Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Five Questions for an Ancestor

Randy Seaver went way over his allotment of five questions in his post, so maybe I'll do the same for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music) is:

1.  If you could go back in time to interview one of your ancestors, what questions would you ask him or her?  Tell us your selected ancestor's name, birth and death years/locations, and spouse's name and marriage date/location.  List at least five questions to ask that selected ancestor.

2.  Tell us about your selected ancestor and your questions for that person in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook comment.

Ah, so now I see that Randy allowed for more than the allotted five questions by saying "at least five" in the more detailed instructions.  I can work with that.

I'm going to choose my great-great-grandmother Beila, who was married to my great-great-grandfather Simcha Dovid Mekler.  As her given name is pretty much the only fact I have for her, I'm going to start with much more basic questions.

1.  When and where were you born?  What were your parents' names?  What was your full name before marriage?  Do you remember when your parents died?  When and where did that happen?

2.  Did you have siblings?  What were their names?  When and where were they born?

3.  What were the names of your grandparents on both sides?  Did you know them?  Do you remember when they died?  When did that happen?  What did the family do at that time?  How did you commemorate them?  What are their yahrzeiten?

4.  Did you have aunts and uncles?  What were their names?  Do you know when and where they were born?  Do you remember when they died?

5.  When and where were you married?  Was it a civil marriage as well as a religious marriage?  Who attended the wedding?  After you were married, where did you and my great-great-grandfather live?  What did my great-great-grandfather do for a living?

6.  How many children did you have?  When and where were each of them born?  How many survived to adulthood?  Which of them married during your lifetime?  Did you get to know any of your grandchildren?

7.  What was everyday life like for you and your family?  Were there other Jewish families where you lived?  What was the community like?

8.  What do you remember about the end of your life?  Do you remember how old you were?  Did you become ill?

I can think of so many more questions!

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Ancestral Home Description

"Ancestral" might be a bit exaggerated for my answer to this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver, but at least I have an answer.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music), is:

1.  Do you recall the layout of one of your family homes (a parent's home, a grandparent's home, your first home with your spouse/SO, etc.)?  Can you estimate the size of the house and the size of the rooms?  What features were in each room?  Can you draw the floor plan, showing doors, windows, etc.?

2.  Tell us about your selected family home in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook comment.

As I have reported previously on this blog, by the time I was 21, I had lived in 22 different places.  So it's hard for me to think of anywhere I have lived as an "ancestral home."

I thought about writing on the one home for which I have always remembered the address, the last place my family lived before moving to Australia:  434 Randy Street, Pomona, California.  We probably were there for a year to two years.  But I already wrote about it for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun in 2020.

So this time I think I'll write about our customized double-wide mobile home, which we had in Villa Tasso, Florida.  I don't think we had an actual street address, because Villa Tasso barely had streets.  We had roads made of Georgia red clay, none of which was paved.  We had our mail sent to a post office box in Niceville.  We lived in Villa Tasso from about 1975 to 1979 (or at least I lived there until 1979, when I moved back to California for college).

Our "double wide" was a 60' trailer and a 40' trailer with a custom addition joining the two together.  We had the longer trailer in a mobile home park in Niceville before purchasing the property in Villa Tasso.  I don't remember the history of the shorter trailer.  The longer trailer was moved to the property first, and later we bought the shorter trailer.  Then my father started working on the addition, which of course took longer than planned.  But eventually it was finished, and we had a spacious home.

The main entrance was the door to the longer trailer, which had a wood porch and stairs.  You entered the trailer in the living room, and the kitchen was to the right.  To the far left was a hallway that went most of the length of the trailer.  The first room on the left was originally my and my sister's bedroom.  Then came my brother's bedroom, the bathroom, and my parents' bedroom at the end.

The 60' trailer while it was still in Niceville.
Walking up the stairs and onto the porch, right to left:
My mother, my sister, my brother, and me

When the addition was completed, a large chunk of the wall on the right side of the hallway went away and opened to the addition.  At the left end, my father had a piano, which I liked to try to play.  I could pick out melodies, but chords have never made sense in my head, so that somewhat limited how well I could play.

The other side of the addition opened to what had been the living room in the shorter trailer.  It became the family den.  We had a big TV in there.  When I won a copy of the home version of Pong in a K-Mart coloring contest, we used to play it on that TV.  That's also the TV I was watching when I heard someone's arm break during an arm-wrestling contest.  I've never watched arm-wrestling since then.

There was a room to the right.  At first I wasn't 100% sure about that, but you can see the doorway in this photo from my high school graduation day in 1979.  The photo was taken at the opposite end of the den from the TV.

Back row:  My mother, my sister, my grandmother
Front row:  Me, my brother, my mother's Sheltie
June 1, 1979, Villa Tasso

At the far side of the den to the left was a short hallway.  The first room, to the left, was a small bathroom, and my new bedroom, which I did not have to share with my sister, was at the very end.

It just occurred to me that there was no kitchen in the smaller trailer.  Maybe the room to the right of the den had originally been a kitchen before my father adapted the trailer for our use.  I do not remember what we used that room for.

I have no idea about measurements beyond the lengths of the trailers.  I suspect trailers were made to fairly consistent specs, so it might be relatively easy to find that information, if I am inspired to do so someday.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Wordless Wednesday

 

A Pool Shill?

