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.

The Second Tuesday of Next Week

The International
Date Line

While I was growing up, my mother was known for using interesting turns of phrase.  She would talk about the "oneth of the month" (the first day of the month).  She and my father both used Spoonerisms deliberately, so we saved Chublip Stamps instead of Blue Chip Stamps and ate chotato pips instead of everyday potato chips.  One of my favorites, though, was my mother threatening to knock us into the second Tuesday of next week when we were being, um, precocious.  But, of course, there is no second Tuesday of the week.

Until there was!

When my family moved to Australia in 1971, we flew on a Pan Am 747 and crossed over the International Date Line.  When we did that, the day we lost was a Tuesday.

When we returned to the United States in 1973, we took a Greek cruise ship, and of course we had to cross the International Date Line again.  On that trip across the date line, we happened to repeat a Tuesday.  So not only did we make up for the Tuesday we lost, we finally had the second Tuesday of next week!

And yes, we gave my mother a bunch of crap about all the times she had said that to us.  She had somehow finally succeeded in knocking us into the second Tuesday of next week.

Unfortunately, my parents have both passed away, and neither my brother nor I remember the specific Tuesday we repeated.  But we know we came back in March, and the Tuesdays in March 1973 were 6, 13, 20, and 27.  So I picked today to write about it.

And I am pretty sure my mother would love the fact that I still remember.

My First Musical Instrument Was the Recorder

I bet it was for a lot of people.  Wasn't it a standard thing around 3rd or 4th grade to introduce young students to music by teaching them to play the recorder?

I always figured that had become established because the recorder is a relatively easy instrument to learn to play (although it does take time and effort to learn to play well, without sounding like a screeching cat; recorders are kind of like clarinets in that way).  Once they were available in plastic, they were also pretty affordable.

Whatever the original impetus for schools was, I think I learned to play in the 4th grade, while I lived in Australia.  I don't remember the recorder from when I was in the 3rd grade in California.

And why am I writing about recorders today?  I guess you didn't know that today is Play the Recorder Day, did you?

Play the Recorder Day (PtRD), celebrated on the third Saturday of March, grew out of a one-day event held in 1989 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the American Recorder Society (ARS).  ARS started PtRD in 1992, to be an annual event.  Play the Recorder Month came after that, just to promote the recorder even more.

I have to admit, after originally learning to play recorder, I didn't do too much with it, even though I kept my instrument through several moves (kind of like keeping my Barbie dolls).  That was until I started participating in the Renaissance Pleasure Faire (the vestiges of which are currently called the Original Renaissance Pleasure Faire and owned by a for-profit corporation, but not the for-profit corporation that bought it when the original in which I participated ran into financial problems and was sold).

And hey, I suddenly had a place where I could play my recorder!  So I did!  And I had a lot of fun!

We didn't use plastic recorders at the Faire, of course, because they wouldn't have that "period" look.  I found a very nice wood recorder and played in the opening and closing parades.

I continued to play for several years.  I became interested in expanding my range from the standard alto recorder and picked up a soprano recorder.  I experimented a bit with tenor and bass recorders also.  I could produce decent notes on a tenor, but I had problems with the bass.  I never invested in purchasing either one, though, sticking to my alto and soprano recorders.

I haven't played either of my reorders in many years, but when I found out about Play the Recorder Day, it encouraged me to reminisce and document a little bit more of my personal history.

Hooray for Barbie!

No, I'm not talking about the movie (which I have seen, and once will be enough, thank you very much, dear daughter-in-law).  I'm talking about the actual doll.

March 9 is National Barbie Day because the Barbie doll was introduced at the American International Toy Fair on March 9, 1959, so today is Barbie's 66th birthday, making her older than I am, if not by much.

I don't remember if Barbie was my first doll — I might have had a baby doll before that? — but she was the first doll I remember, and I still have my first Barbie.  I think my second doll was a Stacey, which I recall as a redhead.  (I might have been given Stacey as a gift because my sister's name is Stacy.  Hey, they should have come out with a Laurie doll!)  Number three I believe was Midge.

I have taken my dolls with me from California to Australia, when my family moved there, then back to the United States when we returned in 1973, and across country when I moved back to California in 1979.  Then they moved with me from Los Angeles to Oakland in 1989, and up to Oregon in 2017.  I have never left a single doll behind.

I never got into the collectible Barbies, because I didn't want to leave them in the packaging ("never removed from box").  I wanted to take them out and play with them!  I have only one collectible Barbie, which a friend bought me for Christmas one year.  It's Barbie as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, in the green and white barbecue dress.  And yes, I took her out of the box.

Barbie is what really got me into sewing.  I had a sewing class in the 5th grade while my family lived in Australia, and when we came back to the States I started making clothes for my dolls.  I have dozens of patterns for Barbie clothes, most of them officially licensed by Mattel and produced by the big pattern companies.  The majority are from Simplicity, some are from McCall's, and a few others are from different companies.  I also have a few unofficial patterns, including some for Elizabethan clothing a friend gave to me when we were both performing at an Elizabethan faire.

Unfortunately, most of my dolls are still boxed up and in storage from when I moved to Oregon.  Not long after my arrival I tore my rotator cuff, and I've never regained the momentum I had for unpacking since then (it was probably the momentum that caused the tear in the first place).  But I've been adding to my collection since discovering groups such as Buy Nothing on Facebook.  It is amazing how many people give away Barbies and their accessories.  Now I have things I could never afford when I was younger, such as a Barbie airplane, car, condo, and house.  Soon I will be adding an RV!

One of my recent acquisitions, obtained specifically to pair with my dolls, is a dollhouse in the style of Victorian painted ladies.  I'll need to find (or make?) some patterns for Victorian clothing so that my dolls will look totally at home in their beautiful residence.

j

Happy Birthday, Sydney Opera House!

Today, October 20, 2024, is the 51st anniversary of the opening of the iconic Sydney Opera House.  While my family lived in Australia, the building was coming closer to completion, and we apparently went there one day, because my father took photographs.  Maybe it was an "open to the public day" to get people excited?

I think that's me in the lower left corner.

We left Australia in early 1973 (I really need to find out what day it was and when we arrived back in the United States), several months before the opening and inauguration, and so did not have the opportunity to go inside or attend anything.  According to Wikipedia, in 1973 they were finishing the interiors of the building.  The outside certainly looks pretty finished in my father's photos.

When I visited Australia in 1988 with the USC Marching Band, we went on a tour of the building, which was beautiful.  I'm sure I took photos, but I haven't found any.  And I can't find any 1988 Opera House photos in USCTMB stuff online, just one from the year 2000.  Well, foo.

But this is a photo of the band in Brisbane, where we performed at Expo '88.  I guess that will have to do.

Seeking Assistance with a Hyena, a Shipwreck, Woodbine, and Route 66

This year National Volunteer Week runs from April 21 through 27.  The week, observed in Canada and the United States, is designed to honor volunteers and the contributions they make.  I use it to highlight the work that volunteers do within the family history world and projects that can currently use their assistance.  And I know about a few projects right now that would like your help, if you have the information they're looking for.

Judith A. Yates is a criminologist who is writing an all-encompassing book on Irma Grese, the "Hyena of Auschwitz."  She is seeking people to interview who came into contact with Grese, who was employed at:

• Ravensbruck, July 1942 to March 1943
• Auschwitz, March 1943 to January 1945 (mostly at Bergen-Belsen)
• Belsen, March 1945

Yates would also like to interview:

• people who attended the Belsen trials
• people who know about Grese's home town, Wrechen (Neubrandenburg County), North Germany
• people who can discuss the general life of female guards at either camp (behavior, where they lived, how they lived, etc.)
• people who did not have personal dealings with Grese but knew "of" her personally
• family members of survivors
• anyone who can provide information, including photos and documents

You may contact Yates at truecrimebook@yahoo.com.  Her site is http://www.judithayates.com/.

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Descendants of victims from an Australian shipwreck are being sought to share their stories.

The SS Nemesis disappeared in 1904 on its way from Newcastle, New South Wales to Melbourne, Victoria.  Thirty-two crew members were on board the ship, and they left behind more than 40 children.

The ship's wreckage was found in 2022 and confirmed to be the Nemesis this year.  After the first call for descendants, twenty grandchildren and great-grandchildren, from almost every Australian state, came forward, including relatives of the ship's captain.  Heritage NSW is asking more relatives to share their stories so they can be saved and archived.

An article about this story has more details and includes contact information for Heritage NSW.

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Do you remember Route 66?  (I don't, I'm too young!)  Have any great stories?  The National Trust for Historic Preservation wants you to share those stories so they won't be forgotten!

Leading up to Route 66's centennial in 2026, the National Trust is hoping to receive (at least) 2,026 stories to celebrate the famous highway, and it's asking community members, travelers, historians, and everyone else to contribute.  More details and a link to the submission form can be found here, along with many stories and photos that have already been shared.

[I just discovered by reading the Wikipedia page about Route 66 that it was established on November 11, 1926.  Although this was commemorated as Armistice Day, it was not yet a holiday (that didn't happen until 1938).  And November 11 is a special day in my family because it was my mother's birthday.]

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Stephen A. Diamond, Ph.D. of New York City is in the planning stages to film a documentary about the Jewish Agricultural Colony of Woodbine, New Jersey.  The filming is likely to happen this summer, but the exact scope and content are still under discussion.  He is looking for descendants and others from the extended Woodbine family who have anecdotal information or memorabilia related to the colony to share that information and/or to participate in the documentary.  You may contact him at diamondesllc@gmail.com.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Christmas Weather

Tonight's topic from Randy Seaver for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun should be interesting!

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.  Here's your chance to sit on Genea-Santa's lap (virtually) and tell him about your Christmas weather experiences:

1.  What Christmas-time weather have you experienced?  Does it snow at Christmas time where you live?  What are the likely temperatures at Christmas time??

2. Tell us about them in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook Status post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

My Christmas weather experiences cover a range of very different locations.

From when I was born to just before I turned 9, my family lived in east Los Angeles County.  So Christmas weather was similar to Randy's experience in San Diego:  warm and sunny, mild and cloudy, to cool and rainy.  The closest we came to snow was when my father and Uncle Tony drove up to Mt. Baldy in a pickup truck, filled the back with snow, and came back with it.  We played in it for a while, but I suspect it melted relatively quickly.

From Los Angeles my family moved to Sydney, New South Wales, Australia and lived there and in the suburbs for two years.  This is another location with warm and sunny or mild and cloudy weather in the winter, but in the Southern Hemisphere, Christmas comes during the summer!  So we had beautiful summer weather for Christmas for two years.

Back to the Northern Hemisphere, I next lived for six years in and near Niceville, Florida, in about the middle of the Florida Panhandle, with my family.  Although most people think "hot and muggy" when they think of Florida, the Panhandle does actually experience winter.  We regularly had below-freezing temperatures at some point during the winter, but mostly it was cool and rainy for Christmas.  On January 19, 1977, which I realize is after Christmas, we had one day with enough snow that it actually stuck when it hit the ground and did not melt immediately (that's also the day there were snow flurries in Miami).  We got the rest of the day off from school, but by the time everyone got home, the snow was gone.

After Florida I moved back to Los Angeles.  The weather had not changed in the intervening years, although it wasn't quite as smoggy as it had been.  On the other hand, I was in South Central Los Angeles, not east Los Angeles County, so that might have explained the improvement in the air.

I lived in Los Angeles for ten years and then headed north to Berkeley.  I was there for almost four years and then bought a house in Oakland, where I stayed for 24 1/2 years.  Christmas in the Bay Area was often rainy and almost always slightly cool.  I never saw snow where I lived, but I believe that sometimes in the Berkeley and Oakland hills they occasionally had dustings of snow.

And now I'm even further north, in the Portland Metro area of Oregon.  I'm in Gresham, east of Portland and at the west end of the Columbia River Gorge, so it's usually a little colder here than in Portland proper.  It is normal for the area to have at least a day or two of snow during the winter, sometimes around Christmas.  My first year here we had a hard freeze with no snow on Christmas, and I was stuck in my house for three days with the cats and the birds.  But a couple of years ago we had a beautiful blanket of snow in the front and back yards for Christmas, and it was beautiful.

Smoking versus Not Smoking

Image by Alexas_Fotos

Today, November 16, is the 2023 observation of the Great American Smokeout, observed on the third Thursday of November, one week before Thanksgiving.  The day is meant to get tobacco smokers to quit smoking, either by quitting that day, not smoking for just that day (as a first step), or making plans to quit.  (And when will we start trying to get pot smokers to stop that smoking????)

I grew up with smokers.  Both of my parents smoked, and my mother's best friend, Aunt Sam, also smoked.  I remember at least one or two years that my mother asked my brother, my sister, and me what we wanted for Christmas, and we responded, "We want you and Daddy to quit smoking!"  To which my mother replied, "Yeah, what do you really want?"  So even when we were very young, well under 10 years old, we knew smoking wasn't good for people.

Yet sometimes you get what you wish for.

Shortly after my family moved to Australia in 1971, my mother and father made a bet with each other about who could quit smoking longer.  I have absolutely no memory of what prompted their bet.  Maybe cigarettes cost significantly more in Australia and they wanted to save money?  Whatever the reason, they made the bet.

My father gave up after three days.

My mother, even though she had already won the bet, continued not to smoke.

And became more and more irritable and unpleasant to be around.

To the point that we children actually begged her to start smoking again.

Which she finally did.  And became our regular mother again.

And there was great rejoicing.

Don't get me wrong.  I know smoking is bad for people.  It's better for your health to stop, sooner rather than later.

But sometimes there are extenuating circumstances.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Four Things!

Well, I certainly haven't posted in a while!  My last post was January 15 for my blogiversary, and before that it was December 1.  I have nothing but my health to blame, but I've decided I need to start writing again anyway, and what better day to start than on my birthday?  I turned 60 today, and coincidentally Randy Seaver provided a theme for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun that works nicely with a birthday — writing about myself.  So let's get back in the blogging habit!

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

1.  Let's have some genealogy fun tonight and answer some family-history-related questions with four responses (Four Things!).

2.  Share your answers with us in your own blog, in a Facebook or Instagram post, or in the comments on this blog post.  Please leave a link to anything you post elsewhere in a comment.

Okay, here are my answers.

Four Names I Go By
1.  Janice
2.  Jan-Jan (but only for my maternal grandmother)
3.  Bubbie
4.  Amanda Rycroft (Faire character)

Four Places I've Lived (Resided)
1.  Maroubra Junction, New South Wales, Australia
2.  Niceville, Florida
3.  Oakland, California
4.  Gresham, Oregon

Four Ancestral Places I Have Been
1.  Mount Holly, New Jersey
2.  Manhattan, New York
3.  Miami, Florida
4.  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Four Interesting Places I Have Been
1.  Athens, Greece
2.  San Sebastian, Spain
3.  Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
4.  Tallinn, Estonia

Four Favorite Ancestors
1.  Ann (Ridgway) Gaunt, 1710–1794
2.  Gershon Itzhak Novitsky, ~1858–1948
3.  Minnie Zelda (Nowicki) Meckler, ~1880–1936
4.  Moses Mulliner, 1741–1821

Four Favorite Genealogy Record Collections
1.  Historical newspapers
2.  Religious records (all, not just BMD!)
3.  Probate files
4.  Military pensions and service records

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your "Place Line"

Randy Seaver is floating a new concept tonight for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

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) We're all familiar with timelines — date, location, event, etc. — for events in our lives.  This week, create a Place Line for your life, or for the life of one of your parents or grandparents — your choice!  In that Place Line, tell us the location (address if possible), inclusive dates (if possible), and events.  Consider categories such as residences, schools, churches, employment, etc.

(2) Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status post.  Please leave a link in a comment to this post.

Place lines, huh?  Well, let's see where this goes.

Residences

• Well, I could copy them all again, but since I created a list of my residences for a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post a mere four years ago, I figure I'll put a link to that post:  Janice's residences through August 31, 2017.

• As I mentioned at the end of that post, the total was 27 residences, and I was about to move to my 28th.  That's where I still am, 1009 NE 196th Avenue in Gresham, Oregon, as of September 1, 2017.  I plan to stay here another 20 years or so.

Schools

• Hey, what do you know?  In February 2017, for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun Randy had us write about all the places we went to school!  So here's a link to that post:  Janice's schools from 1967–2000.  I have not added any formal education to my list since that time.

Churches

Well, this is a really short list.

• While my family lived in Pomona, I occasionally used to go to church with the Lamey family, who lived across the street.  I think it was an Episcopalian church, but don't hold me to that, and I have no idea what the address could have been.  This would have been in late 1970 and early 1971.

