A reader writes in to ask: “Mike, is it true you are an archduke???”
The short answer is: yes, can you believe it?
The longer answer—the “skinny” as it were—is a pretty entertaining family story, and I am in a generous mood, icing my knee and fairly dripping with noblesse oblige, so I’ll tell you what’s what.
Occasionally in these posts I have mentioned my great-grandfather Tony. Tony—whose last name I am not going to share here—emigrated from a fishing village in Sicily called Cefalú around the turn of the last century. He settled in Baltimore, where he was a man of uncertain employment, just like his great-grandson. Tony eventually found his niche as a trainer of horses, race- and otherwise, and was a colorful character, colorful enough to both manage the stables for the Baltimore City Police, and be barred from Pimlico racetrack for fixing horseraces.
Now during the Great Depression, it was Tony’s habit to board the train in Baltimore, and play cards with passengers, The Lady Eve-style, with the goal of making his money last all the way around the United States. As one might imagine, Tony was a pretty good card player, and one suspects that he availed himself of (ahem) every advantage. Even so, bad luck happens to everyone, and one time Tony ran out of money near Los Angeles, and had to get off the train, or was thrown off, it is not entirely clear. The only work he could find was as an extra in an Errol Flynn pirate movie.
Another time, apparently, he was playing Texas Hold ‘Em with a European nobleman. For all the advantages he was blessed with, this poor man was both terrible at cards and terribly addicted to wagering on them. Playing cards with Tony would be, I surmise, a dangerous thing for anyone to do, and soon enough the noble was stone broke.
“I want to keep playing,” he said.
”I don’t see how we can,” Tony replied, slipping the cards into his pocket. “You haven’t got a penny left, and I don’t take checks.”
The nobleman looked glum—then his face lit up. “I will wager my title,” he said. “Double or nothing.”
Five minutes and one predictably awful hand later, with great solemnity the nobleman signed over his Archduchy to Tony.
What a remarkable country, Tony must’ve thought; from sunburned poverty in Cefalú to nobility in just twenty years. And the nobleman didn’t seem bothered in the least; when Tony told the story, he said the man whistled happily as he wrote it all out on a cocktail napkin.
“Aren’t you sad?” Tony asked.
“Quite the opposite!” the ex-noble declared. All Eastern Europe was going to go Communist, he said, and back home, a title this high would be a death warrant. “Now I can see my family again. I should’ve thought of this years ago.”
Tony pocketed the napkin and asked, “What does an Archduke do?”
“Get better tables in restaurants,” the nobleman said. “Oh, there’s one thing you should know, a sort of special feature. You know how most titles pass from father to son?”
“I guess so,” Tony said. (Remember the movie was about pirates, not nobles.)
“Well, this one passes from second son, to second son,” the newly minted commoner said. “Charlemagne had a strange sense of humor.”
•. •. •
I never met Tony, who never had any sons, much less two. But I am the second son of the second son of his daughter my grandmother, and so according to her, the title has passed to me. I don’t really talk about it much for two reasons: as you now know, the way it passed to my family was a little…colorful, and I really don’t want to get dragged into court by some Eastern European looking to get better parking spaces. And secondly, there’s really only one famous Archduke in history, and we all know what happened to him.
So I almost never mention my title. People tend to treat you differently, once they know you’re an Archduke: “No, no Mike—you can have the last Twix.” Then sooner or later, they ask for a recommendation for their condo board or something. I’ve dedicated a lot of community gardens. I’m happy to oblige—it’s just part of the job—but I can’t do it for everybody. When I was a college kid and used to drink beers, it would come out, and so a handful of people in my life know the secret (I think I know who told you, by the way, and she and I are going to have words).
For all the doubters out there, all I can say is, I am in possession of the URL archdukemichaelgerber.com, and they wouldn’t give that out to just anybody. ICANN checks stuff like that.
Thanks for the question!
MICHAEL GERBER is Editor and Publisher of The American Bystander. You can write him at publisher@americanbystander.org.
So, what’s the honorific for something like this? Your Highness? Your Grace? Should we all just default to “my liege”?
Does this mean we now have to bow and courtesy, or just hand over a portion of our crops, whenever we turn in a cartoon?