Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Are Your Genealogy Highlights for the Last Month?

I'm a little late, but not too behind to jump in for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge for the week.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  What genealogy fun have you had this past month?  What is your genealogy research highlight of the past month?  It could be attending or watching a Webinar or local genealogy society meeting, finding a new ancestor, reading a new genealogy book, or anything else that you have enjoyed.

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

I haven't had much time for genealogy during the past month, because I've had to keep an 8:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. schedule, and that is way too early in the morning for me.  It makes my brain mush for the rest of the day.  But one recent blog post encouraged me to rethink a question I had posed previously.

For my mother's yahrzeit, I considered things that my mother hadn't told me, including the name of our poodle (Pepe) and how I acquired a scar on my left arm that I've had since I was very, very little.  Writing about those two items together made me suddenly wonder if the reason my mother never told me the name of our dog was because he in some way had something to do with the scar.  I'm sure I'll never be able to determine if that hypothesis is accurate, but it had not occurred to me previously, and at least it gives me a possible reason for why my mother "didn't remember" how I got the scar.

Not the most momentous discovery, but it's an example of how writing can help you look at things in new ways.

Errors of Omission?

Today is January 19, 2026, which corresponds to 1 Shevat on the Jewish calendar in the year 5786 (thank you, Steve Morse, for the handy-dandy Jewish calendar conversion tool).  My mother died on 1 Shevat; it is Jewish tradition to commemorate a person on the date of that person's death on the Jewish calendar, called the yahrzeit.  Part of how I remember my mother is by writing about her on my blog.

My mother is probably the biggest reason I became so interested in family history.  She and her mother (my grandmother) were always talking about family members, relating family stories, celebrating birthdays and anniversaries.  I grew up knowing so many relatives' names and birthdays because of this.  But something I have been thinking about recently is things that my mother didn't tell me.

One of the most glaringly obvious things she never talked about is how she and my father met.  I heard about this from my grandmother several years after my mother had died.  I wrote about it ten years ago for a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge.

My mother and her best friend (who happened to be my cousin) were on their way to a party when the car broke down.  My mother was fretting about how they would get to the party when her friend said, "Don't worry, my uncle is a mechanic.  He can help us."  And that uncle was my father-to-be, and that's how my parents met.

I have not yet filled in any of the holes in the story which I mentioned in that 2015 post.  One thing I did determine, though, is that my parents were apparently anxiously waiting for my father's divorce from his first wife to be finalized, because it was only about four days afterward that they were married.  I figured out when I was in 8th grade that my mother was three and a half months pregnant with me when they were married, and once I noticed how quickly the wedding came about, I figured they knew at the time that she was pregnant.

So did my mother never talk about how she met my father because it resulted in her getting married on short notice because she was pregnant?  I'll never know the answer to that question, but it is not an unreasonable hypothesis.

Chronologically in my life, the next thing my mother didn't tell me was the name of a dog we used to have.  She often told me about the dog, though.  I wrote a little bit about him for another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post.

This was when I was just a little baby, possibly up to young toddler.  The dog was a standard poodle, and he protected me as I were his own puppy.  If my mother was upset with me about something and yelled at me, he would stand between me and her.  And he died of an epileptic seizure.

And that's all my mother said about him.

It occurred to me after my mother had passed away that she had never mentioned his name.  Lucky for me, my father was still alive, so I asked him.  And he knew exactly who I was talking about and told me the dog's name was Pepe.

Why would my mother tell me about the dog multiple times but never say his name?  I can't come up with a good reason for that.  It's possible that she didn't remember, but she had an excellent memory, so I have trouble with that idea.  Maybe she just didn't like him?  Is that a good reason?

A very frustrating thing that my mother didn't tell me about is how I got a scar on my left arm.  I blogged about it for National Scar Appreciation Day a couple of years ago.

I've had this scar as long as I can remember, going back to when I was really young.  I have no recollection whatsoever of how I got it, what kind of injury caused it, nothing.  That suggests to me that I must have been pretty young when it happened, because I have a good memory.

I asked my mother once how I got the scar.  She said, "I don't remember."  And I took her at her word.

Many years after that, well after she had died, a little light bulb went on over my head.

My mother became hysterical any time one of her children was bleeding.  The size of the scar and its longevity indicate an injury that must have bled, probably quite a bit.  So it would have been noticeable and my mother would have been hysterical.  And yet she didn't remember how it happened?

blink blink

Um, that doesn't make sense.

Unless, somehow, she had something to do with it.  Because then it wouldn't really be that she didn't remember, but that she wouldn't want to talk about it.

There was no abuse in my family, so it wasn't anything like that.  Maybe she turned her head and I cut myself on something?  Maybe she dropped something and it hit my arm?

Maybe it had something to do with Pepe, and that's why she never said his name?

Another question that shall remain unanswered.  At least until either time travel or talking to the dead becomes more reliable.

What else didn't my mother tell me?

Poodle image by MissKaren via Pixabay.

Can It Really Be 15 Years?

I haven't been keeping up well with my blog during the past few weeks, but I knew I had to write a post today.  It is my 15th blogiversary, after all.

Lisa Hork Gorrell and I started our blogs the same day, lo those 15 years ago.  She started a couple additional ones with specific focuses, but I've kept only this general one, lumping all of my posts together.

Who knew we would last this long?

I didn't keep quite the same pace in 2025 as I did the previous year, but I had 125 posts, which averages out to about one every three days.  That isn't too bad.

I posted many more photographs from the "photo bonanza" that my sister's niece scanned.  I still haven't received the boxes of original photos, so I don't know if anything was missed or if there really are two copies of all the photos that have two scans.  But I have identified a lot more of the photos and used some unusual resources to determine more information about them.

I also wrote several posts based on "national day of . . ." prompts.  I found a few sites that promote these days (I'm pretty sure they all make money by getting companies and people to pay to have a "day of whatever" and then advertise the days on the sites).  I've discovered that they can act as prompts to remember events and stories from my family and my own life, so I've written about them.  Documenting ourselves is something genealogists are reminded to do, right?

And of course I sprinkled several Wordless Wednesdays and Saturday Night Genealogy Fun posts in there also.  Those are staples for getting me thinking of something I can write about.

I have a lot more ideas, too:  research I haven't written about yet, more "days of", more great photos to share.  I'm going to try to catch up during the next month and get back to my old pace.

Illustration:  https://pixabay.com/illustrations/billiard-striped-ball-brown-15-1433354/

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Pick an Ancestor: What Story Lines Do You Want to Explore?

It's Saturday, which means it's time for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun from Randy Seaver.  I had a very busy week and didn't have time to write at all, so I'm making up by doing last week's challenge.

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

1.  Pick one of your ancestors whom you want to know more about.  Based on your knowledge of that person's life, what story lines do you want to explore?

2.  Tell us about your ancestor and the story lines of interest to you in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook comment.

Partly prompted by my sister's comment on a recent post, this time I will focus on my great-grandmother Laura May (Armstrong) Sellers Ireland.

• Tell me about your parents, Joel Armstrong and Sarah Ann Deacon Lippincott.  How do you remember them?  What did they look like?

• How much formal schooling did you have?  Did you enjoy school?  What were your favorite and your least favorite subjects?  Did you generally get good grades?

• Did your parents divorce?  If so, when?  Did either one remarry?  If yes to the latter question, how well did you get to know the new spouse (and family, if there was one)?

• Did you know any of your grandparents or older generations?  Aunts and uncles?  I would love to hear about them.

• Did you know about your sister's first marriage, which apparently was annulled?  Why was it annulled?  Were your parents upset about the marriage?

• Was that your mother living with you in 1900 when you were enumerated in the census at your granduncle and grandaunt's house?  Tell me about your granduncle and grandaunt and what they were like.  Did your grandaunt really have three children who died between 1900 and 1910?

• Who got you pregnant with your first child?  How long had you known him?  Did you want to have his name on the birth certificate?  How did your son Bertram Lynn's birth certificate end up being listed as a girl named Gertrude L.?

• How did you meet Elmer Sellers?  How long had you known him before you married in November 1903?  Were you happy with him?

• It must have been difficult and sad to have so many of your children die so young.  Did you have funerals for any of them?  Did Elmer's mother help with their burial expenses?

• It also must have been very difficult for you when Elmer died so young.  Did Elmer's mother pay for his funeral?  Did she help you financially after that?  Did you have to go to work?  Did the older children work to help support the family?

• When did Elmer's mother die?  How well did the two of you get along?  Was she a good grandmother to your children?

• How did your children react when you had a daughter three years after Elmer had died?  Who was that child's father?  Why didn't you provide his name for Bertolet's birth certificate?

• How big of a wedding did Bertram and Elizabeth have?  Did you like Elizabeth?  How did you feel when your first grandchild was born?

• Your grandson died at the age of 2, and then your daughter Bertolet died at the age of 6.  How did the family handle these sad events?  Why didn't you include Bertolet's father's name on her death certificate?

• Your oldest son, Bertram, wrote in a list of everywhere he had lived that from 1927–1928 he was out west with no fixed location.  Do you remember that period?  Was that the truth?  Do you have any idea what he was doing during those years?

• Is it true that you married John Ireland only because someone said you needed a man's help?  And is it true that you dumped him when you figured out you really didn't need his help?  Did you stay married until he died?

• How did you manage to be not at home when the census taker came around in 1940?  Were you trying to avoid him?  Were you living by yourself at that time?

• What prompted you to get an amended birth certificate for Bertram, your oldest child, in 1940?  Did he need it for a security clearance at his job?

• Did you know that Catherine was flipping a bird in one of the photos that Anita took of you and your four adult children at Betty's house?

• When did you move to Florida to live with Bertram and his wife?

Save All Those Photographs!

One of my father's photos which has been saved.
This is the engine from a 1980–1986 Ford Bronco or F Series Bullnose
(at least according to ChatGPT).
But I have no idea whose Ford it was!

I post a lot on my blog about photographs:  how you should identify as many as possible as soon as possible, distribute and share copies (whether digital or physical) to family members, preserve them, and generally just care about them (and not let them end up in some thrift store).  Not only are they tangible artifacts from the history of your family, but they can tell you many stories, even if sometimes it takes some effort to figure those stories out.

But did you know that there is a Save Your Photos Month?  Admittedly, it was started by an organization that has some vested interest in you buying into the concept, but it's still a great way to publicize that we should be saving those photos.

The organization in question is The Photo Managers, which promotes services for organizing photos and sharing stories.  But during Save Your Photos Month, they also offer free YouTube Live presentations related to the subject of saving your photos; they want to help you organize, digitize, and save those photos.  The first two presentations for this year's event have already taken place:  "Before It's Too Late:  A Step-by-step Guide to Preserving Your Printed Photos" (which is now available on YouTube) and "How to Digitize Your Photos:  A Step-by-step Guide for Safeguarding Your Memories" (which will probably appear on YouTube soon).

Coming later this month are:
• "Organizing Digital Photos for Disaster Preparedness", September 9
• "What Is the Family Photo REALLY Telling You?", September 11
• "How to Safeguard Printed Photos from Fire, Water & Disasters", September 12
• "How to Save Photos Damaged by Fire or Water", September 16
• "Rebuilding Your Photo Collection after a Disaster", September 19
• "Clearing the Clutter, Saving the Stories", September 23
• "Essential Tools for Photo Preservation", October 2 (a bonus after Save Your Photos Month)

And all of these are free to attend and free to watch later!

So visit the Save Your Photos Month page, sign up for the YouTube Live presentations, and save all those family photos!

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Two Truths and One Lie

This isn't a game that I used to play, but I have heard of it.  It certainly makes an interesting challenge for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  Let's play the game "Two Truths and One Lie."  Tell three family stories — two must be true, and one must be a lie, an untruth.

2.  Have your readers guess which story is the lie and give their reasons for picking that story.

3.  Share your three stories on your own blog, on Facebook or other social media, or in a comment on this blog.  Share the link to your stories on this blog, so readers can respond.

4.  After all comments are in, share the lie in a comment on your post.

Okay, here goes.

1.  My great-great-grandmother Martha Winn (1837–1884) was three months pregnant when she married my great-great-grandfather Frederick Cleworth Dunstan (1840–1873) in 1858.

2.  My great-grandmother Jane Dunstan (1871–1954) was three months pregnant when she married my great-grandfather Thomas Kirkland Gauntt (1870–1951) in 1891.

3.  My mother, Myra Roslyn Meckler (1940–1995), was three months pregnant when she married my father, Bertram Lynn Sellers, Jr. (1935–2019), in 1961.

Which story is the lie?  Why do you think that story is the lie?

The Big Reveal

Even though Randy's instructions said to share the lie in a comment, everyone else updated the original post, so I'll do that also.  The lie is #2.  My great-grandmother was actually six months pregnant when she married my great-grandfather.  I guess the Nineties were a little more swinging than the Sixties in this case.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Was Your Biggest Genealogy Wild Ancestor (Goose) Chase?

I'm sure everyone has had at least one wild goose chase that would qualify for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver, right?

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  All genealogists are human, and most of us have made gone on wild ancestor (goose) chases in our genealogy research careers.  What was one of the wild ancestor chases in your research?  Explain the situation and how you (hopefully!) solved the puzzle.

2.  Tell us about your biggest genealogy wild ancestor (goose) chase in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

I've written previously about my biggest wild ancestor chase.

Way back when I was 13 and started researching my family, my father, my aunt, and my grandfather told me that my great-great-grandmother was Kate Moore and treated her name as though it were her maiden name.  So that's what I wrote down and then began to look for.

I searched for a Kate/Katherine/Catherine Moore marrying a Sellers and having a son named Cornelius Elmer Sellers for years and couldn't find her.  I searched lists of marriages and other records with no success.

I even bought a book about the Moore family of Burlington County, New Jersey, because that's where my family was from.  I found a Catherine Sellers who married George W. Moore, but that didn't fit what I was told, which was Kate Moore marrying a Sellers.  I kept the book, though.

Not long after I had read the book and decided it didn't have the person I was looking for, I spoke for the first time with my grandfather's last surviving sibling, Aunt Betty, the baby of the family.  After warming up to me, she was giving me information about the family when I said something about her paternal grandmother, Kate Moore.  She responded, "Well, you know that Moore was her second husband."

Well, no, I didn't know that.

Aunt Betty explained that her father's father had died young and that her grandmother had remarried, to George W. Moore, a few years after that.  That's when she became Kate Moore.  And George and Kate had a son, Howard Evans Moore.

Whoops!  Time to restart all my research!

That conversation was on a Sunday.  The next day at work, we were having our staff meeting and talking about what we done over the weekend.  I was telling them about my talk with Aunt Betty when I suddenly remembered the book about the Moore family, which was still sitting in my van a month after I had read it.  I jumped up, ran down to the van, got the book, and ran back into the office.

I excitedly found that entry about Catherine Sellers marrying George W. Moore and looked to see if they had had any children.  Well, whaddaya know?  They had a son named . . . Howard Evans Moore!

So I accidentally had found Kate Moore after all.  Her maiden name, by the way, was Catherine Fox Owen.

The second half of the wild goose chase, however, came when I learned through DNA testing that my grandfather — and by extension my entire family line descended from him — was a Sellers through informal adoption.  Elmer Sellers was not the biological father of my grandfather; he had married my great-grandmother when my grandfather was seven months old and had raised him as his own.  All the research I had done on the Sellers family, back to Hans Georg Söller, born in 1615 in Weinheim, Baden, had been on my adoptive line.  Still my family, just not in the way I had originally thought.

I'm still working on that part of the puzzle.

I Found Out Where We Had Our Vacation!

It's amazing what you can learn once you find the right people to ask.

Back on November 8, I posted a series of photographs from a vacation my family took, probably around April 1970, when most of the photos were dated.  Some photos were at picnic tables, some by a tent, some by a lake, and some of different family members standing in front of rock formations.

I still remember that we visited Lake Mead when I was young, so that was my guess for the lake in the photos.  But I had no idea where the rock formations could be.  I threw the question out to anyone looking at the blog post.

No one posted any comments on the blog, but I did get several comments on my Facebook page.  One in particular, from my cousin's wife, suggested that the rocks might be at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area in Nevada.  So I looked it up online, found an e-mail address for questions, and sent a link to my blog post, asking if anyone there could tell me if the photos were taken at Red Rock.

The person who first received my message said he would forward it to people at Red Rock to look at.  It took a couple of weeks, but a very nice person from Red Rock responded and said the photos didn't look like Red Rock, but maybe they were at Valley of Fire State Park, also in Nevada.  He sent me the URL for Valley of Fire's site.

So I visited the Valley of Fire site, found an e-mail address there to send questions to, and went through the same routine.  This person thought the photos did look like Valley of Fire, and he said he would forward them to staff at the park to see if they could find the locations.

This time I waited much longer.  I realized after three months that I had never heard anything back, so I sent a follow-up message.  My contact said he would poke the staff at Valley of Fire.

Three days later, a message came from a new person, someone at Valley of Fire.  She said yes indeed, those photos sure did look like they were at her park, and she was going to ask some staff members to try to find the locations.

And two days after that, woo hoo!  Not only did they find all three locations, they took photos of them while holding up printouts of my photos from 1970!  Look what they sent me:

First we have the photo of the Toyota station wagon, and then just the rock formation.

Here's the photo of my father, and next the same rock formation without the photo.

Last but not least, the photo of the three of us kids being held up in front of the same rocks, and the rocks by themselves.

And now I know that all of these photos were taken in the Seven Sisters picnic area at Valley of Fire State Park.  Since there were photos of us sitting at a picnic table, I'm guessing that table was not far from the rock formations.  I hope that the picnic tables from 1970 have been replaced by now, although I'm amazed that the rocks look almost exactly the same as they did 55 years ago.  I know geologic time is slow, but I would have expected more erosion.

It's almost exactly 55 years ago, in fact.  I realized that we probably took this vacation during Easter break (yes, back then, before political correctness, it was Easter break, not spring break as it's now called), because my parents weren't really big on having us miss school unnecessarily.  Looking at the calendar for 1970, Easter fell on March 29 that year.  If I remember correctly (it has been a while, after all), Easter break was the week before Easter, so we would have been there during the week leading up to March 29.  And that was just last Saturday.  If Easter break came after Easter itself, then it's 55 years ago this week.

I'm so stoked that I was able to identify the locations for these photos, and also figured out when!  Next up, I think I'll see if the people at Lake Mead National Recreation Area can tell me where at the lake those photos were taken (the person who sent me the URL for Valley of Fire also sent me the one for Lake Mead).  I'm feeling lucky.

And I did receive permission to post these photos on my blog (because of course I asked; I didn't take the photos, so I don't own the copyright).  I'm still waiting on an answer from the park interpreter on whether she wants name credit for the photos.

Addendum, April 1, 2025:  The park interpreter has decided she wants to stay anonymous.  But I gave her a big thank you for helping me solve my mystery!

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.

Turkish Coffee with No Sugar???

Today is January 30, which on the Jewish calendar was 1 Shevat (I say "was" because I'm writing this after sundown, which means it's now 2 Shevat; I had a busy day).  And 1 Shevat is my mother's yahrzeit and the day I've chosen to write about my memories of her on my blog.

Even though it's rather late in the day at this point, I was thinking about coffee, which was one of my mother's favorite things to drink.  She always had to start her day with at least one cup of coffee, and she would drink it throughout the day also.

And that coffee was always strong and black.  She never added anything to her coffee — no sugar, no cream, no nothin'.  Just plain black coffee.

Well, sure, I hear you saying, there's nothing special about that.  Lots of people like black coffee.

But do lots of people like their Turkish coffee that way?

See, my mother didn't even like sugar in her Turkish coffee, which I've always heard is the traditional way to drink it.  Because Turkish coffee is really, really strong.  The kind where people joke it's only strong enough when the spoon stands up on its own in the cup.

Nope, no sugar in that either.  Just plain and black, please.

Now that's a woman who really liked her coffee.

My mother and I talked about coffee only once that I can recall.  It was after I had started college.  I was probably visiting for the holidays.  I think she was drinking a cup of coffee and offered me one.  I told her I didn't like coffee.  She was surprised and said that she used to drink a lot of coffee when she was in college and cramming for her exams.  I remember telling her that was the difference — I didn't have to cram for my exams.  She never asked me about coffee again.

I still don't like coffee.  My idea of the perfect cup of coffee is you take a big mug, pour a packet of instant hot chocolate into the bottom, add two spoonfuls of sugar, fill it about one third of the way with coffee, stir it up really well, and then fill the rest of the mug with half and half or whole milk.  Yes, I know that coffee drinkers sneer at me.  But I think of it as kind of like starting the day with a milkshake.

Turkish coffee image by Engin Akyurt and used under the Pixabay Content License.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Holiday Celebrations and Memories

I'm combining last week's and this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun from Randy Seaver into one post because I don't have a lot of memories to write about.  Maybe my brother and sisters will remember more and add to this or correct me.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. 

1.  Today's challenge is to share memories of December holiday gatherings and celebrations with your families (as a child, a young adult, a parent, a grandparent, a great-grandparent, an aunt or uncle, a nibling, a cousin, an in-law)!

2.  Pick two or three questions from the list in my blog post:  Ask AI:  "What questions can I write about concerning family gatherings and celebrations during the December holidays?"

3.  Tell us about your memories of your holiday gatherings and celebrations in your own blog post, in a comment here, or on your Facebook page.  Be sure to leave a link to your report in a comment on this post.

Except for the addition of having the questions created by AI this year, this is a traditional holiday post by Randy, and my problem every year is that I just don't remember that much.  Let's see what I can come up with via the new questions prompting me.  I'm sticking to Christmas memories from when I was a child living at home with my parents.

• Who traditionally hosted celebrations in your family, and why?
Growing up, I only remember celebrating Christmas at home with my parents.  If we went anywhere else, I can't recall it.  As for why, I don't know.  We didn't have a lot of money, so we probably couldn't afford to travel anywhere.

• Did family members travel far to attend?
I don't remember any family members traveling to celebrate Christmas with us.  I think my half-sister and her mother may have celebrated Christmas with us one year, but that would have been the year they were living with us, so they didn't have to travel.

• What did the space feel like during the holidays—sights, sounds, and smells?
We always had a Christmas tree, which my mother called the Chanukah bush.  I only remember it being fake; I don't recall ever having a real tree.  My mother displayed her menorah; I think she may have lit candles sometimes, but that was all she did to acknowledge Chanukah.  The house had decorations, including one of those elves which is now called Elf on the Shelf (although it was just an elf way back then).  And my mother displayed all the cards we received, including Chanukah cards from her side of the family.

• Were nonfamily members invited to join your celebrations?
The only nonfamily guests I remember at any of our Christmas Day meals are my "Aunt" Sam (my mother's best friend), and maybe her children Jeff and Cathy.

• Are there group photos or video from holiday gatherings that capture a story about your family?
It's very strange to me that I can't find any photos from Christmas when my siblings and I were young.  My father took lots of photos, but apparently not on holidays.

