Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

 

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

 

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.

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: Tell Us Your Best Christmas Memory

We're getting close to Christmas, so it isn't surprising that Randy Seaver is focusing on the holiday for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge:

Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along; cue the Mission:  Impossible! music!):

(1) Many of us grew up believing in Santa Claus as children, having a Christmas tree, going to church, and visiting relatives and friends at Christmas time.

(2) Tell us your "best" Christmas memory:  What Christmas holiday event is still vivid and real in your mind?

(3) Share it in a blog post of your own or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a comment here so we can all read about your memory.

I hope this doesn't make me sound like a Scrooge, but I had serious trouble remembering anything specific about Christmas.  I know we celebrated it when I was a child (and my mother jokingly called the Christmas tree a "Chanukah bush"), and I used to believe in Santa Claus, but I couldn't come up with any special presents, any Christmas visitors, nothin'.  My mother's family is Jewish, so they weren't doing anything with us for Christmas, and my father wasn't close to his family.  Neither of my parents was observant about religion.

The memory I was finally able to come up with was, of all things, going to Midnight Mass with my mother while I still lived in Niceville, Florida.  Even though my mother was Jewish, she had a lifelong fascination with Catholicism.  I don't know if Niceville even had a synagogue (somehow I doubt it, and it doesn't seem to now), but it definitely had at least one Catholic church (it appears to have two currently).  I think two years in a row my mother and I attended Midnight Mass.  I remember being impressed with all the pomp and ritual, but I don't recall any details.  I also remember my mother being very happy that she was able to find someone to go with, and I guess that's the most important part.

Wordless Wednesday

Loving Day

Floyd Richard Williams and Elizabeth Jean McStroul were married on October 5, 1968 in Columbus, Franklin County, Ohio.

Today, June 12, is Loving Day, and time to celebrate and remember the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia that struck down antimiscegenation laws in the sixteen (Southern) states that still had refused to let them go.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday