Great-Grandpa Kelvin's "Appendix"

We Kelvins have always been a slightly odd bunch. Only slightly, mind you.

I remember spying this on my grandparents' mantel when I was a kid:


After years of begging to hear the story of that thing in the jar, my dad finally told me all about the day my great-grandfather almost died. In 1902, my great-great-grandfather finally succumbed to extreme dementia and died after stirring rat poison into his muesli. A week later, my great-grandfather was out in the fields (and by "fields", I mean back woods), working (and by "working", I mean tending his still). His left side had been bothering him since the funeral, and that day the pain exploded and he passed out. Eventually he came to and was able to drag himself to where someone could find him, and was taken to a hospital.

Burst appendix, the docs said. Back in those days, they let you take your bits and pieces home with you.


Well, great-grandpa was no doctor, and back in those days, there was no WebMD to tell him that that thing in his jar only roughly mimicked an appendix. But I eventually inherited my great-grandpa's stuff, and after years of looking at the thing myself, I still can't tell you what was in his belly.


My dad told me that he could have sworn there used to be teeth in there, when he was a kid, then they all dissolved away.


Since great-grandpa's day, a new Kelvin tradition has emerged. Every time a family member dies, within 2 days of the funeral another family member is hospitalized for "appendicitis."

They never let me see my "appendix."