• When we moved to Niceville, Florida, I went regularly (at least for a while, probably 1973 to maybe 1974) to the First Baptist Church (now the First Baptist Church on Bayshore), 622 Bayshore Drive, which was across the street from my grandfather's house.  We probably went there because that's where Grandpa went.  I remember the church had a bus that went around town and picked people up; I boarded in the trailer park where we were living.  I had perfect attendance on the bus (don't remember how long that took) and earned a personalized King James Bible.  Not long after that I stopped going, not because my goal had been to earn the Bible, but because I just couldn't take that much organized religion.

And that's it for me and churches.  I have never attended a synagogue on a regular basis; I think I've been to services two or three times in my life (and one of those was in Paris, France).  I never saw my mother in a synagogue, but I went to Midnight Mass with her more than once while we lived in Niceville, at what was probably the only Catholic church there at the time.

Employment

• Another great coincidence!  For Labor Day a few years ago, I created a list of the jobs I have held, and that post is right here.  I have nothing to add to the list since leaving BART as a train operator.

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I don't have as many actual addresses as Randy does.  As usual, I am impressed with the amount of detail Randy remembers about years past, while I am lagging behind quite a bit in that department.  But I did find it amusing that I had already created three of the lists he suggested for tonight's post.  And now I have collated that information together so one of my relatives can learn where I lived, was educated, and worked.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Father's Work History

As I expected, with today being the day before Father's Day, Randy Seaver has chosen fathers as the theme for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun:

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

(1) Sunday, 19 June, is Father's Day.  Let's celebrate by writing a blog post about your father, or another significant male ancestor (e.g., a grandfather).

(2) What was your father's occupation?  What jobs did he have throughout his life?  Do you know his work history?

(3) Tell us all about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status post.

I don't have a detailed work history about my father.  Unlike my grandfather, who created a chronological listing of every job he had held, my father didn't do anything similar (but then again, who does?).

What I do know is that most of the jobs my father held during his life had something to do with cars.  During his younger years, most of those jobs were as a mechanic.  While my family lived in the Los Angeles area, he owned at least one garage of his own, and I suspect he worked at more for other people.

While we lived in Australia, he was again a mechanic.  (In fact, that's part of the reason we moved to Australia, because they were looking for skilled tradesmen at the time as potential immigrants.)  I know the name of one place he worked:  Frank Woodham Ford in Maroubra Junction, a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales.  And I know that because a photo of my father working with a Sun 1120 Engine Analyzer (probably spelled Analyser in Australia?) was used by Woodham Ford in a newspaper advertisement, and my father saved a copy.  I used that photo with a blog post (coincidentally, one for Father's Day), and a fellow BART train operator recognized the machine.

When my family returned to the United States in 1973, my father was still a mechanic.  He had his own garage again by 1975, in Niceville, Florida, because that's where my family and my father's business partner sheltered during Hurricane Eloise.

As he started getting older and his arthritis became worse, he really couldn't do the mechanical work anymore.  I know he worked in at least one auto parts store for a while.  I think that was in Fort Walton Beach.

Part of the reason I'm having trouble remembering a lot of specifics was that my father's work history was apparently a little sketchy.  I remember him telling me when he hit retirement age that he was shocked to learn he had never worked more than five years at any job.  While that is not unusual nowadays, especially in the tech field, for someone born in 1935, it was not common.  He started selling stuff on eBay to help supplement his Social Security income; I don't know if that counts as a "job."

My Uncle Gary

Gary Steve Meckler, February 12, 1951–July 24, 2019
Photo: Hot August Nights, Reno, Nevada, August 12, 2018

Last week, on July 24, my aunt called me to let me know that my uncle Gary had died that day.  He had been ill for some time, more than he had let on.

My mother was the oldest child, so both of her brothers were younger than she was.  Gary was the younger of the two, born seven years after his older brother and eleven years after my mother.  I asked my grandmother about that age gap once, and she admitted that Gary had been a little bit of a "surprise."

Gary's Hebrew names were Gershon Sholem.  Gershon was for his father's maternal grandfather (my great-great-grandfather), Gershon Itzhak Nowicki (Novitsky here in the United States).  Sholem is more complicated.  That was for his mother's sister-in-law's mother, Scheindel.

These are a few of my favorite memories of Gary.

My mother was close to her family, so my siblings and I grew up knowing her side of the family well.  Gary visited us several times while we lived in California.  He was kind of like an older brother for my brother, my sister, and me because the age difference wasn't that big.  He taught us to eat ketchup on our scrambled eggs and gave us the phrase, "You don't cheat fair!"

Gary even visited us while we lived in Australia.  He brought us a present, a book titled 101 Alphabets.  It was mostly alphabets in different fonts and styles, but one of the examples was the Greek alphabet.  So I learned the Greek alphabet when I was 10, because I thought it was pretty cool, and because my uncle gave us the book.  I think I still have the book.

One of my favorite photos of Gary is from when he was stationed in Vietnam with the U.S. Army.  I love snakes, and I still think this is a fantastic photo.  I don't know if Gary had a copy of this of his own, because when I posted it on my blog several years ago, he saved my digital copy and posted it to his Facebook page.

We will all miss Gary very much.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Favorite Winter Activity Growing Up

After a couple of weeks of "classics", Randy Seaver has a new topic this week for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music, please!):

(1) Winter arrives this month all over the northern hemisphere, and the daily routines of work, education, and play change along with the seasons.  

(2) What were your favorite winter activities when you were a child and teenager and young adult?

(3) Share your memories on your own blog post, in a Facebook post, or in a comment on this post.  Please leave a link as a comment on this post if you write your own blog post so that everyone can read all about it.

Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting this topic.

I grew up in warm-weather areas — Los Angeles County; Sydney, Australia; and Florida — so the types of things that people think of as "winter activities" weren't usually something we did.  Sure, we might get some rain (and it actually can get below freezing in the Florida Panhandle, which is where I used to live), but overall not the kinds of locations that come to mind when you say "winter."  Neither of my parents were into ice skating or skiing, so we didn't go anywhere to do that.

But while my family lived in Los Angeles County (we were there until 1971), we did have a tradition for at least a couple of years where my father and Uncle Tony (not really our uncle, but a close friend of my father) drove up to Mount Baldy (which I've just learned is officially named Mount San Antonio; never heard that name before!) in a pickup truck and filled the truck bed with snow.  They then brought the snow back to the house, and we were able to play with it for a while before it melted.  I don't remember if it lasted long enough for us to make anything resembling a snowman, though!

As a young adult I lived in California again, actually in Los Angeles, so it was still pretty temperate in the winter.  I think the closest thing I had to a winter activity was spending Christmas break visiting my parents while I was still in college.  At least that's all I can remember now.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: How Did You Get to School?

I am revisiting my childhood for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun from Randy Seaver:

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music, please!):

(1)  How did you get to your school(s) through high school?

(2) Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or on Facebook or Google+.  Please leave a comment on this post with a link to your post.

It's obvious from Randy's comment about having gone to three schools (only three!) that his family didn't move around as much as mine did (there's a reason my mother earned the nickname "the wandering Jew").  Let me see how many I can recall . . . .

I don't really remember how I traveled to elementary school, or actually how many schools I attended during the years my family lived in California.  We left in March 1971 while I was in 3rd grade.  I know I was at Rorimer Elementary in 1st grade; that is in La Puente.  When we moved to Pomona I'm sure I went to a different school, so that's at least two.  I think I went by bus when I lived in Pomona.  Maybe my mother drove me (and my sister?) to Rorimer, or maybe my sister's mother did?  I guess I should ask my sister about that to see what she remembers.  But there may have been a school between Rorimer and Pomona.

In Australia I attended two elementary schools:  Daceyville Public School for the 4th grade (which I was in for only the second half of the school year) and Woollahra Demonstration School for the 5th grade.  I remember my mother driving me to Woollahra, because she complained about it, but there may have been a bus to Daceyville.

When my family returned to the United States, we moved to Niceville, Florida.  I had three months of the 6th grade, at James E. Plew Elementary School.  (And for those who are counting, that makes at least five elementary schools I attended.)  I rode the bus to school there.

I remember telling my mother that whether she moved or not, I wanted to go to the same school for all my years of junior high school and high school and not have to be the "new kid" in school.  I actually managed to accomplish that.  I rode the bus to school at C. W. Ruckel Junior High School and Niceville Senior High School, even after we moved 10 miles from Niceville out to Villa Tasso.  We moved while I was still in junior high school.  The school bus picked us up in Villa Tasso on County Line Road, because Niceville is in Okaloosa County and Villa Tasso is in Walton County, just over the county line.

When there was really bad rain, however, my mother sometimes drove us to school from Villa Tasso, because we didn't have paved roads, and they often flooded in the rain, so we couldn't safely walk to the bus stop.  And if the temperature was below zero (which does happen in the Florida panhandle) she might drive us also.  Sometimes she just drove us to the bus stop, though.

Until now, I have never thought about whether we were actually in the residence area for Niceville schools once we moved to Villa Tasso.  We must have been, because the bus came out there.  And really, we were so far away from everything else in Walton County that it wouldn't have been practical for Walton to bus us anywhere.  I guess the counties worked out something.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Sporting Activities

It looks like more people are helping Randy Seaver come up with new themes for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun:

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission: Impossible! music, please!):

(1) What sporting activities did you participate in as a youth and as an adult?

(2) Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or on Facebook or Google+.  Please leave a comment on this post with a link to your post.

Thank you to Lisa Gorrell for suggesting this SNGF topic.

Sports, huh?  Never one of my strong points.

I don't remember any organized sports from when I was really young.  I know I had a sports uniform (which I have kept all these years), worn one day a week, when I attended 5th grade at Woollahra Demonstration School (in a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales).  I think Friday was sports day.  I can't think of what sports we played at school, though.  I recall having the opportunity to play soccer, cricket, and rugby while I lived in Australia, and I strongly disliked the first two.  I doubt I was particularly good at any of them.

When my family returned to the United States, I was able to be bad at more sports.  The only F I ever received in my life came in physical education.  My teacher, who looked a little like Crystal Gayle but whose name I don't recall (I can still picture her in my mind), didn't believe that I couldn't do a cartwheel and failed me for that.  She thought I was faking.  Sorry, lady, I still can't do a cartwheel.  But I'll always remember you (and not in a pleasant way).

I had various attempts at archery, basketball, volleyball, baseball, and softball, all of which I was very bad at because I can't aim well.  (My father learned this when he tried to teach me to shoot a gun.)  Even trying to compensate for how I missed didn't work.  One thing I was reasonably good at with baseball and softball was catching, but I never learned how to use a glove properly, so I always caught barehanded.

I did some bowling, mainly during summer breaks, but that was another thing where aiming was almost a prerequisite.  I was the queen of gutter balls.  I think my lifetime high score is in the 70's.

I was long and lanky, so I should have been good at running, but nope, I sucked at that also.  It wasn't until I was in college that I learned I had totally flat feet.  (One healthcare person told me they were so flat they almost went the other way.)  At least that explained why I was so miserable at running.

I am pretty sure there were Girl Scout badges for sports stuff, but I don't remember if I earned any of them.  I know I saved my uniform and badges, but I have no idea where they are in the house.

My brother and I used to play sandlot football in Villa Tasso with some of the other kids living out in the sticks.  I always wanted to be a quarterback (I dreamed of playing for the Minnesota Vikings when Fran Tarkenton retired), but that whole problem with aiming bit me again.  I was a good lineman, though.  The guys had trouble moving past me, because it was like my feet were planted in the ground.