• What dishes were a staple at your family's holiday celebrations?  Who made them?
I remember that we always had turkey and ham, because Aunt Sam loved ham.  I also remember we had the classics:  candied yams (which were of course really sweet potatoes), green bean casserole, mashed potatoes.  I believe my mother made everything.
I don't like sweet potatoes, and my mother tricked me one year.  She told me the food was candy.  I took one bite, glared at her, and exclaimed, "It's yams!"  And she grinned and said, "Candied yams!"  Talk about ruining your child's faith in you.

• Do you own or display any heirlooms, decorations, or items that belonged to your ancestors during the holidays?
I have my mother's menorah and usually display it during Chanukah, although I almost never light the candles.  I used to have our old Elf on the Shelf, but I haven't been able to find him.

• Did your family have traditions for how gifts were given or opened?
We children were allowed to open one present, which we could choose, on Christmas Eve.  Everything else was opened Christmas morning.  My brother always opened his presents very carefully, cutting the tape, unfolding the paper, and then refolding it flat.

Even with that long list of AI questions Randy provided, that's it for what I remember.  Let's see how my siblings do.

A Cast at Christmas (and maybe his birthday also?) Couldn't Have Been Fun

It's my father's birthday today.  If he were still here with us, he would be 89 years old.

Growing up, my mother used to joke about how my father had broken one arm and one leg each three times, one on the left side, the other on the right.  She never said how or when he had done that, but I took it on faith that it was true.  He told me that he had broken an arm once racing cars when he was young, but he never mentioned a broken leg.

Going through my photo bonanza, I discovered two photos of my father wearing a cast.  So now I can document at least part of my mother's story!

This photograph was taken at a Chevron/Standard Oil station, but I can't guess anything beyond "somewhere in the Los Angeles area."  It might have been a station my father worked at, because I don't recall that he ever owned a Chevron station.  I think his mechanic businesses were all independents.  I've been told the car might be a 1958 or 1959 Buick, but I'm working on pinning that down more definitively.

Here's another photo of Daddy with a cast, which appears to be the same as in the other photo.  The angles are different and the second photo doesn't show his hand as clearly, so I'm not 100% certain, but it's a pretty good match.

This broken arm had to be different from the one he told me about, because that one was while he was still living with his mother, before he was married.  So I guess that means I've somewhat documented two of his broken arm events that my mother talked about.

After a little online research, the thing Daddy is playing with in this photo is a Johnny Astro Luna 3, which seems to have come out in 1967.  The stockings attached to the fireplace bricks indicate this might have been around Christmas, so maybe the Johnny Astro was a present, although there's no way to tell from the photo whether it was for him or one of us kids.  He might just have been testing the toy to make sure it worked, like so many other parents.  I don't recognize the room so don't know if it's our house or someone else's, or where it could be.

Obviously, I have more research to do!  But I feel I was able to identify enough to post this for Daddy's birthday.

These are two photos of the Johnny Astro and its components.  I think the small oval white thing next to one of the stars on the launching station in the first photo might be the astronaut.  And next to it appears to be a clear piece of plastic, which might be a bag of some sort; maybe inside it are one or two of the vehicles?

According to the box, the original came with a "control center, 3 space vehicles, astronaut and capsule, and launching station."  There was also a sheet of paper, which was most likely the instructions.

Wow, if we still had the Johnny Astro now, I wonder how much it would be worth?

The Much-sought-after Jan Peerce Connection to My Family!

Five years ago, I wrote about my maternal grandparents' wedding for a Wedding Wednesday post.  One piece of information I included in my story was my grandmother's comment many years later that the famous Metropolitan Opera tenor Jan Peerce had sung at her wedding (even though she couldn't remember what he sang, but remembered what the cantor's son sang).

Bubbie (Yiddish for grandmother, and what we always called her) said at the time that she thought the reason Peerce sang for the wedding was some connection to my grandfather's brother's wife, Ida Bogus.  Her family was involved in catering, and she was somehow connected to Peerce by family, and that's all Bubbie could remember.  She was married in 1939, so for 60 years later, that's actually remembering a lot.

After being told this, I did quite a bit of research on Peerce's family, including buying a copy of his autobiography and mining it for family history details, trying to find some connection to my family.  I have Perlmans in my family, whose original family name was Perlmutter, which is close to Perelmuth, Peerce's original family name, so that seemed the logical place for the link, even though Bubbie had said it was through Ida.  I didn't find a connection with my Perlmans/Perelmutters or with Ida, however, so I was stuck.

Then, a couple of years ago, I saw someone on one of my genealogy mailing lists with the last name Bogus.  I decided to write because I don't see the name come up often.  I explained my story, and lo and behold, she knew the answer!

The research I had done on Ida Bogus had shown that her parents were Abraham Bogus and Minnie Posner.  My new genealogy friend told me that Minnie's sister Anna married Louis Perelmuth, and they had a catering business.  And Louis and Anna were the parents of Jan Peerce!  So my granduncle's mother-in-law was the sister of Peerce's mother.  That's extended family, all right, but apparently close enough, because I believed my grandmother when she said that Jan Peerce sang at her wedding.  And after looking up more information about Peerce, he was not yet famous in 1939, so it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that he would sing at the wedding.

So thank you, Felice!  I was able to resolve one of my longstanding (about 25 years) genealogy questions!

But I still want to find out one day if the wedding was covered in a Yiddish newspaper that mentioned that Peerce sang.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Share Something Unexpected That You've Found While Researching an Ancestor

As for Randy Seaver's topic for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, if a genealogist has never found something unexpected while researching an ancestor, I'd say that genealogist hasn't done enough research.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. 

1.  Share something unexpected that you've found while researching an ancestor.

2.  Share about your unexpected something in your own blog post or on your Facebook page.  Be sure to leave a link to your report in a comment on this post.

[Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting this topic!]

One major fact that I discovered wasn't quite unexpected, so I guess you could say I merely confirmed it.

I was told by my cousin Ruth Anne that the rumor in the family was that my paternal grandparents had never actually been married.  This was strongly supported by a letter she had that was from a lawyer, in response to an inquiry my grandmother (who was also Ruth Anne's grandmother) had sent to him.  It was clear from the letter we had that our grandmother had asked about circumstances relating to a common-law marriage.  Now, that is not something you ask if you know that you signed a marriage license.

But the confirmation that they had not been married came when Ancestry.com added a database of an index to Florida divorces.

I was sitting around in an airport during a layover and discovered the database.  I figured it would be amusing to look up my father's and my grandfather's divorces.  And lo and behold, when my grandfather was divorced in 1953, it was from Elizabeth, his first wife, whom he married in the 1920's — not from Anna, my grandmother.  My father was born in 1935.  Oops!

So I called my father and said, "Guess what?  You're a bastard!"  Which he thought was hilarious.

(And yes, I realize that the possibility exists that my grandfather could have told my grandmother he wasn't married and entered into a bigamous marriage, but they lived in a pretty small town, and I'll bet that my grandmother knew his first wife and knew that he was still married.)

I did discover something unexpected about my great-great-grandfather on my mother's side, however.

I had been told by cousins that my great-great-grandmother had died while the family was still in Europe and that my great-great-grandfather had remarried, which made sense, because they had very young children when she passed away.  It's certainly common for men to do that, so they have a wife to take care of those children.

I found the record for my great-great-grandmother's death on December 8, 1908.  But when I found an index entry for my great-great-grandfather's second marriage, I learned that it had taken place June 8, 1911, two and a half years after my great-great-grandmother had died.

Um, say what?  You mean to tell me that he took care of those babies (including one who was a mere one month old when mom died) all by himself for those years?

So I asked my cousins about this apparent "modern man", taking on the mantle of mother while he was also a businessman.

And learned that no, he had not been the one taking care of the children.  The oldest daughter in the family, who was about 18 when her mother died, was still living at home, and she was the person taking care of those little ones.  My great-great-grandfather only remarried after Etta married and moved out.  While that's not quite what I was told the first time around, it certainly made that second marriage date make much more sense.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: An Ancestor Who Experienced or Did Something Unique or Memorable

What's memorable to one person (I won't even get into the actual definition of "unique") may not be to others, making it difficult for me to decide what to write about for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. 

1.  Choose an ancestor who experienced or did something unique or memorable (such as an event, family life, trip, etc.).

2.  Share about your ancestor and his/her unique experience and how it may have affected their life in your own blog post or on your Facebook page.  Be sure to leave a link to your report in a comment on this post.

[Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting this topic!]

Hmm hmm hmm.  What to write about?  After all, every person's life is unique.

Well, one of my favorite ancestors to write about is my 6th great-grandmother Ann (Ridgway) Gaunt.  She was Quaker, as most of the ancestral lines on my paternal grandmother's side of the family were.  She was born October 10, 1710 and died February 6, 1794, both events likely taking place in what is now New Jersey.  I don't know if she was unique, but she apparently was memorable, because people took the time to write about her.

From Peter Gaunt, 1610–1680, and Some of His Descendants (Woodbury, New Jersey:  Gloucester County Historical Society, 1989) by David L. Gauntt:

"Ann Ridgway was a well known Quaker minister of Little Egg Harbor, N.J.  She began preaching when she was a very young girl and traveled extensively on preaching excursions from that time until a very advanced age.  She was a minister for over 60 years . . . .  When very old, she could not stand to preach, but would kneel while preaching for an hour or more."

Memorable and admirable!

I also think my paternal grandfather was memorable.  He overcame a disability that would be a problem even for many people today and had a busy, productive life.

Bertram Lynn Sellers was born April 6, 1903 to Laura May Armstrong, an unwed mother.  She married Cornelius Elmer Sellers on November 7, 1903.  Elmer accepted my grandfather and raised him as his own.  Neither my grandfather nor his siblings ever knew that Elmer was not his biological father.

On January 22, 1916, when he was not yet 13 years old, my grandfather and three friends were playing in an unreinforced tunnel carved out of a dirt mound, and the tunnel collapsed.  Grandpa suffered a serious leg injury that soon led to his right leg being amputated just below the knee.

A poor family in a relatively small town probably would not have had many resources available to provide lots of physical therapy or a state-of-the-art prosthesis (whatever that might have looked like in 1916).  It would be easy to imagine that the future of a child in this situation might not have gone well.

But Grandpa married his first wife, Elizabeth Leatherberry Sundermier, on December 18, 1923.  They had three children together, born in 1924, 1925, and 1928.

It doesn't reflect well on him that he apparently abandoned his wife and children for some time, because in a list he created of all the residences he had had during his life, he wrote, "1928-1929 Traveling thru west no perm. Add."  That doesn't sound like an adventure where you have brought your family, so I've always presumed that he didn't, and neither of my aunts ever mentioned it.

He must have returned to New Jersey by the time of the 1930 census enumeration, because he was listed in the household with his mother in Mount Holly, New Jersey.  Maybe he came back after the beginning of the Great Depression?  His occupation was working in the silk mill in town.

My best guess is that that is where he met my grandmother, because in 1930 she was also in Mount Holly and also working at the silk mill.  I know that they had to have gotten together by about March 1935 at the latest, because my father was born December 4, 1935, and I can count back nine months.  This was without benefit of marriage, because Grandpa was still married to Elizabeth at that time.

At some point after that, probably not too long, Grandpa's daughters from his marriage came to live with them.  My aunt Dottie told me that they called my grandmother Mother Ann.  After thinking about this recently, I have been considering that this was at the instigation of my grandmother.