Today, August 9, is National Billiards and Pool Day.  It is noted as such on two of the "national day" sites (Days of the Year and List of National Days), although neither has any information about how it started.

I'm celebrating the day on my blog because my mother used to tell me about how she and our Aunt Sam (who was not our biological aunt, but my mother's close friend, so we called her "aunt") used to play pool.  My mother, as she told the story, was not that great a pool player, but Sam was.  So my mother got someone to play against her, and she would lose, then setting up the poor stooge to play against Sam.  That made my mother the shill.

Coincidentally, I actually found photographs in the "photo bonanza" showing my mother and someone I believe to be Sam playing pool!  Some people in other photos are playing pool or look as though they are in the same location.  I don't know who most of them are, but all the pool players are women!

This is the only easy identification, because it's my mother.
I think the woman on the right here is the one in the last photo (see below).

I think this is Aunt Sam, but I'm not sure.

Aunt Sam had a daughter named Cathy.
Could this be her?

This photo makes me wonder who the photographer was.
It could have been my father, but I don't know.

Here's the girl from the previous two photos,
with another girl and a man.  No idea who they might be.

And here's our final player!
Unidentified, of course.

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Rabbit Hole!

I haven't had much time recently to do deep dives in genealogy, but I can come up with something for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music), is:

1.  Have you been down a genealogy rabbit hole lately?  What was it, and what did you find?  (If not, go find a rabbit hole!  Try your FamilySearch Notifications or Ancestry.com Photos or Stories.)

2.  Share your rabbit hole chase and results in your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, BlueSky, or other social media post.  Leave a link to your post on this blog post to help us find your post.

My last rabbit hole was when Randy asked us to play around with FamilySearch's Full-Text Search two weeks ago.

As I described at the time, I didn't find any of my ancestors, so I started hunting around for other families I am researching.  The most productive search was for my aunt's maiden name of McStroul:  42 results!  And most of them were documents and stories I had not previously found.

A lot of what I found was newspaper stories.  I naturally put them into chronological order, so I could see how the family changed and developed over time.

I found it interesting to be able to follow stories about my aunt's brother over several years.  In early 1962 he completed training in the U.S. Army.  In 1969 he started college (presumably after leaving the Army, but I didn't find an article about that).  In 1973 he graduated college.  In 1978 he visited his mother from out of town for Christmas and was studying at a seminary.  In January 1980 he and his wife-to-be obtained a marriage license.  Sometime between January and May they apparently married, because his wife graduated college in May 1980 with her married name.

I found four World War II draft registrations where my aunt's grandfather was the registrar.  I figure he probably registered more than four people, so maybe the AI hasn't recognized his signature on others.

I found my aunt's mother's obituary and the obituary for her second husband.  I also found my aunt's parents listed in several deed indices in Erie County, New York.  I have a vague recollection that one of the children was born in Buffalo (I can't look it up right now, because my new computer is still in transition), so I guess they lived there long enough to buy and sell some property.  More to follow up on!

Wordless Wednesday

 

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Five Reference Books for Beginning Genealogy Researchers

I suspect we will see very different lists in response to tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music) is:

1.  What five reference books (and only five) would you recommend to a beginning genealogy researcher to have on the bookshelf?

2.  Share your list of five books in your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, BlueSky, or other social media post.  Leave a link to your post on this blog post to help us find your post.

Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for this SNGF topic.

I have a significantly different list than Randy's.  Mine is based on research in the United States of America specifically, which is where most of our blogging audience is, as far as I know.

1.  I'll agree with Randy on Val D. Greenwood's The Researcher’s Guide to American Genealogy (4th edition).  Quoting Randy, "Arguably the best book ever written on American genealogy, it instructs the researcher in the timeless principles of genealogical research, while identifying the most current classes of records and research tools."  This will give a beginning researcher a solid foundation of research skills for American research.

And now I will deviate from Randy and choose four entirely different books than he did.  While I agree that court and land research are important for genealogy, they're not the first topics I would emphasize for a beginner.

2.  Map Guide to the U.S. Federal Censuses, 1790–1920, William Thorndale and William Dollarhide.  The census is the starting point for most American research, and this book not only explains the census but illustrates changes in jurisdictions over ten-year increments.  It still provides a solid foundation in understanding the U.S. census.  If researchers don't understand the census and how to use the information it provides, I have learned they generally don't get far in their research.

3.  International Vital Records Handbook, 7th Edition, Thomas Jay Kemp.  This book will have out-of-date information (similar to the next entry) because it was published in 2017.  But vital records are probably the most important records specific to individuals, and this reference book explains so much about them.  Understanding the background of vitals, when they started in different areas, and jurisdictions are critical to finding and using them.  Having the names of administrative offices, which this book supplies, means you can search for them online and see if they have Web sites where you can order online, or learn if addresses and phone numbers have been updated.

4.  Red Book:  American State, County & Town Sources, Third Edition, Alice Eichholz, Ph.D.  I hesitated about this choice primarily because the last print edition was published in 2004, making a significant amount of the details in it out of date, but the basic information is mostly still valid.  I decided to include it because the information in it is important and because Randy said books.  It is possible to use the references in the book and then search online for Web sites, current addresses and phone numbers, etc.  When you don't know what resources are available, the Red Book can point you in good directions.  At one point Ancestry.com had the information in the book available on its site, but I don't know if that is the case anymore.

