How in the world did I get into this?  I think of it as looking for my “roots” as in Alex Haley’s beautifully written history of his family.  My wife, who sadly passed away in Nov, 2021, called it “looking for dead people.”  Whichever it may be, I’ve twenty years doing it, and I think I’ve become a pretty experienced, if not talented, genealogist.  I just counted, and I’ve now “done” over seventy families— many of them in great depth.  I’ve managed to “rescue” a few of my own and my wife’s lines which I am certain would have fallen into obscurity had I not intervened.  I’ve even graduated now into finding friends’ old families, and, for the first time a few years back, making a few bucks at it.