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.

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.

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.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: A Facebook "Have You Done This?" Meme

It's good to see that almost whatever is going on in the world, genealogists can count on Randy Seaver to challenge us with new questions for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun!

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

(1) Another "Have you done this?" meme was going around Facebook this past week.  Let's do it!!

(2) Copy and paste the list below, delete my answers, and add your own.

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

So here's this week's list:

1.  Driven 100 mph:  I'm with Randy, I don't think so.  Probably 85 mph is the fastest I've driven, and that was not deliberately.  I have been a passenger in a car with someone driving 90.

2.  Ridden in a helicopter:  Once, from Ontario (California) airport to LAX.
 
3.  Gone ziplining:  Oh, hell, no.
 
4.  Been to an NFL game:  Not many, but yes.  Only one with my beloved Minnesota Vikings.
 
5.  Been to Canada:  Yes, to British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, and Québec.

6.  Visited Florida:  Yes, visited and lived there.

7.  Visited Mexico:  Once, to Acapulco, as a stop while on a cruise ship on the way back to the States from Australia.

8.  Visited Vegas:  Yes, visited dozens of times and also lived there.

9.  Eaten alone at a restaurant:  More times than I can count.

10.  Ability to read music:  Yup, since I was a kid.

11.  Ridden a motorcycle:  Yes, and I still have my license.

12.  Ridden a horse:  Yes, a few times.

13.  Stayed in a hospital:  Yes, abdominal surgery.

14.  Donated blood:  Yes, earned a multigallon pin.

15.  Been snow skiing:  Never.  I've barely been in snow.

16.  Been to Disney World or Disneyland:  Yes, both.

17.  Slept outside:  Yes, camping with family and with Girl Scouts.

18.  Driven a stick shift:  Yes, that's what I learned first.

19.  Ridden in an 18-wheeler:  Not that I can recall.

20.  Ridden in a police car:  Not that I can recall.

21.  Driven a boat:  Yes, small boats when my family lived in Florida.

22.  Eaten escargot:  Yes, once for my birthday.

23.  Been on a cruise:  Yes, when returning to the States from Australia.  We stopped at New Zealand, Fiji, Mexico (mentioned above), Panama, and the Canal Zone (when the latter two were still separate political entities).

24.  Run out of gas:  Yes, two or three times.

25.  Been on TV:  Yes, several times with the USC Marching Band (The Greatest Marching Band in the History of the Universe).

26.  Eaten sushi:  Yes, many, many times, including several times in Vegas at the San Remo (awesome sushi!).

27.  Seen a UFO:   No.

28.  Been bungie jumping:  Not only no, but hell, no.

29.  Visited another continent:  Yes, Australia and Europe.  South America if you count Central America as being part of it.

30.  Been to Ellis Island?  No, but it's on my list.

Not bad, only seven noes.  I expect three of those to stay that way.

It's National Motorcycle Day!

A Honda CB750, but not quite like mine*

And just what is National Motorcycle Day, you may ask?  Apparently it's a blatant marketing push by a Wisconsin-based company that offers motorcycle insurance.  But motorcycles have been an important part of my life, and I felt like posting about them as part of writing my own story, so I searched to find if a national motorcycle day existed, and I found it.  This year it falls on July 12, ergo this post.

I've decided the first bike I'll write about is my Honda CB750K, because it was the most distinctive of the motorcycles I've owned.  Based on my recollections of all of my vehicles and the fact that I now recall that I already had it when I had my knee surgery, I think I bought it about 1985.  I was living in Los Angeles at the time and had been riding a Suzuki GS550 for a while but had decided it wasn't big enough.  I bought it used, as I have done with all of my vehicles.  I don't remember what year it was, but according to the Wikipedia page about the model, the 750K was made from 1969 to 1982, so it could have been anywhere in there, and I don't know the submodel.  I'm inclined to think it was more toward the later end, as it was in reasonably good condition.  Maybe there's a way to research that kind of thing with the California Department of Motor Vehicles?  Hmm, if so I could get copies of all of my vehicle registrations and learn more about them, like their license plates.  I'm pretty sure I had a vanity plate for the Honda, but I don't remember what it was.