5.  The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition, University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff.  Some may call it heresy, but I still rely on CMoS for my style information.  There is nothing I have found in genealogical research that cannot be well cited by using this book, and it is useful in other contexts as well.

And it's possible to find used copies of most of these (maybe not so many of CMoS 18) at good prices.

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Do Some FamilySearch Full-Text Searching

Randy Seaver has more AI in store for us for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music) is:

1.  FamilySearch Full-Text Search continues to add databases and searchable images to their collections.  This is a gold mine, especially of land, probate, and court records.

2.  Pick one or two of your ancestors and see what you can find on FamilySearch Full-Text Search about them.

3.  Share your Full-Text Search find(s) in your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, BlueSky, or other social media post.  Leave a link to your post on this blog post to help us find your post.

The results for most of my searches for my ancestors (and remember, an ancestor is someone from whom you descend, not a collateral relative; since there is no such thing as an "indirect ancestor", the term "direct ancestor" is redundant at best and nonsense otherwise) either had far too many results to look through, when I searched for just a surname, or no results at all, when I searched for full names in quotation marks to control the number of irrelevant results.  My names are not extremely common ones, such as Smith and Jones, but they are common enough that a blind search with no index produces far too many results to slog through.  My grandmother's name was Anna Gauntt, with no middle name that I have ever discovered, so I searched for "anna gauntt" and learned that the AI provides results with something between your search terms.  I was able to rule out all of those Anna Gauntts, because they either had middle names or initials or were not in the correct locations for my grandmother.  I abandoned my ancestors and searched for some of the unique surnames that I am doing research on.

My search for Gudapel, a name which has been used by only four people in the history of the world, produced two results.  Both had headers that read "History Records 1800–1902, Diaries 1800–1902 | New Hampshire. Genealogies 1978–1982, Society Records 1978–1982 | Maine. Genealogies 1978–1982, Society Records 1978–1982" (truncated on screen, but visible when I moused over the link).  If I were searching for a name that I did not know as well, I might have ignored these results, because I know the family was never in New Hampshire and Maine and would have no reason to appear in genealogies for those area.  Because I do know the name, I clicked on the links, hoping that maybe there was something from the 19th century, and discovered that the title was not particularly accurate.  Both links went to the same book, a 1941 Houston, Texas city directory, which did include the name of Geo. [George] Gudapel on two different pages.  While city directories can be classified as history records, the directory in question does not fall in the years of 1800–1902.  I'm not sure if I already had these directory listings.

I next searched for McStroul, a name which my aunt's grandfather created when he naturalized as an American citizen.  His original name was Moska Leib Strul.  He asked to have it changed to Leo Martin McStroul when he became a citizen.  The name McStroul belongs only to his family; when I find it, I know it has to be the right people.  When I entered it in the keyword field, I had 42 results.

I searched for McStroul when Randy did a previous FamilySearch Full-Text Search challenge.  At that time I had two results, both in my aunt's great-grandmother's will and probate.  The name appeared because my aunt's mother, who was the granddaughter of the deceased, was listed under her married name.  I noted at the time that the name actually appeared three times in the document, but only two were identified by the search.  This time the search picked up all three occurrences.

All 42 results for McStroul that Full-Text Search found were correctly read.  A couple of the given names were misread by the AI (such as Geo instead of what actually said Leo).  Many of the documents were ones that I have not previously found, such as articles in a Kingman, Arizona newspaper and naturalizations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where the McStroul family members appeared as witnesses.  So these are all useful in researching the family and are nice discoveries.

I tried searching for Szocherman, a name in my family that I believe more and more may be unique to that branch of my cousins.  I had no results.  But when I searched for Socherman, a spelling which some family members have adopted, I found many results, almost all of which were not for my cousins.  Amusingly, one that was my family was misread by AI and actually does say Szocherman.

After all of that, I tried to find a collateral relative in the database and searched for "frederick dunstan" in quotation marks.  Again the AI provided results with something between my search terms, and there were far more Frederick Dunstans than I had anticipated, more than was practical to look at.  I restricted the search to New Jersey and ended up with only four results, three of which were for Frederick C. Dunstan in Burlington County, which is exactly where my great-grandmother's brother should be found.  I believe this is the right person, so it appears he had a middle name, which I previously did not know, that started with C.  All three results are from deed indices from the early 1920's.  That does provide me with information about him.

Before I restricted the search to New Jersey, some of the results were for a Frederick Dunstan in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.  I looked at them bcause that isn't horribly far from New Jersey and found that they were for a Frederick Dunstan from Combe Martin, England, which is in Devon County.  My Dunstans were from Lancashire, so I knew this was not my guy, but ironically, his wife's name was Jane.  Jane Dunstan is my great-grandmother and the sister of Frederick Dunstan.  I did find that entertaining.

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your (or Your Ancestor's) Personal History Timeline

Tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver (via Taneya Koonce, one of my genealogy buds) sounds like a fun exercise.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music) is:

1.  Taneya Koonce wrote a happy birthday post about her own life in Quick Tip:  Create Your Personal History Timeline:  The Birthday Edition 🥳.  What a great birthday idea.