The closest I ever came to playing football was, many years later, being an assistant coach of a professional women's football team.  I can't remember the team name or how I found out about it, but I drove from near the USC campus out to Van Nuys for the nighttime practices.  This was not long after my knee surgery (see below), so I couldn't do a lot, and there was no pay.  But I was thrilled to be part of it.

In college, however, I did find a few athletic activities at which I was at least adequate.  I got into weightlifting about the summer of 1982, when I really, really wanted to try out as a walk-on for the USC football team.  I had a couple of friends on the team, one of whom was a walk-on himself (Rick Vasquez, a quarterback), who encouraged me, and wide receivers coach Nate Shaw thought I should at least be given a chance.  But John Robinson refused to talk to me.  I competed in a couple of local weightlifting contests and even won two prizes.

During the time I was working out with weights, I also started bicycling as exercise and part of my training regimen, not just as a means of transportation (because I didn't have a car at the time).  I used to ride laps around the USC campus.  I think I built up to 11-mile runs, and then fall semester came and I was taking classes full time and working half-time in an office.  Between that and wrenching a knee (which eventually needed surgery), boom!, there went the exercise routine.  Because of the way I injured my knee, now I can't even ride a bicycle half a mile.

The other sporting activity I got into and enjoyed a lot was swimming.  I had been swimming since I was a kid, but nothing major.  USC had an Olympic-size swimming pool in the old PE building.  I did lap swimming and built up to a mile at a time.  I found it very relaxing and enjoyable.

At this point in my life I'm mostly fat and lazy.  I walk, and that's about it.  As a fan, however, I love the NFL and root for the Minnesota Vikings and Oakland Raiders.  I enjoy baseball (see Lisa Gorrell's post on this topic) but haven't gotten really enthusiastic about a team since the Montreal Expos ceased to exist.  And I will always love the Boston Celtics.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Family Pet Stories

It's another great topic for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (but I might be biased)!

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music, please!):

(1) What were your family pets?  What were their names?  How long did they live?  What stories do you have about them?

(2) Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or on Facebook or Google+.  Please leave a comment on this post with a link to your post.

Thank you to Janice Sellers for suggesting this topic.  If you have an idea for an SNGF topic, please let me know.

My family and I have had a lot of pets during my life, so I'll see who I can remember.

My mother used to tell me stories about a standard poodle that we had when I was a little baby.  He protected me as if I were his own puppy.  His name was Pepe (which I learned from my father; my mother never mentioned his name), and he died of an epileptic seizure.  This had to have been around 1962 or maybe 1963.

The first pets I remember were Shazam, a solid black purebred Siamese (some kind of throwback), which we got from my dad's brother, who bred Siamese (Shazam's mother was named Ding-a-Ling); and Zeby, a German shepherd or shepherd mix whose origins I know nothing about.  Shazam used to catch birds, insects, and small rodents and bring them to my mother, who freaked out and told one of us kids to get rid of them.  She was closest to me; I could hold her on my lap when she had to go to the vet, and she totally behaved herself.  As I recall, she just disappeared one day (one of the many reasons I am firmly in favor of indoor cats).  Zeby was a pretty good dog from what I remember.  She was another pet who ran away and we couldn't get her back; one day she got out of the yard accidentally.

I do remember that we had those two pets while we lived in La Puente, maybe about 1966?  One day the two were getting into some sort of a fight, and the babysitter who was watching us tried to intercede — not a good idea!  The babysitter and Zeby got really scratched up.

My parents apparently were not too good on getting animals fixed, because Shazam had a litter of kittens of which we kept one, Velvet, who was also solid black.  Zeby had puppies at some point and we kept one of them, which my mother named Bubbala.  Velvet was my cat and used to sit in my room all the time.  One day she ran away and didn't come back.  Shazam, Zeby, and Velvet all disappeared in Pomona.  That would have been about 1969 or 1970.

Bubbala was a special dog.  It's the only time I have heard of when a vet has called a dog retarded.  Bubbala never really learned to be housetrained and was always a little slow.  We had him in Pomona also.  I don't remember what happened to him.

Other pets we had in Pomona were various small hamsters and gerbils, and a green snake that was kept in the garage.  He was primarily my mother's pet.  He got away three times; the first two times my mother was able to find him and bring him back, but the third time he was gone for good.  I think it was the second time he escaped that he bit my mother when she retrieved him.  I remember her saying that it hurt, but he wasn't poisonous, so she wasn't worried.

I only remember one pet from the period we lived in Australia.  When we were in Pagewood we had a cat that was permitted to be indoor/outdoor.  She was run over by the neighbor's car.  That was in 1973.

When we returned to the U.S. and moved to Niceville, Florida, we had a series of Siamese cats and black cats with names evoking the devil — Beelzebub, Demon, Diablo, Lucifer, Satan, Shaitan — as chosen by my mother.  One of them — maybe Demon? — wasn't very friendly with other people, including family members, except he liked me.  Then one day he attacked me for some reason (I recall him being nervous because a bunch of people were in the house), and that was the excuse to find him a new home.  I think Lucifer is the cat we came home and found dead in the middle of the living room, but that was after we moved to Villa Tasso.  These were between 1974 and 1978 or so.

Somehow one day we ended up with a small, female white cat.  We went in the opposite direction with her:  Her name was Angel.  She was a very sweet, loving little girl, mostly mine.  She appeared to understand what I told her in English and act appropriately.  We had her in 1977 or 1978, I think.