My Honda was blue.  It was designed as a touring bike, to be ridden long distance over highways, so it had a large gas tank for a motorcycle, 5 1/2 gallons.  This was probably my favorite feature, because it meant stopping less often to gas up, particularly helpful when I was driving regularly between Los Angeles and Berkeley on I-5.  With the Honda I only had to stop once each way for gas, whereas all my other bikes required two or three gas stops.  Because it was my primary vehicle and I hauled around various things on it, I had saddle bags and a trunk.  I also had a full fairing for highway riding.

Some of the features described on the Wikipedia page I remember:  electric starter, kill switch, dual mirrors, flashing turn signals, and air-cooled engine.  One of the problems I discovered with the air-cooled engine was that if you weren't moving, you weren't getting air to cool the engine, so on really hot days when I was stuck on the freeway it would often stall on me.

Three things I remember about my Honda are not described on the page.  First, it was extraordinarily tall, so tall that I had trouble getting on it for the first few months after my knee surgery, which was in the fall of 1985 if I remember correctly.  I had to very carefully pick up my right leg and gently slide it over the bike, letting my foot just barely tap the ground on the other side before I could tilt the bike to an upright position and rely on my left leg.  I'm lucky that you shift with your left foot, or I probably wouldn't have been able to ride at all until I was fully recovered.  None of the images I can find online of 750K models looks like my bike; all of them look like normal-height street bikes.  Second, it was very heavy and had a very high center of gravity, more than any other motorcycle I've owned, even the 920.

The other "feature" of the bike which is not mentioned is the fact that it was necessary to take the side panels off of both sides to gain access to the battery, which I think of as a serious design flaw.  I remember the problems I had with that after one year at Band Camp (from when I was in the USC Trojan Marching Band, The Greatest Marching Band In The History Of The Universe).  Not only was I out of town for four days (I think?) with band camp in San Diego, but I broke my finger while there (which was an adventure in and of itself that I should write about sometime).  So when we returned to Los Angeles I couldn't ride for a while.  By the time I finally had a chance to check on the bike, which I had left parked on campus near the band office, the battery was dead.  So here I was, my right (dominant) hand in a cast, fumbling with this stupid layout to undo bolts to get the battery out so I could take it home and charge it.  I eventually did manage to do this, but when I brought the battery back, for some reason the charge had not taken, and I had to do it all over again!  The second time the battery did charge, and I was able to start the bike (yay!).  I vaguely recall that I rode the bike home slowly and carefully and had someone else drive my car home.

The center stand on the Honda was extremely difficult to maneuver.  I was never able to get it up by myself.  I never learned if that was normal for the model or if mine was just stiff.  This became a big problem once when I was riding south on the 405 during rush hour and the rear tire blew out.  I was in the fast lane, so I pulled over onto the shoulder and tried to get the bike to stand up on the side stand.  Nope, that didn't work; the bike kept trying to fall over.  This was well before ubiquitous mobile phones, so I didn't see a lot of choice of what to do (although I suspect if I had stayed there, someone would have alerted the police).  I got back on the bike and started it, got up to speed, and moved over two lanes.  I could see the Warner Avenue exit coming up, but I had to move two more lanes to the right to get to it.  Some absolute angel in a station wagon in the third lane saved me.  Somehow that person figured out I really needed to move over and waved me over to the third lane.  Then he (she?) moved to the right lane and covered me for that move.  I was able then to exit the freeway!  The first place I found to try to park the bike was some fast food place.  I still couldn't put the bike on the center stand, however.  I don't remember how at this point, but I was able to call AAA.  At that time AAA had pretty much no assistance for motorcycles except gas and water.  When the dispatcher asked for details about the vehicle, I said it was a Honda CB750K motorcycle with a flat tire.  He told me they couldn't really do anything for the bike because they couldn't repair or replace the tire, and I explained I just needed someone to help me put it on the center stand.  He sounded doubtful but said he would send someone.  The AAA driver who arrived was a big, beefy guy.  I explained the problem.  That center stand was so stiff he couldn't do it by himself, and I had to help him!  But we did manage to put it on the stand.  My landlord very grumpily came to retrieve me from Orange County (I lived just on the edge of East L.A. near the USC campus), and the next day I called the one local motorcycle towing company to retrieve the bike.

After my knee surgery, I no longer had the leg strength to pick the Honda up when it fell over.  One time this became a problem was when I somehow managed to get the shoelace of my left shoe tangled with the foot peg.  I tried but could not fix it while I was on the bike, so rather than risk some kind of horrible accident because I couldn't control the bike, I pulled up to a median, laid the bike down, and untangled my shoe.  Then I looked around at people and asked if someone could please help me pick it up!  Happily, someone walking by did just that, and I was able to go merrily on my way again.

Another time I laid the Honda down was not quite so . . . planned.  I was turning left at an intersection when the engine suddenly cut out.  I was in the middle of the turn and leaning left, and the bike just dropped.  I tried to catch it with my left hand, but because of the weight it slipped off my fingers (and caused a hairline fracture in my pinky).  So there I am, standing in the middle of the intersection, with a downed bike.  I shouted for help!  Someone came and helped me pick the bike up, and I made it out of the intersection safely.

The last time I had to get help picking up the Honda was after I had moved to Berkeley from Los Angeles.  It was the day of the Loma Prieta earthquake, October 17, 1989.  I was in the house when the quake hit.  At the time I was a nanny/cook/housekeeper.  After the shaking stopped, I left to pick up the 2-1/2-year-old daughter of the household, who was in daycare.  When I walked outside, the Honda had fallen over, and onto the wrong side, no less.  Motorcycles are designed to lean to the left on their side stands; it was on its right side.  That makes it even more difficult to pick up.  I didn't want to just leave it there, because gasoline from the tank would have leaked out.  I was fortunate in that someone was walking past the house at that moment, and she helped me get the bike up.

By that point I wasn't actually riding the Honda anymore.  While I was still in Los Angeles, it was stolen from outside the USC Hillel, where I was working as a kosher cook.  This was between the fall of 1988 and the spring of 1989.  I walked out after finishing work one evening and poof!, no motorcycle was there.  Beyond the annoyance factor, this was suspicious because this particular model was not popular and therefore not worth much money.  I reported it but didn't end up waiting for it be found.  I got fidgety without a bike and only lasted about a week before I bought my Virago.  About two months later, the police recovered the Honda on the side of a freeway (I think the 10), where it had been abandoned by a man who was trying to get away from the police.  I was told that the engine was still running when they found it.  It had been in some kind of accident.  I don't remember how I transported the Honda to Berkeley.  I tried to sell it, but no one wanted it.  Not long after the earthquake, I gave it to my landlady's lover just to get rid of it.

And so ends the tale of my Honda CB750K.

*Credit:  yoppy.  Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Super Bowl 2018 Edition

The Super Bowl, and the NFL in general, are near and dear to my heart, so I really like this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun topic from Randy Seaver.

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

(1) The Super Bowl is on Sunday, 4 February 2018 in the USA.  The New England Patriots are playing the Philadelphia Eagles for the National Football League championship up in Minnesota (an indoor stadium!).  The winners get to go to Disney World.  

(2) Predict the score for this game.  You have to predict the winning team and the closest to the actual score (point differential summed for both teams) to be the winner.  The winner of this contest gets announced next week in a Genea-Musings blog post.  

(3) Tell a story about your experiences playing football or watching professional football games.  Did you go to football games?  Who in your family was the real fan of the game?  What were the pregame routines?  How do you, or your family, react to good plays or bad plays, or wins or losses?

(4) Provide your entry in a comment to this blog post, in a blog post of your own, or in a Facebook or Google+ post.  Be sure to tell me about your post in a comment to this post.

1.  Well, I do love football, but I don't like who ended up in this year's Super Bowl.  I was rooting for the other two teams in each of the conference championships.  I've been a Vikings fan for more than 40 years, and they would have been playing at home.  But such is life.  And Disneyland is so much better than Walt Disney World anyway.

2.  I have to decide if I want to go with the odds or with what I really want to happen.  Since Randy isn't giving out a prize for the winner of his contest, I'm going with what I want.  I'm going to say Eagles over Patriots, 24-20.  (Please let it come true!)

3.  I've been to several professional football games.  For Saturday Night Genealogy Fun last week I wrote about the two Super Bowl halftime shows I have performed in.  During the five years I was in the USC Trojan Marching Band, we also performed at halftime during several regular-season games for the Los Angeles Raiders and Anaheim Rams.  We were never permitted to actually sit in the stands and watch these games.  At least with the Raiders and Rams we walked onto the sidelines a few minutes before the half ended, so we were able to watch a little bit of the game (and I remember always feeling very, very small while standing next to the pro players!).  For the Super Bowls we didn't see squat except on television monitors before we went out to the field.

I have splurged a few times on attending NFL games.  While I was still living in Los Angeles, one year I went to a Raiders postseason game, and it wasn't even that expensive.  In Oakland, some friends and I went to a Raiders game when they played the Pittsburgh Steelers, because one of the friends is a huge Steeler fan.  I think I have been to one or two additional Raiders games over the years.  And once I went to a San Francisco 49ers game with some sort of group deal, but I was rooting against them.

Both of my parents watched football, so I grew up with it.  My second favorite team, the Raiders, was one of my mother's favorite teams.  My dad's favorite teams were the Rams, whom I don't like at all, and the Eagles, which makes another good reason to root for them this year.  I don't remember any pregame routines, but I do remember my mother would react loudly to plays she liked or didn't.  She's also the person who taught me about "football tushies", yet another reason to enjoy the game.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: One Thing You've Done

For Saturday Night Genealogy Fun this week Randy Seaver is using a meme that has been making hte rounds on Facebook.  I posted a response there already, so I have an answer ready!

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

(1) There have been some posts on Facebook to tell one thing that you've done in your life that your Facebook friends have never done.

(2) For this SNGF, write about something that you have done in your life that your friends have not done, as far as you know.

Share your act with your readers (and friends) in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a Facebook post.

So here's mine:

I know I have several friends who have done this, but I'm pretty sure none of my genealogy friends have.  While I was a member of the USC Marching Band (The Greatest Marching Band in the History of the Universe), I performed in two Super Bowl halftime shows and at one World Series game.

On January 25, 1987, Super Bowl XXI was held at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.  The teams were the New York Giants and the Denver Broncos.  I was a member of the percussion section, playing cymbals.  The halftime show was choreographed and put on by Disney.  Unfortunately, Disney doesn't really like live music, because people can make mistakes, so we band members didn't actually get to play.  More unfortunately, because we weren't playing, it was decided that percussion section members wouldn't carry our own instruments.  Instead, we had to carry wind instruments.  I had a trumpet.

Mickey Rooney was part of the show.  The band was marching in two concentric circles, one circle going clockwise and the other counterclockwise.  Rooney was supposed to step between two band members and walk out to the middle of the field.  He missed his cue, which was a few people ahead of me in the counterclockwise circle.  He decided he would walk in front of me.  He had been a really rude, obnoxious person during the rehearsals, and I strongly considered tripping him.  Then one thought immediately popped into my head:  "Art will kill me" (Art being Dr. Arthur C. Bartner, the band director).  So I let him through.

At some point I managed to get one of those foam hands as a souvenir.  It was a Broncos hand.  I sent it to my mother as a memento of my gig.  And what did she do?  Complain that it wasn't a Giants hand, the team she preferred.  Sometimes you just can't please someone!

On January 31, 1988, Super Bowl XXII was held at Jack Murphy Stadium (which no longer exists) in San Diego, California.  The Broncos were back, but this time they played the Washington Redskins.  This show was a lot better, because the band actually got to play!  The show was choreographed by Radio City Music Hall.  We had 88 pianos on the field, with 88 keys each, for 1988, and the featured performer was Chubby Checker, who was much nicer than Mickey Rooney.  It was a great show, and I was able to identify myself in a clip from a video I found online.

I'm the cymbal player on the far right

The World Series game was also in 1988, when the Oakland A's played the Los Angeles Dodgers.  The date was either October 15 or 16, because it was at Dodger Stadium.  Then I was playing clarinet.  The main thing I remember about our performance is that the clarinets were near the back of the band, and after we had finished playing one song I stepped back and thought I had run into a wall — but it was actually José Canseco!  I had had no idea that he was so tall.  He thought it was pretty funny.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Drive Down Memory Lane: Family Cars

For this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun exercise, Randy Seaver has chosen a great topic, although I'm not sure I will be able to do it justice:

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

(1)  Drive down Memory Lane:  What were your family cars?  From childhood to now, year, model, color, features.  Can you remember?

(2)  Share your memories with us in your own blog post, in a Facebook post, or a comment on this post.  Please comment on this post if you write somewhere else.

