My genealogical research has turned up something that should probably not surprise me. I found a 1942 newspaper blurb about my grandfather going to court on a charge of passing a bad check!
This is my maternal grandfather, Ralph DeRicci. He was definitely colorful. He always struck me as basically an honest person, but he was not a detail-oriented one. And he was always chasing the next get-rich-quick scheme. Apparently something he thought would pay off did not, at least, not in time. And he was sued for passing a bad check. He was lucky. The "prosecutor" R.K. Morgan, who I assume was the wronged party, defending himself in court, did not show up for the trial. So my grandfather's case was dismissed.
I showed this clipping to my mother, who was a toddler at the time and had no idea that this had ever happened. As much as we would like to believe that this was some other Ralph DeRicci, this clearly was him. He owned a commercial garage that repaired trucks, so it would have been common for him to write a check to the head of a local truck company, which I'm assuming was a larger one (there is a road in town named after this guy). But why is it that my mom and I both find this so funny? It would have been mortifying at the time to my grandmother.
I can just hear my grandfather now, complaining that R.K. Morgan was a crook, the owner of a bigger company who was sticking it to the little guy.
This was one item in a long column of paragraph-long court reports in a Pennsylvania newspaper, dated 2 December 1942.
(Don't confuse this grandfather with my paternal grandfather, whom I've mentioned in various other blog posts. Two grandfathers could not have been more different. My dad's father was a paragon, a pillar of the community who was scrupulously honest and honorable. He would have died rather than pass a bad check.)
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