2.  This week, write your own personal history timeline:  every 5 or 10 years, or the most important events.  If you don't want to do yours, write a history timeline for one of your ancestors.

3.  Share your personal timeline in your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, BlueSky, or other social media post.  Leave a link to your post on this blog post to help us find your post.

Thank you, Taneya, for the idea!

Here's mine!

1962 (age 0):  I was born in Los Angeles, California in the County Hospital, the first child of Bertram Lynn Sellers, Jr. and Myra Roslyn Meckler.  My mother listed her address on my birth certificate as being in Whittier, which is where my godmother lived.  I don't know if my parents actually lived with her or if that was strictly a contact address.  I don't remember anything about Whitter.  I do remember County Hospital, only because many years later I volunteered in a pharmaceutical test and went there for the visits.

1967 (age 5):  My family was living at 537 Lochmere Avenue, La Puente, California.  We apparently were at that address at least from sometime in 1964, when my sister was born, until some point in 1968.  Also in the family was my brother who was born in 1963.  At the age of 5 I was probably in kindergarten.  I don't recall anything about kindergarten.

1972 (age 10):  In 1972 when I turned 10 my family was living in either Maroubra Junction or Pagewood, both suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.  I was attending 5th grade at Woollahra Demonstration School, a school for advanced students that had 5th and 6th grades.  I remember having a sewing class and a physical education class, although I don't remember the names of my teacher(s).  Somewhere I still have my school uniform and my physical education uniform, along with some of the projects I made in my sewing class.

1977 (age 15):  My family lived in Villa Tasso, Florida and had been there for about four years.  I was in 10th grade, attending Niceville Senior High School.  I was in advanced classes; I may have taken calculus that year.  I think my elective was French.  My siblings and I took the school bus 10 miles into Niceville to attend school.  I was a social misfit and did not attend school events.  I think I was working at my grandfather's stamp and coin store.

1982 (age 20):  I was living in Los Angeles, California in the dormitory at the University of Southern California during the academic year.  I was a junior and was on track to graduate the next year as a French major.  I was a work-study student in the Office of Overseas Studies; my boss was Connie Horak.  That summer I went on a student exchange program to Bordeaux, France and managed to take a one-day trip to San Sebastian, Spain.  At the end of the trip, when all the students gathered in Paris, we found a theater that was screening Pink Floyd — The Wall, which was even more surreal with French subtitles.  We went to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show in another theater, where we totally flummoxed the French attendees by doing all of the participatory things people do here.  When I returned from France I went to San Antonio, Texas to visit my family; I almost didn't recognize my mother at the airport, as she had gained a significant amount of weight after quitting smoking.  Back in Los Angeles I worked in the dorm cafeteria at the end of the summer and lived in one of the fraternity houses, which rented out rooms to bring in some money.

1987 (age 25):  In 1987 I was still in Los Angeles; I was either living in a small apartment or had moved to the lower half of a duplex with three housemates.  I had a female gray Russian blue-Persian mix cat named Tamara.  I was working at USC in the French and Italian Department and was in the Trojan Marching Band (The Greatest Marching Band in the History of the Universe).  One of my work-study students in the department was Brian Rhodes; we were co-uniform managers for the band.  At the beginning of the year the band had gone to Florida to support the USC football team, which had competed in the Florida Citrus Bowl.

1992 (age 30):  In 1989 I had moved to Berkeley, California; in 1992 I was living in an in-law house at the back part of a property there.  I still had Tamara.  I was working at Chessex Manufacturing in Berkeley, where I was the assistant production manager.  To celebrate my 30th birthday I took a trip to Hawaii with my then-boyfriend.  We were there when the Rodney King riots occurred; it was surreal to watch the news and see parts of Los Angeles where I had lived being burned, etc.

1997 (age 35):  I bought a house in Oakland in 1993, and I was still there in 1997.  The boyfriend from 1992 was now a former boyfriend but still one of my best friends, and he was my housemate.  I was working at Chaosium in Oakland, where I was an editrix and the convention schnook.  I think the pets in the house were dogs named Cody and Kirby and cats named Hank and Napoleon.  I don't remember anything distinctive about the year, though.

2002 (age 40):  I was still in the house in Oakland, although who else was living there had changed.  The housemate/former boyfriend had moved out; I had had two other housemates in the interim, but I think I was the only person at this time.  Hank and Kirby were still with me, but I had surrendered Cody to the Humane Society because she no longer got along with Kirby.  Napoleon had died a couple of years previously.  I had added a new cat named Sassafras, Sassy for short.  I was no longer working at Chaosium but had moved on to the Seismological Society of America, a scientific membership association, where I was the publications coordinator and the junior Web geek.  My friends helped me celebrate my 40th birthday by throwing a big party at a Mexican restaurant whose name is not coming back to me at the moment.  I also had started volunteering regularly at the Oakland Family History Center two years earlier, and I spent a lot of time there researching and helping others.

2007 (age 45):  Still in the house in Oakland, but at a different job.  I was working for a transcription company in downtown Oakland, where I learned a lot about the history of Kaiser, who was one of our major clients.  I also commuted for the first time in my life by bus, which was a much better choice than trying to find parking near the office.  Hank, Sassy, and Kirby were still there, along with another cat, Noodle, plus a guinea pig named Pulga.  I also had added birds:  Peaches (blue and gold macaw), Ray (sun conure), and Zach (green-cheeked conure).  Having eight pets was enough to keep me busy when I wasn't at work or the Family History Center.