There were some dogs also, although I don't remember most of their names.  My mother was a bookkeeper for a breeder of show Shelties.  One puppy was born with an undershot jaw, and the breeder was going to put it down, but my mother convinced him to give the dog to her.  I think that dog died of a heart attack.  Then there was a dachshund who loved to play by rolling over onto his back for you to rub his belly.  He ran into the street one day and did that for a truck that was coming through.  My mother rushed him to the vet, but he didn't make it.  These were also around 1976 to 1978.

The most confusing choice of pet I remember was one summer when my father came home with a St. Bernard.  Remember I said we lived in Florida?  Besides being the wrong dog for the local weather, Bear thought he was a lap dog and was always trying to jump up on people.  As I recall, we didn't keep him long.

Once I graduated college and moved out on my own, I had pets of my own.  Every single one has been a rescue of some sort, with me almost always being at least the second owner.  The first was a Russian Blue/Persian longhair mix I found at the Los Angeles animal shelter in 1985.  I walked into the cat room, and she was the only one who talked to me, so I figured she was the right cat.  Her original name was Mura, which I thought was odd, so I changed it to Tamara.  She was a beautiful cat.  She looked like a "luxury model" (as a friend called her), but she was a good mouser, always making sure to leave some left over for me.  She was with me in my first apartment in Los Angeles, then the four-bedroom house I rented, moved with me to two houses in Berkeley, and finally to the house I bought in Oakland.  Her nickname was Fuzzybutt.  She lived to be 15.  She had an enlarged heart (I saw the X-ray; it had grown to fill her entire chest cavity), which is what killed her.  I learned how to give IV feedings while she was ill.

Right around 1993 my aunt and uncle somehow ended up taking care of a female German shepherd mix which had shown up in their neighborhood, probably dropped off in the country by some peabrain who simply didn't want to take care of her anymore (I was told this happened relatively often).   They (mostly my uncle) didn't really want another dog, so they talked me into taking her.  Cody started off being a nice dog but eventually became aggressive.  I ended up surrendering her to the Humane Society with the recommendation that she be in a household with no other dogs.

Then came Hank, who used to belong to a friend who had combined households with two other friends.  Four cats came together, and Hank was the odd man out, not quite fitting in.  He was a beautiful black and white Persian, complete with the wheezing, and a very mellow boy.  His previous owner had called him "the big duh", but he was far more intelligent than she had given him credit for.  I had always liked him, so when he wasn't happy in the new household, my friend offered him to me.  I went to pick him up, and he was waiting on the bed as if he knew I was coming.  He went straight into the carrier and was ready to leave.  This was in 1996.  He liked to curl up with me under the covers at bedtime.  He lived to be almost 18 and died in 2011.

Soon after Hank was Kirby.  He was a purebred Sheltie.  While I was out of the country for three and a half weeks in 1996, Cody stayed with a friend of a friend, who had Kirby, and the two got along great.  Not long after I returned to the States and brought Hank home, Kirby's owner contacted me and asked if I would like to take him.  She never went into detail about why she couldn't keep him anymore, but over time I began to figure out that someone had been whipping Kirby, and I suspected that she was giving him away to get him away from that problem.  He was a wonderful dog.  Even though Shelties are known for barking problems, he was pretty quiet.  As a herding dog, he was very good at keeping the cats in line when they started hissing or fussing.  He would just charge between them, almost like he was saying, "Knock it off!"  As he became older he had diabetes, then became deaf and almost blind.  When he started walking into rooms with a look like he couldn't figure out what he was doing there, I knew it was time.  All the employees at my vet came in to say good-bye to him, he was so well loved.  I think he made it to 15 also.  That was in 2009.

Napoleon arrived after Kirby.  While my housemate and I were at the 1995 GAMA Trade Show, a cat crawled into my basement and had a litter of kittens.  When we discovered them, about a week after our return, I was told by the Humane Society to start socializing the kittens so that they would be adoptable.  When it came to take them to be adopted,  we decided to keep the runt of the litter, a little white male shorthair.  He thought he could take on the world and had a definite "superiority complex", so we named him Napoleon.  Possibly due to his ignominious beginnings in the basement, he acquired an immune deficiency and had multiple problems, including severe allergies (I learned how to give allergy shots with him).  In 2000, at the age of 5 he had a stroke, and I took him to the evening emergency vet.  His odds of survival were extremely poor, so I had him put to sleep while I held him.

Later in 2000 a friend of mine circulated a message as a favor to a friend of his.  The other friend's girlfriend had found a cat and five kittens in a laundry basket in her apartment building parking lot and had been taking care of them.  She supposedly thought they were about four weeks old and was looking for homes for them, and the mother was said to be a Himalayan.  I waited a few weeks to allow the kittens to be weaned and then contacted the woman.  I discovered that they were only about four weeks old at that time; apparently when the lowlife left them in the parking lot, the kittens had just been born.  The mother wasn't actually a Himalayan, although she obviously had some sort of "Siamese" type ancestry.  (I eventually figured out she was probably a Birman mix.)  The woman also had a dog and a young baby and was desperate to find someone to take the cats.  So, I gave in.  I took all six of them home with me and kept them in a closed bedroom, where the kittens could be safe.  I socialized all of them really well and when they were weaned found them homes, and I kept the mother.  She was a little bitty thing, but when I was able to take her to the vet, they estimated that she was about 5 years old.  I named her Sassafras, Sassy for short, and she was my little fluff bucket, all long fur and fuzzy undercoat.  She was always small, 8 pounds at her absolute heaviest.  I adored my little princess.  But after Hank died, she just wasn't the same, and she really missed me when I traveled.  I came back from a trip and discovered that she really hadn't eaten for about four days, which is often deadly for cats.  In her case, it was; she didn't recover.