My father is the person who will know exactly what cars we had when I was a kid, but first I'll see what I can remember and then ask him to supplement my comments.  I remember more from when I was older, of course.

• The first vehicle I remember any stories about was not a car but a motorcycle (and more of them will appear in my timeline later).  The story is that my father took my mother motorcycle riding to Death Valley while she was pregnant with my sister.  I don't know what kind of bike that was, although my guess is Indian or Harley-Davidson.

• My father sent me a scan of a photograph of me sitting on an Indian motorcycle which I believe belonged to him.  The photo is from 1967, so I was 5, but I don't know what year the motorcycle is.  The photo was taken in Southern California, probably in La Puente?

• The first car I remember my family having was a Plymouth Barracuda, which because my family liked to play around with words we called a Baccaruda.  No clue as to year, color, or whatever.  I remember it was a two-door and the three of us kids had to cram into the back seat.  I think we had it when we lived in Southern California, so my guess is sometime between 1969 and 1971.

• In Australia the only car I can recall is a Mini Cooper, which was awesome!  Even though my dad is 6'1" and we three kids were growing, it had plenty of room inside for everyone.  Again I don't remember year, color, or other details.  I know we had it while we lived in Pagewood, which was toward the end of the time we were in Australia, so definitely during the beginning of 1973, maybe extending back to the end of 1972?

• After we returned to the States and moved to Niceville, Florida (yes, that's really the name), at some point we had a Mercedes that wasn't really a Mercedes.  It was one of those kit cars where the outside is just a facade and the car underneath is something else.  I remember no details about it.  We probably had it around 1973–1974.

• After we moved from Niceville to Villa Tasso (still in Florida), my father had a Chevrolet Chevelle that ended up being painted BFY, for Bright (expletive deleted) Yellow.  I have a vague recollection that the man who later became my stepfather, who worked with my father, painted it that color as some sort of revenge, or maybe it was a bet.  It quickly became an albatross — everyone in town knew that car was ours.  We were immediately recognizable everywhere.

• One day while I was walking around Villa Tasso, which probably had only about 200 residents, I found a Mini Cooper in someone's yard.  I ran back home to get my father to drag him to look at it, because I wanted it.  He bought it for $75; I don't know if the title was in my name, but it was supposed to be for me.  The interior was shot and the tires were all flat.  Because it was going to be my car, I had to help my father take each tire off one at a time, roll it back to our house, pump it up with a compressor (yes, we had one at the house), roll it back to the car, and put it back on.  We then rolled the car to our house.  My father was going to get it into running condition for me.  I wanted to have it painted purple and yellow and call it the Minnesota Mini.  Nothing ever happened with it, and I believe my father sold it for the $75 he paid for it.

• My first motorcycle was a 75CC Yamahauler in 1975 or so, which I think my father bought for me.  It was kind of a starter motorcycle for kids.  My father, however, liked to ride around on it, but it was so small his knees were up by his ears.  I don't remember what happened to the bike.

• My mother drove a Chevy Corvair for a while.  I think it was white.  I remember that it was really low to the ground, because when we had heavy rains and the unpaved roads in Villa Tasso flooded, we couldn't go out in the Corvair, because the water came up through the floorboards.  At least once the only way we managed to get to school was the parent of another student who lived in Villa Tasso came and picked us up.

• After my parents divorced and my mother had married my stepfather, the latter promised me a 1964 1/2 Ford Mustang convertible (the only car I've ever really wanted) for my high school graduation present.  At one point he found a 1967 Mustang for me and started to fix it up.  While he was working on it he discovered that it was rusting out from the inside (the joys of unibody construction), so he slapped a quick paint job on it (I think it was light tan) and sold it to someone.  I never drove the car.

• I don't know when we got it, but in 1979 we had a Fiat 124.  It was a small, boxy yellow car.  My sister nicknamed it Turkey, after the character on Captain Kool and the Kongs.  In one of the few instances when I really got in trouble with my parents growing up, I drove the Fiat by myself in the summer of 1979 from Villa Tasso to Auburn, Alabama for a reunion of students who had participated in a math seminar the previous year.  It was a 200-mile trip in a torrential, driving Southern thunderstorm, and I had no idea that the car shouldn't have been able to make the trip.  It didn't give me any problems on the way.

• Sometime around 1980 or 1981 my parents moved to San Antonio, Texas.  No recollection as to when he found it, but my stepfather bought a 1964 1/2 Mustang that had been sitting on the back part of someone's property for many, many years.  It wasn't a convertible, and the tires, roof, and interior were shot, but the body was in decent shape.  Just like my Minnesota Mini, this was supposed to have been fixed up for me.  It never was, and in 1992 I had my parents sell the car so I could make a down payment on a house.  That was where I lived for 24 years in Oakland, California.  I used to tell people I was living in my Mustang.

• Maybe around 1983, while I was living in Los Angeles, I had a red Ford Pinto.  I don't remember where or how I got it.  I do remember someone broke into it one day while it was parked in front of where I was living.  The only thing stolen was the registration.  I have no memory of what happened to it.

• Sometime after the Pinto I acquired a Pontiac Firebird, or one of the GM cars that had the same body.  I think it was white (I seem to have had a lot of white cars).  I had it in 1984, because I drove it to San Antonio while the Olympics were in town.  All nonessential staff at USC were told to take two weeks of vacation during the Olympics to get us off the campus.  I drove the car to San Antonio because my stepfather was going to give it a spiffy paint job for me (he was primarily a paint and body man).  I had my bicycle in the back seat, so he could paint that also.  When I arrived, however, Ric looked over the car and discovered the head was cracked, so he wouldn't let me have it back.  He did paint the bicycle a beautiful pearl flake (which he had left over in the shop), and I brought it back to L.A. with me on the plane trip I had to take because I no longer had the car.

• After knee surgery in 1985, I could no longer ride a bicycle, so I decided to buy a motorcycle, because it was less expensive than a car.  I got a Suzuki GS550.  I think it was red.  I had a custom plate that read "JANS GS."  I kept it for a few years until I upgraded to a larger bike.

• Sometime around 1986 or 1987 I got a 1964 Pontiac Catalina (I think) 9-passenger station wagon from my parents.  I think I had determined that as cool as it was to ride the motorcycle, occasionally I needed to move stuff around (although I have moved furniture and large musical instruments on a motorcycle).  I wanted my stepfather to paint it black, so it would look like a hearse, but that's when I learned that black is a very difficult color to do well.  The car ended up green, which was a color he had left over in the shop (again).  It came in really handy while I was in the USC Marching Band, because it was almost big enough to fit an entire 10-piece band (used for small gigs) and all their instruments.  In 1988 or 1989, someone broke one of the quarter panel windows, which would have cost about $300 to replace, to steal a $20 emergency car care kit.  Luckily, my stepfather had another station wagon in the shop that used the same windows, so he shipped me the replacement, and all I had to pay for was the installation.  When I moved from Los Angeles to Berkeley, I drove the Oldsmobile.  One of my new friends in the Bay Area nicknamed the car Space Cruiser Yamato because it was so huge.  When the transmission started to go, it was too expensive to have the work done locally, so I put the car on a car carrier to send back to my stepfather to work on.  Through a series of events painful to recall, the station wagon was never retrieved from the shipper, so it was claimed on a lien and lost to me forever.

• While I was still in Los Angeles, I decided that the Suzuki 550 was not big enough anymore, so I sold it and bought a Honda CB750K.  It was blue.  It was also a relatively unpopular model.  It was tall and had a very high center of gravity.  To take out the battery, you had to remove the covers from both sides of the bike.  The center stand was an absolute bear to maneuver; it always took two people to get it to work.  The one thing the bike really had going for it was the 5 1/2 gallon gas tank, because it was built for touring.  I drove that motorcycle up and down I-5 several times to go to Renaissance Faires in the Bay Area.  It was stolen one night while I was working at the USC Hillel (I was the kosher cook there), so between fall of 1988 and spring of 1989.  (I'm pretty sure I know who stole it, in a revenge scheme, but I was never able to prove it.)  I lasted about a week before I bought a replacement bike (see my next entry).  A couple of months after I bought the new bike, the Honda was found by the police on the side of a freeway, where it had been abandoned by someone running from the police.  I don't remember how I got it up to Berkeley when I moved there in September 1989, but I couldn't find a buyer.  I ended up giving it to my landlady's lover.  I think I had a personal license plate for this bike also.

• Because I couldn't stand not having a motorcycle after the Honda was stolen, I went out and found a new bike.  I went bigger again, this time buying a Yamaha XJ 920 Virago.  It was black.  It was a pretty cool bike.  I rode it up and down I-5 a bunch of times also, although I had to stop for gas more often, because it wasn't a touring bike and had only a 3 1/2 gallon tank.  I had a personal plate for it, but I don't remember what it was.  I had the Virago until the summer of 1994, when the third (expletive deleted) who drove through a red light totaled it.  I was very lucky and came out of the incident with only a broken toe.  Of course the idiot didn't have insurance.

• Shortly before I moved to Berkeley, one of my housemates abruptly moved out and left her Honda Rebel 125 motorcycle behind.  I got a title for it purely so I could sell it, but that did make it mine for a while.  I think I rode it once or twice?

• I think it was after I bought the house in Oakland, therefore 1993 or later, that I got the 1971 Oldsmobile Delta 88 convertible.  This was also from my parents.  I was told it was one of the three largest production convertibles ever made; it was an absolute boat.  I remember the first thing that my stepfather and his business partner both told me when I saw the car:  "Never lock the doors."  It is too easy with a ragtop to just slice the cover, so there's no use taking the risk.  This car, which was another white one, was fun to drive.  It had tons of room and turned on a dime.  But with a 455 engine, it got 10 miles to the gallon when it was fully tuned, going downhill, with the wind behind it.  In addition to that problem, I realized I was never putting the top down.  I eventually sold the car to my cousin.  I don't know what he did with it.

• After selling the convertible I needed a replacement vehicle.  This time my parents provided me with a 1983 Chevy G20 short van.  I flew to Florida (they had moved back from Texas by that time) to pick it up and drive it to California.  This was probably in early 1995.  I loved that van; it was a workhorse.  Oh, did I mention it was white?  I drove it up and down I-5 to multiple Ren Faires and game conventions.  I took it to Reno for a conference for work and then down to Vegas for a get-together of game industry people.  I even had the engine rebuilt when the car hit 150,000 miles.  Eventually it died at 255,000 miles, in 2010, and I gave it to a charity reseller.  The personal license plate was "DRD PIR8" (for Dread Pirate, from The Princess Bride).

• Probably about 2007 my surgeon said I had recovered enough from shoulder surgery that it was ok for me to ride a motorcycle again.  I looked up bikes on Craigslist and found someone selling a red crotch rocket.  I don't remember what make it was, but it was definitely Japanese, because all I've ever owned are rice burners.  It turned out that I wasn't actually recovered enough, because the shoulder had torn again, so I didn't have the bike for long before I sold it.

• I don't do well without my own transportation.  When my Chevy van died in 2010, it took me only four days from when my mechanic told me it was a goner to buying a replacement.  My father helped me find a 2003 Chrysler PT Cruiser Turbo.  I transferred the DRD PIR8 license plate to it.  I was thinking I was finally going to have a vehicle with decent mileage, but my sister, who had owned a few Cruisers, warned me that the Turbo wasn't that great.  It was an improvement over the van, though:  I went from 15 to 20 miles per gallon.  The Putt Putt, as I fondly called it, was reasonably reliable.  It was black, which I discovered made the interior much warmer than I had expected.  After all those white cars, it was a huge difference.  The Cruiser and I got along fairly well, but it died on me in spectacular fashion this past June, conking out on Sepulveda Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley in rush-hour traffic.  My mechanic back home in Oakland wanted to check it out to make sure about the condition, so I had it towed the 400 miles back.  After performing last rites over it, it was time to move on.

• The vehicle I have now is a silver 2005 Toyota RAV4.  I think it took a couple of weeks after the Cruiser died to finalize this purchase, mostly because of being out of town when it happened.  This is kind of like having a van again, because it has a lot of room inside.  It was crammed totally full when I drove the 600 miles to Portland, Oregon on August 31.  I didn't transfer my personalized plates because the existing plates were still valid through November, and I already knew I was going to be moving to Oregon, so it made no sense to buy new California plates.  So I have some nondescript plates for the moment, but last week I registered the Toyota here in Portland, and my new custom plates are on the way.  Unfortunately, Oregon allows only six characters on a license plate, so I had to settle for DRD PR8.

Wordless Wednesday