Over the years I have paid particular attention to my family history.  Not because my family is in any way unique from anyone else’s, only that from a very young age I have been imbued with an abiding appreciation for the experiences of my ancestors.  I’ve wanted to know them, or at least about them, and so maybe learn something about myself as I’ve traveled through this life.  And it is the Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri branches of my family — Norwegians, Germans, and Dutch — who all wound up farther west at one point or another, that I have learned the most about