2012 (age 50):  Still in Oakland, amazingly enough, considering how much my family moved when I was a kid.  The pet line-up had changed, though:  Ray, Zach, Hank, Sassy, Kirby, and Pulga had all passed away.  I still had Peaches and Noodle, and Caesar and Brandy had joined the family.  Just before I turned 50, I started training to become a train operator at BART, which I really enjoyed.  My friend Anne set up a huge surprise for my 50th birthday; at a costume event commemorating the launch of the RMS Titanic, she managed to coordinate having a band play "Happy Birthday" and about 150 people singing along.  I had announced I wanted a fuss for my birthday, and I certainly got one!

2017 (age 55):  The big event for me in 2017 was moving from Oakland, California to Gresham, Oregon, which I did at the end of the summer, arriving at 9:30 a.m. on September 1.  I still had the same furred and feathered children:  Noodle, Brandy, Peaches, and Caesar.  I sold my house in Oakland and found a similar-sized one in Gresham that had enough room for me, the pets, and all my belongings (which took more than an entire truckload to bring here).  The early part of the year was spent preparing for the move, and the months after arrival were taken up with unpacking as much as I could.  But I did start volunteering at the local Family History Center within two weeks of arriving, and by the time I moved here all five of my grandchildren were within relatively easy driving distance.

2022 (age 60):  This was during COVID, so not a lot was going on anywhere.  I had shoulder surgery in 2020, during the heart of COVID, and was still recovering from it for the majority of the year (it usually takes about two years to fully recover from shoulder surgery, and it did this time).  So on top of COVID, I wasn't doing much of anything else anyway.  The list of pets changed again.  Noodle died in 2018, only a few months after we moved, and I added Frankie to the household to be company for Brandy.  Then a macaw needed a home in 2020, and I welcomed my first female bird, Angel.  Later that same year Brandy passed away, and I fell in love with a gorgeous little female Siamese.  Unfortunately, she and Frankie didn't exactly get along, so they lived in two different parts of the house.

And that's my life broken down into 5-year synopses.  As usual, Randy remembers far more details than I do, but I hit the highlights.  All my grandchildren were born in in-between years, and I couldn't figure out how to weave that in well.  Maybe I'll revise this post later after thinking about it for a while.

National Motorcycle Day Rolls Around Again

When I first posted about National Motorcycle Day, I had plans to write every year about my motorcycles and my adventures with them.  But I somehow skipped all the years between now and 2019, that first post.  I'm not sure how that happened, although I suspect COVID had something to do with it.

But here we are again!  The day is still a pretty blatant marketing push by the insurance company that created the event.  This year they emphasized supporting charities, but they included the suggestion that you could post on social media about your motorcycle story, and blogging is one of the social media, so I guess I'm okay.

This year I decided to write about one of my adventures while riding a motorcycle.  Riding inherently always carries some danger, simply because you are exposed on all sides, but sometimes there are twists.

Many years ago when these marketing techniques weren't quite as common, I received an invitation in the mail to visit California City (I think) as a come-on to purchase land while they were continuing to develop the area.  (Quite an interesting history on the Wikipedia page.)  I decided to go, listen to the sales pitch, and collect the freebie they were giving away.  I am pretty sure I was still riding my Honda CB750K at the time.

This was set up so that you drove out the night before, stayed in their hotel, and listened to the marketing spiel the next morning.  I made my reservation well ahead of time and headed out the evening before, looking forward to spending the night in the nice hotel and taking advantage of the amenities.

I don't remember if I didn't plan adequately for how long it would take me to get there (which I'm usually pretty good at), but I ended up driving through the desert in full darkness.  The area was not developed yet, and much of the trip was on unpaved roads, which are never fun on a motorcycle and even less so on one like that Honda, which was very top-heavy.  There were a few times that I had slight skids and thought I was going to drop the bike, but somehow I prevailed.

After taking far too long and worrying myself far too much, I finally made it to the hotel — only to be told at the desk that, even though I had made a reservation, sorry, they were full.  I was given the option of driving back part of the way and getting a room at their overflow property (don't remember how far back, but it was too far), then returning in the morning for the presentation.

Over those dark "roads" again?  Gee, thanks.  I didn't think that sounded like a good idea.  So I decided to sit in their lobby all night and wait for the morning presentation that way.  I think I had my helmet next to me the whole time.  I got a lot of dirty looks, but I stayed put.

The next morning I was pretty tired, as could be expected.  My solution?  As soon as they started serving it, I drank about 20 cups of coffee in quick succession.  I hate coffee, by the way.  I was drowning each cup in sugar and milk.  I still managed to give myself a stomachache, probably just because I wasn't used to drinking that much caffeine.  Eventually they started serving breakfast, at which time eating something helped settle my stomach a little.

When they finally did the sales presentation, I somehow managed to resist giving them any money.  As I recall, the giveaway was a fur jacket, which I tucked in my trunk.  I then carefully headed back out over the lovely unpaved roads and returned home to Los Angeles, swearing I would never do anything that crazy again.

Wordless Wednesday

Ever Hitched a Ride?

Since 2020, apparently, July has been celebrated as National Hitchhiking Month, at least according to National Today.  What's strange, however, is that when I Google "national hitchhiking month", I get a hit on the Chicago Tribune site that shows a date of July 5, 1995, five years earlier.  Unfortunately, I don't have a subscription to the Trib, so I can't see the page and figure out if Google is steering me wrong.

I searched for the origin of the word "hitchhiking", and the earliest that the Oxford English Dictionary (which I love!) records it is 1921, which is very recent.  I had been wondering if the concept went back to the days of horses and wagons, but apparently it does not.  It seems firmly connected with cars.

Anyway, National Today suggests that people should celebrate National Hitchhiking Month by hitchhiking or by giving a hitchhiker a ride, but I don't feel that adventurous in my old age.  Instead, I'll mark the occasion by writing about the only time in my life that I hitchhiked, which was in France, of all places.

During the summer of 1982, I visited France on a student exchange program.  The woman I was working for at USC, Connie Horak, was the coordinator of the program, which was part of a sister-city alliance between Los Angeles and Bordeaux.  High school students alternated yearly between Americans going to Bordeaux and French coming to Los Angeles.  I spent a good amount of my regular at-work time that spring typing lots of paperwork for the program, including lists of students who had applied for the first time or who were participating for their second summer.

At one point, Connie learned that a female American student who had hosted a French student the previous summer had decided not to go to France.  She asked if I wanted to go to France in the place of the American student, so that the French student would have someone to participate with.  I jumped at the chance.  Not only did I figure this was a great (and relatively inexpensive) way to visit France, but I was actually a French major, so it was also a way to practice and improve my speaking skills.

I know we flew to Orly from Los Angeles.  I think we traveled by train from Paris to Bordeaux, where we met our students.  Sylvie, the student with whom I was paired, had decided that the perfect way to spend the summer was at a campground in Biarritz (more details of which is a story for another day).  While we were there, I don't remember why, but at some point we wanted to go somewhere else.  We didn't have a car, so we hitchhiked.

I was very nervous, because the reputation of hitchhiking in the United States by that time was that it could be very dangerous.  I remember the man who picked us up was driving a Citroën.  I think it was a 2CV.  No memory of the color at this point!

And somehow, we survived.  Nothing untoward happened to us; we arrived wherever we were trying to get to, and the driver let us leave the car with no problem.

I only recall the one hitchhiking trip, so we obviously found a different way to get back.  And I've never even attempted to hitchhike since then.

How about you?  Any good hitchhiking stories?

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay.  Used under license.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Did Your Grandparents Know Their Grandparents?

In some ways, I love it when Randy Seaver's theme for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun is something for which I already know the answers.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music), is:

1.  Did your grandparents know their grandparents personally?

2.  Check your family tree and share your grandparents' names and birth and death years and places, and their grandparents' names and birth and death years and places, and indicate if they knew their grandparents.

3.  Share  in your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, BlueSky, or other social media post.  Leave a link to your post on this blog post to help us find your post.

As another poster on Randy's site commented, we did this exact same topic in February.  I took her cue and did this with my parents instead of my grandparents.  I realized after I wrote everything down that it would be difficult to look up the years I couldn't remember, because the computer on which I have been running my family tree crashed three days ago.  I shipped the computer out yesterday and won't know the status of the hard drive until at least Tuesday.  I searched for when I've posted about these ancestors, though, and retrieved the few years of which I was unsure that way.

• Father:  Bertram Lynn Sellers, Jr. (1935 New Jersey–2019 Florida).  His grandparents were:
    • Cornelius Elmer Sellers (1874 Pennsylvania–1918 New Jersey; adoptive) — no
    • Laura May Armstrong (1882 New Jersey–1970 Florida) — yes
    • Thomas Kirkland Gauntt (1870 New Jersey–1951 New Jersey) — yes
    • Jane Dunstan (1871 Lancashire–1955 New Jersey) — yes

• Mother:  Myra Roslyn Meckler (1940 New York–1995 Florida).  Her grandparents were:
    • Morris Mackler (about 1882 Russian Empire–1953 New York) — yes
    • Minnie Zelda Nowicki (about 1880 Russian Empire–1936 New York) — no
    • Joe Gordon (about 1892 Russian Empire–1955 New York) — yes
    • Sarah Libby Brainin (about 1890 Russian Empire–1963 Florida) — yes

Totals:
Yes:  6
No:  2

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Try Out the FamilySearch "Famous Relatives" Page

I knew I wouldn't get far with tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music), is:

1.  FamilySearch has a page for "Famous Relatives" at https://www.familysearch.org/en/discovery/famousrelatives.  It works if you are connected to the FamilySearch Family Tree.

2.  Check out the site.  Which connection surprises you?  Do you believe that the connection is correct?

3.  Share your famous relative connection in your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, BlueSky, or other social media post.  Leave a link to your post on this blog post to help us find your post.

I clicked the link and saw this result:

I found it interesting that on the page behind the pop-up, it says, "Results in Famous Relatives are based on the information currently in your family tree."

As I routinely tell people, no individual has a family tree on FamilySearch.  Family Tree is one big collaborative tree to which you may have contributed, but it is not "your" family tree.  So saying that is disingenuous, at best.

I am disappointed that my information has to be entered for me to be able to use the tool.  I don't put information about living people into FamilySearch.  I would prefer that I be able to look up a deceased ancestor and use the tool with that individual.  But that does not serve the greater purpose of Family Tree, so it won't be happening.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Celebrate World Music Day

Well, I better like tonight's topic for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, since I'm the person who suggested it to Randy Seaver!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music), is:

1.  According to Wikipedia, today is World Music Day!  How should we celebrate?

2.  How has music affected your life?  What is your favorite music type?  What are your favorite songs?

3.  Share your World Music Day efforts in your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, BlueSky, or other social media post.  Leave a link to your post on this blog post to help us find your post.

[Thank you to Janice Sellers for suggesting this challenge to me.]

I grew up with music and it has always been part of my life.  My father was a musician — he played piano and guitar and sang credibly well.  He used to play guitar and sing for my siblings and me when we were little.  We heard "Sixteen Tons", "Mairzy Doats", and "Aba Daba Honeymoon" often enough that we knew all the lyrics.  Then as we got older he would sometimes try to cut out a verse, but we knew the songs too well and caught him.

I don't remember Daddy singing so much when he played piano, but I remember listening to a lot of boogie woogie and blues.  One year when I posted on my blog for Father's Day, he commented and said that he started piano lessons when he was 8.  And piano was what he played when he competed on Ted Mack's Amateur Hour with Court's Jesters, although that was swing music.

My mother loved music also, but for listening to.  She unfortunately couldn't carry a tune in a bucket; when she was in a singing class, they decided her part was turning pages for the accompanist.  But she adored Broadway and movie musicals and played cast recordings and soundtracks a lot.  Those were more songs that I learned lyrics to.

At least by the time I was 8, possibly earlier, I was taking piano lessons.  Even when I was that young, I had long fingers ("piano-playing fingers", I have often been told), and instead of holding my hands in the correct upright position and playing the keys with my fingertips, I could stretch my hands out and fudge a little.

I wanted to play guitar like my father.  My hands were big enough when I was young that I could handle an adult guitar, rather than one scaled down in size for children.  Daddy was ready to teach me, but then I discovered that you had to cut your fingernails to play (and I couldn't cheat as on the piano), so I gave up on that for a long time.

Once, for some reason I absolutely cannot recall, I had an accordion lesson.  I took the one lesson and decided I never wanted to try to play accordion again.  That I have stuck to.

When my family moved to Australia, I learned to play recorder (an instrument I still own and can play!).  I also sang in some sort of school musical in the 4th grade.

After we moved back to the States, I had chorus for two years.  The first year was great, but then my voice changed, and I couldn't sing alto anymore.  The teacher, Miss Foster, eventually told me I could stand next to the boys and sing tenor, but I used to sing bass.  After that I had a fairly regimented class schedule, and I didn't have room for any more music classes through the end of high school.

When I went to college at the University of Southern California, I had heavy class loads and still no time for music.  But after I graduated, I started working at USC, and the next year, I joined the Trojan Marching Band (The Greatest Marching Band in the History of the Universe).  I didn't play any band instruments, so I started as prop crew (kind of like roadies).  During the spring semester, when we were at a women's basketball game supporting the team, none of the cymbal players had come, and Mark Laycock called out for someone to play the cymbals for "Fight On."  And thus I started on percussion.  I marched three years in percussion in the band, playing cymbals (and occasionally bass drum for some small gigs when a regular bass drummer couldn't make it).

Working at USC, I was able to use tuition remission for classes.  One of things I did was take percussion lessons.  I had a really great teacher.  I think his given name was Dale, and I cannot remember his surname.  He was a spokesman for Sabian cymbals.  He was allowed to go through the warehouse and choose his own, matching them for tone.  His cymbals sounded so beautiful!  I learned I do not have a good enough ear to play timpani and that my broken right index finger severely hampered the way I hold a drumstick.  Or, as I routinely tell people, I am not a drummer; I am a percussionist who can drum a little.

But in the band I had also become enamored of saxophones, because they just sound so cool.  Jeff, one of the tenor sax players, recommended that I start with flute, then work on clarinet, and finally move to sax.  So I started using my tuition remission for those lessons.  I think I took two years of flute (with Gary Anderson) and then two or three of clarinet (with Yehuda Gilad).  Sadly, I never did take up saxophone.  But my fifth year in the band I played clarinet (and learned, after stabbing all the way through my left thumb with an Exacto knife, that there are exactly seven notes you can play on a clarinet without using your left thumb).

Something else I used my tuition remission for was voice lessons.  I sang with groups, I sang solo, I did recitals, I sang anytime I could.  I still love singing.  I participated twice in Songfest, a big student group singing competition.  Both times the group with which I sang placed.  I think I still have the music from both.

A friend of the teacher in one of my group vocal arts classes came around to recruit people to help fill out a new choir she was hired to create in a local church.  I think it was in Hollywood.  As is common with this type of activity, the number of men volunteering were far outnumbered by the women.  I ended up being a bass soloist for the Christmas concert.  Unfortunately, one of my voice instructors tried to make me a mezzo soprano, and I lost two octaves at the bottom of my range, so I can't do that now.

I played in the USC Community Orchestra as a percussionist for several years.  General percussion, no drums.

