This is probably the right way to tell a family history: in little meaty gobbets. Oral traditions aren't passed along in tidy narratives, but as a jumble of messy sketches. Not a ribbon; beads on a string.

The Weasel family drifts languidly down history's timeline, trailing clouds of bourbon. Genial, feckless, glib, a little unsteady on its feet. Not quite energetic enough for a rakehell, nor romantic enough for a ne'er-do-well, nor rich enough for a wastrel. I think we could just about manage to make a layabout.

I like my family. Nobody can let you down and make you feel okay about it like we can.

Leaving aside a brief, unfortunate outbreak of dour German Presybterianism in the early 20th Century, we pretty much run to type. Remarkably consistent, for all the many and disparate bloodlines that come together to make up a family. And that's not just because of the inbreeding.

Booze. Politics. Hunting. Fishing. Art. Music. Booze. Livestock. Firearms. Booze. Soldiering. Speechifying. And we drink a bit. An unsurprising profile for a family in America at the very dawn of the 18th Century; a harder skill-set to sell in the 21st.

Perhaps our greatest achievement has been convincing everyone that we're underachievers; that if it weren't for X, we could've gone so far and done so much with our lives. Nah. I'm guessing we mostly went as far and did as much as we had it in us to go and do.

Happily, it was seems to be about as far and as much as we wanted.