William de Ormesby, Knight

The ever-entertaining story of my last name. (copied from Ormsby.net).

"An old tradition, dating back before the year 1050, says that the first original ancestor of Ormesby-Ormsby-Ormsbee was Orm, so called because he came from a Place of Elms (Etymology Dictionary by William Arthur, M.D.). Orm was the old Scandinavian word for Elm or Elm Tree, or Elm Trees. Bey, By, Bye were places, any places where people resided.

The original Orm lived in the Scandinavian Peninsula. He was a Lord. (Lord meant, not nobility but a person who owned or who controlled large tracts of land) Orm did. In that section, and during those times a rich man might have as many wives as his possessions might support. Orm had several and raised a large family of boys. As the boys grew to manhood, Orm followed the custom of those times and gave each of his male offspring a portion of the land he owned. When the youngest and last son reached manhood there was no more land, so this latest son required to seek and forge for himself.

He joined a Viking crew under the leadership of an old experienced Viking, who during about the middle of the eighth century plundered the coast of Scotland in one of those Long Ships of Rowing Galleries popular at that time among Vikings and Pirate Sea Kings.

On one of his excursions to Scotland, the Scots were better prepared and came out upon the sea to give battle. The Scots were getting the best of the fight when the old Viking called his crew together, together, asked them to fight harder, and promised to make that particular one the ruler of captured territory who should be the first to set foot on Scottish soil.

During the fight which ensued Young Orm had his leg severed just above the knee by the broad sword of the Scots. He tied it up. The Viking won, and as they neared the Scottish soil Young Orm suddenly arose, picked up his severed leg and threw it overboard onto the land and claimed the reward as being the first to put his foot on Scottish soil. He finally recovered from his wound and the Viking kept his word making Young Orm the ruler of the captured territory.

The termination bye meaning a place or settlement was added later, undoubtedly from the colony over which Orm was made ruler."

**Please note the severed leg on our coat of arms.

To further romanticize my heritage, here is an ancient Ormsby love story.
"The Ormesbys of Lincolnshire eventually became a massive family, and in the middle of the eleventh century, in a war with France, in which William the Conqueror played such an important part, the then, Baron Ormesby captured the daughter of a French Nobleman and held her for high ransom. The Baron's son, whose name was William, in defiance to his father's project fell in love with the supposedly beautiful girl; helped her to escape, and went with her back to the Northerly part of France known as Normandy. Here, because of his heroic act, he became a hero to the Norman people. William the Conqueror then took him into the army, and after the subjection of England in 1050 dispelled the leading Baron of the Ormesbys and in his place established Young William, giving him the title of William de Ormesby, Knight"

Fortis Qui Prudens!

John Paul Jones

Last night the Braes Bayou ward had a pinewood derby. For those of you who were not cub scouts, a pinewood derby goes like this: You buy a kit from a hobby store that has one block of pine wood, four plastic wheels, and four nails to use as axles. From these you fashion a car that is raced against other cars on a downward sloping track. There are several rules and regulations, particularly a weight limit (otherwise, the heaviest functional car would have the advantage). This really is the ideal American dream father-son experience. Dad gets to play with his tools and strategize the heck out of it, trying to find the perfect blend of aerodynamics and momentum, adding led weights to the bottom to compensate bring it as close to the weight limit as they can get away with, placing the added weights in the best place on the car for balance, graphite lube for the wheels… And, they get to write all this fun off as quality parenting. The sons get to play with tools, exciting and grown up, and get Dad time. In our lineup for our race, I could definitely see some paternal influence. My first reaction was to figure out where to find the graphite wheel lube that I remember my dad using. Some guys brought their cars to the race in USPS boxes, clear signs that they’d had their parents mail them their boyhood racecars. One in particular even had the wheels shaved down to reduce the surface area touching the track, lowering the friction that slows the cars down. A little elbow grease and some ingenuity is all you need. There’s your American Dream, Protestant Work Ethic for you.

I lucked onto my team. Last Sunday I was bored, so I invited myself over to some friends’ apartment. I had overheard that they were watching the Oscarns, so I butted in and invited myself. I don’t feel that bad about it, though. Whatever reservations they may have had were soon erased. So, while we were watching the Oscars and eating the cookies one of them was baking, I asked if they were making a car for the activity. Turns out, they had. Hobby stores have gotten wise and now sell pre-cut derby cars. All you have to do is glue a few parts on, hammer the wheels in, and paint it. They, being girls, were never cub scouts and had acquired one of these kits. I, being a boy, owning both a knowledge of such things and a tool set, was invited to participate. Instantly, I started hatching a plan.

To make this race fun, the organizers made a point of eliminating the cub scout restrictions. As a matter of fact, the rules said “This is an ‘anything goes’ kind of event...none of those pesky BSA rules to stop you from creating a rocket launcher, or flame thrower (okay, maybe the church doesn't favor open flames in the buildings)...” Now, this may not be obvious when you first look at it, but it tests good old fashioned American ingenuity as much as your classic Boy Scouts of America simply BECAUSE there weren’t the traditional rules. We had full license to be as innovative and as reckless as we wanted.

I started with the two things that stuck from when my Dad was designing our car. I had a lot of fun driving around with him pointing out different sports cars that we could model ours after. In the actual construction, though, I remembered powdered graphite lube and the importance of weight. First stop, Hobby Lobby. I got one tube of graphite powder and around twenty dollars worth of lead hobby car weights. If weight was such a big deal for BSA strategery, then my goad was to make our pre-cut car as innocuously heavy as possible. At team headquarters, we painted the car and decided on the name “The Heartbreaker.” Certain parties wanted to spell it like “brake,” but because my vote counted for three votes and there were only four of us, I won. We were having so much fun that it was decided we would make team t-shirts. We painted the car (I did the blue base coat while those with finer hands painted a big silver cracked heart on the hood), the axles and wheels were hammered in place, racing stripe decals added (which I later ruined with my power-drill, more on that later), and a mustache was painted on the figurine bust for a driver that came with the kit. Finally, we took turns gluing small panels of lead onto the bottom in as geometric of a pattern as possible (to ensure balance) and more weight in the back than in the front to maximize speed (using the “the back of the rollercoaster is the best seat” principle). When it got to be the wrong side of late, I said “Hey, here is what’s going to happen. I’m going to take the car home to work on it some more, and you guys are going to make my t-shirt.”
That’s when the real fun started.

At home, during commercial breaks in The Daily Show, I took our car and my cordless drill onto our patio. With a 3/8’ bit, I drilled 5 holes in our car. Three in the back, two in the front. Pete didn’t know what was going on, and I got a very funny look when he came out to see how on earth I was making so much racket. The holes were to put even more weight INSIDE the car! I had found these lead rods that were perfect for adding inconspicuous weight. The next day, after getting some wood putty from the corner hardware store (funny aside, when I got home, the paper bag they’d put my sandpaper and putty in had writing all over it; they’d re-used the bad they wrote their lunch orders on!) I sat down and put the finishing touches on Heartbreaker while watching the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup. The holes were covered over and a new coat of paint added, followed by several layers of shiny varnish.

The race itself was both fantastic and absurd. Things got off to an exciting start with our good-lookin’ team shirts and how much fun it was telling everyone that we were going to beat them, and Heartbreaker was winning because of its superior weight and well lubricated wheels. People started catching onto my conclusion that the (reasonably) heavier car would do better. Without the pre-race insight I had, however, they had to improvise, and people started taping whatever they could find to their cars between races. Keys. Rolls of quarters. A combination lock. One guy in our ward is a federal agent and actually donated the bullets from his concealed-carry handgun to the cause. One girl actually had twelve nine-millimeter hollowpoint rounds mounted on her car with clear packing tape. We held our own, but in attempt to keep up with the Jones’, we added all of our keys to the car with the girls’ elastic hair bands. We were nearly disqualified for our keys knocking another car off the track. Allegedly. I thought that wasn’t a very strong case when there was another car with live ammunition on it, but we were still winning anyway. When the competition got steeper with the addition of cell phones and fishing weights to admittedly better engineered cars (who also had well lubricated wheels), we up-armored to the metal pin from a trailer hitch and an adjustable wrench, attached with red electrical tape. A team of girls tried to one-up us by duct-taping a five pound exercise barbell to their car, but I felt a lot better when their wheels fell off half way down the track.

The final rounds were exciting. Because of our near (and undeserved) disqualification and an unfortunate incident involving a misaligned front wheel, we had to beat a John Deere styled derby car (the one with the bullets) in four out of six final races. I think that we were favored to win by the crowd. Possibly because of our t-shirts. The DJ even played “Heartbreaker” by Led Zeppelin during the final rounds. In spite of ill-advised competitors donating weights from THEIR cars that were added IN BETWEEN our final races. They were not match for Heartbreaker (NOT Heartbraker), though. We won. Just like I told everyone we were going to.