Scandal!

My parents spent the weekend down in Denver feeding some youth group retreat. In their off time they hung out with Grandma K, my dad's mom. Nothing unusual, they see her at least once a month. However, when they returned tonight, they had some souvenirs with them. Two quilts made for my grandma when she was a child, some afghans, a basket full of other random stuff, including a heritage book, which proclaimed to contain history of our family from the middle ages on. The first stop was the thick tagboard page in the middle which has the family crest printed on it. It's the first time I've seen the Kramer heraldry, I was a bit curious to see it. The family crest on my mom's side has always been a bit of a joke around the dinner table, it's literally a log with a fist growing out of it.

The Kramer crest however is much more lavishly appointed, with curls and eagles surrounding a lion with three pomegranates framing the bottom. And chevrons. All done in blue and gold. My mom got a look at it a minute or two before I did, so, while I was still taking in the heraldry she started to laugh and said, "You guys are French! I knew there was something wrong with you!"

Confused, I rushed my eyes to the bottom of the page where a detailed description of the crest was. My eyes caught something that looked possibly French, it definitely wasn't German. Before I could register what was going on my dad defensively slapped the book shut and proclaimed, "We are not."

My mom teasingly pressed the subject and my dad got extremely defensive. I still don't know what was going on, but you can rest assured I'll find out at the earliest time I can get the book away from my dad. I assume it said something about our family originating in France, but living in Germany long enough to be considered Deutsch... It would be a killing blow to my already vague and pathetic sense of cultural heritage if that isn't the case. Kramer is a German name, but, there's always been some debate over how much our name changed when that part of the family came over to the States in the mid-late 1800's. It was before the big Ellis island immigration rush of the 20th century, but, I don't think by much. I can't wait to investigate this!