Before my father was born, however, in 1933, my grandfather started working for the government in the Civil Service, originally as a carpenter and plumber and later as a mechanical engineer.  He list of addresses includes a lot of moving around, which my father remembered, between New Jersey and New York.  They weren't enumerated in the 1940 census at all, probably because they lived in three different locations that year and were either just ahead of or just behind enumerators.

In 1941 Grandpa started working at Fort Dix, New Jersey, which is where he met his second wife, Anita Clarice Loveman.  Unlike my grandmother, she wasn't willing to fool around with a married man, so (as she told me) she made him prove he wasn't married.  I guess that's what prompted his divorce from Elizabeth in 1953 and his abandonment of my father and grandmother.  And later in 1953 (at least I hope it was later) he married Anita in Okaloosa County, Florida.  They had one daughter in 1954.

Grandpa was not an easy man to live with from what I have heard, and in 1961 Anita divorced him.  But he found someone else quickly, and a month later he married Adelle Cordelia Taylor.  She was his third wife, for those who are counting, and he managed this before I was even born.

He continued to work for the Civil Service for many, many years.  He was a Shriner.  He was well known and respected in the city of Niceville, where he settled.   He drove a stick shift.  He only started to slow down a little when he turned 80.

I consider him pretty memorable also.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Which Family Members Stayed in Contact with Your Family?

Randy Seaver has a very interesting topic for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  Most genealogists try to stay in contact with their aunts, uncles, and cousins.  Who among them made the most effort to stay in contact your family?  Did they write, use the telephone, send cards or gifts?  Did they visit you, and/or did you visit them?

2.  Share your cousin experiences in your own blog post or on your Facebook page.  Be sure to leave a link to your report in a comment on this post.

There was a significant difference in the contact maintained by my mother's side of the family versus my father's.

My siblings and I grew up knowing many of my mother's relatives.  We saw her parents on a regular basis.  We lived in the Los Angeles area and they lived in Las Vegas, which made it easy for visits in either direction.  I don't know when my grandparents moved to Vegas, though, because now that I think about it, they still lived in Florida when I was born.  But not long after that they must have moved, because we saw them a lot while growing up.  When they came to California, they often took us to Disneyland.  My earliest memory is of a train trip to visit them in Vegas when I was about 2 1/2 years old.

My grandparents also visited us while we lived in Australia (this was made affordable by the fact that my uncle was working for National Airlines at the time, and they were able to fly for free).  After they retired, my grandparents moved back to Florida, and when my family returned to the United States we went to Florida, so then we were in the same state, but we were actually farther away from each other than when we lived on the West Coast (Los Angeles to Las Vegas is about 270 miles, but Fort Lauderdale to Niceville is 600 miles!).  But they came for everyone's graduations and may have visited a few other times also.

We regularly received cards for holidays and birthdays, and my grandmother and mother talked on the phone a lot.  After I finished 9th grade, I went to stay with my grandparents in Fort Lauderdale for about a month.  So there was lots of contact between us all the way around.

My mother had two younger brothers.  The older of the two married in 1967 in Coral Gables and their first son was born in Miami in 1971, so I don't think we saw them much, but they had moved to California by 1975, because my other cousin was born in San Jose that year.  But I remember my aunt visiting us in California before we moved to Australia, probably around 1970?  And I went to college in Los Angeles and visited them a lot after I moved back to California.  I know we received cards from them for holidays.  I don't know how much phone calling there was.  But I'd say overall we were in pretty good contact with them also.

The younger of my mother's brothers moved to Las Vegas with my grandparents and graduated high school there, so we must have seen him on visits to Vegas.  I remember him visiting us once while we lived in Pomona, before we moved to Australia.  I don't remember a lot of regular communication with him growing up, but after I moved to Berkeley, California, I saw him semiregularly, because by that time he was living in Reno, Nevada.  Not as close of a relationship as with my other uncle, but there was still regular contact.

My mother also stayed in touch with her uncles and their wives, and I grew up knowing their names, the names of my cousins, everyone's birthdays and wedding anniversaries, and lots of information about the family.  My mother took the three of us kids with her to Florida for her first cousin's wedding in 1969, which must have been an adventure.  I remember bits and pieces of the trip and things that happened during our visit, such as my sister and I getting our hair done for the wedding.  (I still have the widget that was used to make my hair stand up and be poufy.)  Another of my mother's first cousins helped take care of us kids while we were there.

For my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary in 1989, there was a huge family gathering in Las Vegas (I think it was in October?).  I think the youngest person there was my nephew, who was born in August, so literally a babe in arms.  Probably around 100 or so people came.  We had aunts, uncles, grandaunts and granduncles, cousins of all types.  It was a great family event.

So it's clear that there was lots of contact with relatives on my mother's side of the family.

My father's side?  Not so much.  My father may have loved his relatives, but he wasn't close to them.  I knew about them, because my mother made sure we knew about them all, but for the most part knowing about them was the sum of it.

I remember my paternal grandfather came to visit us in California, I think in Pomona, once.  We might have visited him and his wife in Florida before we moved to Australia?  But I don't remember regular contact with him.  When we moved back to the States, we went to Niceville, Florida and lived near him.  At that point we saw him regularly, because he was in the same city and because he was our introduction to everyone.  But his wife didn't like having us around.

We also saw my aunt, his oldest child, and her family.  I remember one time they visited and had a camper in my grandfather's yard for a while, and we met our cousins.  I don't remember when my aunt moved to Niceville, but it may have been after I moved back to California.

I knew about my other aunt, between the older daughter and my father, but I don't remember meeting her for quite some time.  I don't even remember now when I met her.  It may have been after she moved to Niceville.

I also knew about my youngest aunt, younger than my father, but I didn't meet her until many years later, after I tracked her down so I could return family photos to her.  My father didn't like talking about her until 2005, when she reached out to him.