Oh, and one semester I took a guitar class.  I actually cut my fingernails and made the effort.  I discovered that chords did not make sense in my head.  I was the only student in the class who preferred to pick out melodies.  And then I decided I liked my fingernails more than the guitar.

Eventually I left Los Angeles and moved 400 miles north to Berkeley, where I had an entirely different musical routine.  But I think I'll save that for next year's World Music Day.

I got a little carried away, didn't I?  But music makes me happy.  Let's see, what other questions did Randy ask?  Well, favorite music type — hmm, I suppose "E, all of the above" is probably not a helpful answer.  I really do like almost everything, but if I have to pick favorites, probably show tunes and country.

And the last question was favorite songs.  Wow, that's even harder.  Anything I know the lyrics to and can sing along with ranks high.  "Danny Boy", because that was one of my mother's favorites.  "Sixteen Tons" is probably my favorite of the songs my father used to sing.  "Even Now" always makes me cry.  "Light One Candle", even after all the revelations about Peter Yarrow.  "Do You Hear What I Hear?", even though one of the most well known versions is by Robert Goulet.

Letters from Anita

Anita (Loveman) Sellers and Nanny Ireland, 1960

I wrote a few years ago about the efforts I took to track down my father's youngest half-sister, Carol (http://www.ancestraldiscoveries.com/2021/08/finding-my-aunt-carol.html), and her mother, Anita, so I could return several photographs to them.  After that, Anita and I wrote to each other for a while.  Recently I was going through one of my genealogy folders and found three letters that Anita had written to me.  I had been trying to remember when exactly I had been able to find her, and I guess it must have been around 2001, because that's when the first letter from her is dated.

===

17 Oct 01

Dear Janice,

I'm sorry it took me so long to answer.  I really appreciate your sending me the pictures and the family tree for the Sellers family.  This is really a complicated amount of facts.

Your Mother was the second wife of your Dad.  Right?  Her name was Myra Meckler.

Bert always called your Dad, (Sunny).

I'm glad you also sent Carol a copy of the family tree.  Did you get to talk to her.  Please forgive my writing.  After breaking both wrists I tend to scribble.

Thought you might like to know Carol did go to college with my help only.  Her Dad never sent us a penny.  She was 17 and graduated 4 years later from Douglas College in New Brunswick NJ.

I worked at Fort Dix N J for 22 years.  Because I had no college I could not get a higher position than a GS-4 Top Pay.

God has been Good to us and I managed to take care of myself & Carol with no help.

I had to retire at 60 years old as Mother was sick and had to have my help.  She died at age 89 and my husband Henry Reynolds died at 79.  He insisted I go live near Carol in Fla.  I've been here for 12 years.

Pray you are keeping well and thanks again for caring enough to contact me.

All the pictures were of my family or Berts, plus a few friends.  Did you notice too the one of Nanny Ireland.  She stayed with us for 6 months after we were married.

Will close for now and thanks again.

A friend & relative

Anita

P.S. You have such beautiful hand writing.  Hope you are able to read mine.

☺

===

19 Nov 01

Dear Janice,

I went through all my photos and found a couple you might like.  I am sending these four because they show Nanny Ireland plus. (other family)

I wrote on the back of them.  They were mostly taken in 1960 while we were visiting (Aunt Bettys in NJ) except for the one of Carol at age 6 months.  I couldn't remember Aunt Catherine's husband's name.

I'm surprised your Dad didn't recognize Nanny Ireland.

You might not want the one of me with Nanny but it was a better one of her. ☺

I would love to have a picture of you.

I really liked Sonny, as his Dad called him.  I'm sorry if he felt unkind toward me because of his Mom.  I didn't know they were still together.

Yes, I did meet Mary Lou while they were still married and Carol was a baby.

If you would like a picture of me at age 75, I'll send you one.  If you wouldn't I won't be offended.

Hope to hear soon again.

Love Anita

===

6 Aug 02

Dear Janice

Was so good to hear from you.

I too want to say thank you for sending me your picture a while back.  I don't think I ever told you thank you.

Glad you were pleased with the picture I sent of Bert's family.  I gave you the one I thought you would want.

No I never saw that picture before.  It looks like a baby boy because the hands and feet are large.  Where did you find this picture?  What was the background on this picture?  The nose and ears don't look like your Dads or Carols.

Please forgive my writing.  My wrist has arthritis in it and hurts when I write much.

Carol has some of your Dad's features.  When Carol was born she had a little bump in one ear (Like a mole).  The doctors took it off.  They told me that your Dad had that same bump or mole in the same ear.

How's your Dad doing?  Say hello to him for me.  He was always nice to me.

I guess the weather there is hot like here.  We have 90's every day.

God is good and I'm doing OK for an old lady ☺ 76.

Write me when you get time.  From looking at your picture I can see you have a beautiful personality and a very pretty & sweet face.

I'm so glad you got in touch with me.  Thanks for wanting to know me.  My wrist is really messing up.  Hope you can read this.

Guess I better close for now.

Pray you are keeping well.

Love Anita

===

I know I would have told Anita I wanted a photo of her, but she didn't end up sending me one.  So the photos I have of her are from when she was married to my grandfather, which was from June 20, 1953 to August 1961.  The photo in this post is the one she mentioned in her letter of November 2001, taken in 1960 in New Jersey.

Wordless Wednesday