In 2003 Noodle entered my life.  He was a black and white shorthair from the Boston area.  His original name was Nunu, which I discovered was the name of the vacuum cleaner on Teletubbies, which I learned to despise when it was imported from the UK to PBS.  He obviously needed a new name.  If I change someone's name I try to keep it sounding somewhat similar, and my cousin's wife suggested Noodle, as in Mr. Noodle from Sesame Street, which worked for me.  He was a little punk, always picking on Sassy.  He moved up to Oregon with me but had heart failure earlier this year, surviving only two weeks after that.  He was about 15 1/2 when he died.

The year 2004 saw me branch out into birds.  I had always wanted a macaw, but when I had finally saved enough money to buy one I also had a cat, and I didn't think the two could coexist.  Many years later I met someone involved with a bird rescue group, and she explained how cats and birds can live together in some semblance of harmony.  I met Peaches, a blue and gold macaw, at his foster mom's home, and he took an immediate liking to me.  I determined that he was hatched about 2001, so he was only 3 years old when I brought him home.  He's now about 17, but since large macaws live to between 60 and 80 years old in captivity, he should long outlive me.

In 2005 I took in a second bird.  My boyfriend at the time really wanted a sun conure, so we went to look at some in a local pet store.  One of the birds had been returned after he hadn't worked out for the original purchaser (a guy who bought it for his girlfriend without asking her first).  He seemed like a nice little bird.  He was called Sunny at the store, apparently a very common name for sun conures, but I renamed him Ray.  He was friendly and very social, and the only bird I've had that I permitted to sit on my shoulder (actually not a great place for them).  The only negative thing about him is that sun conures have a rather high-pitched piercing scream, in some ways worse than macaws.  I never got used to that noise.  Ray took ill suddenly one day in December 2010, and I rushed him to the bird vet.  They thought he had a chance, so they tried some different therapies with him, but all it did was drag it out.  He died the day of Christmas Eve.

The second pet to join my household in 2005 was a guinea pig named Pulga.  I had gone to a local flea market just to browse and had no money with me.  A man who was trying to sell the guinea pig kept trying to convince me to buy it, but I kept telling him I had no money.  He finally begged me to take it, as he didn't want to have it at his house anymore.  He told me her name was Pulga, which means "flea" in Spanish.  Inasmuch as guinea pigs are pretty docile animals, she was a good pet.  Noodle, mentioned above, used to try to climb on top of her habitat all the time, so I housed her in the bird room, which Noodle was not a big fan of (Peaches scared him).  Pulga got along well with the birds and everyone was happy until Pulga suddenly died one day in 2009.  Peaches was very upset and screamed for two days.  I don't know if he really missed her or simply didn't like that something in his world had changed.

In late 2006 a third bird found his way into my life.  A friend of mine had asked me for advice on taking care of a bird that had been given to her daughter.  Zach was a green cheek conure.  I checked out his cage and food and gave her several suggestions.  Within a couple of weeks she called again and asked if I would just take the bird.  Her daughter didn't want to take care of it, and she didn't want it at all.  So little Zach moved in.  I learned that I was (at least) his fourth owner in less than one year.  This was a bird with trust issues!  He was always nipping and biting at me.  After a couple of years he finally figured out I wasn't going to dump him and became friendly.  One morning in 2011, when it was time for the birds to get up, I uncovered his cage and found him lying on the bottom, looking very distressed.  I rushed him to the vet, but he didn't make it through the day.

The addition of Zach to the house brought me to my personal pet maximum.  I had three cats, three birds, a dog, and a guinea pig from 2006 to 2009.

I looked for a new bird after Ray and Zach died, because Peaches definitely seemed lonely.  One day when I walked into my bird supply store, later in 2011 I think, I saw a severe macaw that was listed for sale.  Caesar had been returned to the store after the couple that had bought him had had a baby, because they just didn't seem to have time for him anymore (not an uncommon occurrence).  He seemed to like me a lot and stepped up for me right away, so I checked with my vet about introducing him into the household and got an ok.  I should have been suspicious, because he was being sold for only $200.  It turned out that the store owner really didn't give me the complete story — Caesar is very territorial and extremely jealous, and one of the problems that the couple had with him was his jealousy over the new baby.  He was absolute hell while he went through puberty, but he's calmed down a little at this point.  He and Peaches have their own cages but are close to each other.  When I have boarded them, I have been told that if he isn't near Peaches, he screams constantly until his cage is moved.  Overall he's rather a brat, but I have assured him I won't send him back.  I think he should live to be between 40 and 60 years old, so he'll probably outlive me also.

The same kind of problem with loneliness happened with Noodle.  After Hank and Sassy died, Noodle was moping around the house and obviously needed a new companion.  I started checking out cat rescue organizations.  One day I walked into the same bird supply store where I had found Caesar, and they were displaying cats from a feral rescue group.  One of the cats was listed as a Himalayan.  Just like Sassy, this cat didn't look like a Himalayan (he's a short hair and looks like an orange tabby with points), but he seemed friendly and responded to my talking to him.  I jumped through the hoops and filled out all the paperwork, and "Brando" came to live with me.  I have never been that big of a Brando fan, so I renamed him Brandy, which he seems to have taken to reasonably well.  He and Noodle were the best of buddies and got along beautifully.  His actual age is unknown, as he was picked up as a street cat, but he's about 12 or 13, which is definitely "old" by cat standards (don't forget, they're seniors at 7).

And the latest addition to my home is Frankie, who came to live here in April of this year, just before his sixth birthday.  After Noodle's heart attack, my boyfriend was concerned that Brandy would be a lonely cat when Noodle died (his prognosis had been for three months at the best) and told me about Frankie, who was in kind of a foster situation but wasn't fitting in very well.  I figured it must be a sign that there was a cat that needed a home, so I said yes.  He's actually kind of like Noodle, a bit of a punk.  He and Brandy are still working their positions out, but things seem to get a little better every day.