monogodo

As mentioned in my last post, I've been trying to track down my baptismal certificate. As I was an infant when it happened, I don't have a memory of it, so I have had to call my parents to find out where it happened. My mother (who was raised Catholic), remembers making the arrangements, or rather, she remembers asking her sister to make the arrangements. Neither she, nor my aunt, nor my godmother (another aunt), nor my grandmother remember where it was performed. The aunt who made the arrangements thought it was St. James, one of 13 churches in Madison, but when I called them, they didn't have it. My father swore it happened at my grandmother's church in Baraboo. He felt so strongly about it that he was willing to bet his mortgage payment on it*. I called them and found it wasn't done there, either.

Late last week my stem-mother suggested that it might have been mis-filed at the Baraboo church under my mother's maiden name, so I called them, and found it was not. On Saturday I spoke with my mother and she insisted that it was at her sister's church (St. James). She then said that she hadn't actually made the arrangements, that her sister did. I then suggested the possibility that it was mis-filed under her sister's name, and said I'd call them on Monday.

So I called St. James on Monday, and spoke with Ann. She didn't have it under either my name or my aunt's name. She did, however, recommend another church that was nearby, Blessed Sacrament. That was one of the churches that I was waiting to hear back from, one that my father insisted that it couldn't possibly be. So I called them. The woman who answered, Kathy, wouldn't tell me one way or the other unless I gave them the address of a church to send it to if they had it. I told them I'd call them back. I got the address to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Dallas (our local parish), and called Kathy back. When I did, she confirmed that she had the record, and went on to say that the number I'd given them last week was noted as a non-working number. I'd be willing to bet that they wrote it down incorrectly.

Anyway, I've got that mystery solved, and can move on to the next case.

*This isn't saying much about his confidence. His house has been paid off since the early-90s.