The Mano story.

LISTEN to this superfatted nonsense. "Finally, after months of work, my new book THE AMAZING STORY OF THE MANOS IN AMERICA is ready for printing and you are in it!" Loud as water hammer, no? Appeals right to the old birth canal. A first and last edition: after all, "less than 1/1,000 of 1 per cent of the people in America share the Mano name." For $24.95 I'll learn how we 1/1,000 got that name and what it meant back when. Also, "little-known facts about the Mano population in the U.S." (good grief, they found out I'm so insecure I drink Scope before phoning.) Plus "an unusual Coat of Arms granted to an early Mano." Rare and valuable book: perfect Christmas present for that Mano who has everything except an iron hat tree and his own bar sinister. I couldn't resist Sharon Taylor of Halbert's, Inc.--heraldist to the totally undistinguished. See, at just that moment, I was going through a genealogical cafard.

Truth is, I never have been at ease with Mano. It resembled, I thought, some word I'd once seen on a foreign men's room door. Or the acronym for your latest, defunct treaty organization. When I was poor and scholarshipped at my patrician New York prep school--with Whitney on one side and Whitlock on another--I felt like an au pair boy. (It didn't help that I bought clothing from the wrong Brooks Brother--Salvatore in Long Island City.) So, when dating a Chapin or Spence girl, I stressed my maternal heritage: Minor. On that side we go back to 1360, when a Somerset tin miner was barometed by Edward the Black Prince. Mother said she'd never gone without employment--1929 crash, no matter--because of her WASP last name. In any coming devaluation Mano, I thought, could put the wreath on his door. And I was persona non with Buff Vandermost's father: he kept her hidden more thoroughly than a government witness before a Mafia trial.

By 1968, however, ethnic was in. I featured Mano not Minor: hell, back then, Edward the Black Prince would've worn an Afro. Only I couldn't be sure what eth I was. Italian, no (though I wasn't above pretending, so they'd dump extra clam sauce on my linguine). Grandpa Mano, you understand, said that his mother and father had been murdered in a silk-caravan heist somewhere between Constantinople and Vienna. Brought up by this noble Gypsy band the infant Mano was. But then Grandpa also claimed to have taken Lillian Russell's virtue. The birth certificate said, "Salonika, Catholic." Aha, Greek, I thought. But then an immigration paper said, "Salonika, Turkish, Muslim." Meanwhile every Greek who heard "Salonika" said, "You must be Jewish"--90 per cent of that town apparently having been settled by Sephardic Jews from Spain. Aha, I thought, Jewish, and Sephardic no less. With this maybe they'll let me write for the Times Book Review again. I was a one-man ecumenical movement. Then another paper said, "Born Cavadartzi, Turk." I didn't have roots, I had damn strawberry runners. No wonder Lillian Russell got so turned on.

But worse is yet to come. Last year, 1,000-volt culture shock, I receive a first letter ever from my 98-year-old great-uncle in Vienna. Ninety-eight, and he couldn't go quietly without telling me this. Grandpa was born in Philopopel, Bulgaria. Bul-ga-ri-yah. I reveal it here: Mano is, with no previous experience, one-quarter Bulgarian. Name one restaurant in New York where that'll get me an extra pat of butter. The kid has been totally Balkanized.

And last month arrives this quart of lard oil from Sharon Taylor. MANO: bound in movie-seat maroon and computer-inserted like that contest letter you got--YES, MR. C. SMITH OF BENSONHURST, BKLN. HAS WON $1,000,000! maybe. MANO can tell me nothing about my "forebeaters" (sic) that I couldn't have learned from, say, a Portuguese weather map. Ninety-eight per cent blank note page, blank genealogical chart, blank family tree, chat about heraldic jargon and Ellis Island. (She doesn't wish to suggest "that we have traced any individual's lineage..." Of course you don't, or didn't, Sharon.) Oh, I forgot the vermiform MANO appendix--name and address of each Mano findable (139) by phone book or auto registration (except me: the original sucker letter was sent on by my ex-wife, a McArthur, who is listed). And this single leaky onomastic idea about MANO. It may derive from the Italian, meaning "one who had unusual hands." With which I'd like to strange her.

Okay, yes, there is a coat of arms--taken right off the rack, I suspect. Mine has come from Siebmacher's Wappenbuch (13th cent.?). (This 86-volume heraldic pawnshop must be worth many 1,000 X $24.95 to Sharon. My guess is that, in each case, she will start with the Wappenbuch or Diccionario Nobilliano coat collection. Then she Taylors data to an ancestor-deprived American buying public.) My shield--what else?--is kind of grotesque: disembodied hand with an eyeball midpalm and three stars above. Did some early Mano invent early Braille? My Siebmacher can be made up for hanging in "Classic" plaque (rich red flock, $34.95) or the less prestigious "Heritage" (walnut wood tone, $31.95). And Sharon promises me that a Mano who had "medieval armor must have been granted it." Sure, Sharon--and granted to the forebearers of all my phone-book kin. Like Juanita and Manuel and Pepe Mano. Not to mention those noted medieval Europeans, Eiichi Mano and Tatsuo Mano and Tsuyoshi and Miyoko and Kiyoshi. Maybe that silk caravan was going from Tokyo to Vienna.

Roots do matter: though not such laughable grafted-on tubers as these. You can get sick up to here with individualism in America. We require familial and religious and ethnic and neighborhood associations: we enjoy being alumni and alumnae. Even if only to react against them, men cherish heritage and human location. But Halbert's of Bath (Ohio) is providing just contemptible genealogical tree blight. Uh-huh, Sharon, I am dissatisfied for any reason. Send the $24.95 back. You don't mess around with us Bulgarians.