILY when traveling around the country or the world!

OK, enough preaching!

Be sure to check the website index page thoroughly. There are a lot of new links and opportunities. Check the My "Public Room" link. Look at the filing cabinet there. LOTS of pictures! Also look at the Reel.com link (it's the colorful one near the bottom) which lets you buy DVD movies BEFORE they are released. The pre-issue price is quite a bit lower that the usual store price. Below that one is a link to Seattle Film Works. Those of you who wish to get your pictures into your computer but have no scanner; they will develop your film and even let you download the pictures right on the net! Interesting stuff is still found in "Grumpy’s Internet store" and I am actually making money with the viewbar program! Check that link: Grumpy's viewbar I have a viewbar on my computer that flashes ads at me at intervals. All I do is click on one occasionally to look at it more closely. For this I GET PAID! Really! It works; I already deposited one of their checks for $34! Not much? Well, it pays for my monthly Internet provider fee and then some. A great way to get paid for stuff you do anyway. Click on my link to get involved.

I am going to forgo the usual Happy Birthday and Anniversary greetings, as well as THIS MONTH IN KEIDEL HISTORY, as these items are now found on our MyFamily.com site.

Just one thought to my brother and sister who were killed on the 19th of this month in 1945 just before WW2 ended! This is my mother and my sister Marianne Keidel A1112-311.