I did meet my paternal grandmother.  I think it was just once.  I vaguely remember a family visit to her in Florida, so it was probably after we moved back from Australia.  She was living in Jacksonville, I think.  That's about all I remember.  My father told me that she came out to California after I was born and helped my mother for a while, but I obviously don't remember that, and I don't think she was still in California when my brother was born.  (Hey!  Why didn't my father take any photos of us together?!)  But I did used to write to her after that, and I still have her letters from when I started asking about family history.

My father had a much older sister from my grandmother's marriage, prior to her living with my grandfather.  I never met the sister, but I did meet her daughter, my cousin.  I knew she lived in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, so when I was going to a conference there, I arranged to meet her.  We stayed in touch for quite a while and I visited another couple of times.

My father's aunts and uncle on his father's side?  They were nothing but names.  I didn't even know my grandfather had a brother until the brother died and Grandpa went out of town for the funeral.  I never met that uncle or the older of my grandfather's two younger sisters (Grandpa was the oldest in the family).  I found out the younger of the sisters was still alive from a chance conversation with my aunt and reached out to her by phone.  The next time I was in Florida, I dragged my cousin across the state just so I could meet my grandaunt.

Because I am my mother's daughter when it comes to family.  When I used to travel regularly to conventions and conferences, I would always figure out which relatives were in the area and make efforts to visit.  I met my mother's favorite cousin on a trip that was actually to Milwaukee but had a side visit to Chicago.  I went to Atlanta for a convention and took a short trip to Toccoa (where DeForest Kelley lived at some point in his life!), just so I could meet my father's younger sister.

I stay in touch regularly with my brother, sister, and half-sister.  I even used to write and talk regularly with my half-sister's mother!  (There really should be a term for your parent's spouse from before the relationship that produced you.  Not a stepparent.  Maybe a preparent?)

I also have tried to stay in contact with all of the relatives I have met during my travels.  I used to send out big envelopes to everyone I knew every year for Christmas or Chanukah (depending on which side of the family) with all the updates I had made to the family trees.  Now I'm connected to many of those relatives, and even more I have found, on Facebook and by e-mail.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Did Any of Your Ancestors Suffer the Loss of a Parent at a Young Age?

I have a feeling it would be difficult to find someone who did not fall into the category of tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  Do you have ancestors who suffered the loss of one or both parents early in their lives?  Did the surviving parent remarry soon after one parent died?  Was a guardian appointed for your ancestor to protect physical or legal interests?

2.  Tell us about one or two of your "orphaned" ancestors and how this affected their lives.

3.  Share a link to your blog post, or your Facebook Status post, on this post.

I can immediately think of a few ancestors who had a parent die when they were young.  My great-grandmother Jane Dunstan was just shy of 2 1/2 years old when her father died (she was the youngest child).  My great-grandfather Joyne Gorodetsky was about 16 when his mother died (he was the oldest child).  And my paternal grandfather, Bertram Lynn Sellers, was only 15 when his father died.

I think I'll focus on my grandfather, because some parts of that story are particularly interesting.

Let's start at the beginning.  My great-grandmother Laura May Armstrong gave birth to my grandfather on April 6, 1903 without the benefit of a husband.  Even if she had been inclined to name the father (and I suspect she wouldn't have), the registration form actually had instructions that if the birth was out of wedlock, that was what was supposed to be indicated on the line asking for the father's name.  So the socially disapproving "OW" is all that appears there.

Notwithstanding that she brought a 7-month-old son to the relationship, Laura was able to find a husband, and she and Cornelius Elmer Sellers were married on November 7, 1903.  I showed with Y-DNA testing that Elmer was not the biological father of my grandfather, but he was the only father Grandpa ever knew.

On January 22, 1916, a little shy of being 13 years old, my grandfather and three other boys were playing in a dirt mound in town.  They had dug out a cave in the mound and, of course, had not reinforced it, because they didn't know better.  On that January day, the cave collapsed on them.  Two of the boys did not survive.  My grandfather did but severely broke his right ankle, which soon after necessitated the amputation of his leg at the knee.

The family had already had its share of sadness.  Elmer and Laura had nine children together, three of whom are confirmed to have died young.  Cornelius Howard Sellers was born about October 1904 and died September 3, 1906.  Harry J. Sellers was born January 9, 1913 and died June 6, 1913.  Birdsall Sellers was born April 16, 1916 and died May 26, 1916, right after my grandfather's accident.  For three more children — Amelia, born after 1904; Elmer F., born January 2, 1912; and Herman J., born June 2, 1915 — I have not found death dates, but I haven't yet found them living after 1915.

And on September 14, 1918, Elmer died of endocarditis.  The family had never had much money (in fact, Elmer's mother was the person who paid his funeral expenses), so this must have put a horrible financial strain on everyone.  There was no estate that needed to be guarded for the children's sakes.

In 1920, Laura and her four surviving children, which included my grandfather, were enumerated in the census as living with her granduncle and grandaunt, Amos and Rebecca Lippincott.  Neither Laura nor any of the children had an occupation listed, and Amos was working as a laborer.  They could not have been doing well financially.

Laura did not remarry at that time.  She did, however, give birth to another child.  Yes, less than three years after her husband had died, on March 6, 1921, my great-grandmother had a daughter, Bertolet Grace Sellers.  And did not state the name of the father for the birth certificate (thanks, Laura!).  We'll probably never know who Bertolet's father was, because she died January 11, 1927, and Laura did not provide the father's name for the death certificate either.

Laura eventually did remarry.  On August 31, 1929, she and John Stephen Ireland were married, and he is enumerated with her in the 1930 census.  The story I heard is that someone told Laura that she really should find a husband to support her, and that's why she married John.  The rest of the story was that soon after having married him she figured out that he wasn't worth the effort and got rid of him.  Apparently they didn't divorce, because when John died in 1949, she was listed as his widow in the obituary.  On the other hand, I don't know who write the obituary.

Before Laura's second marriage, however, my grandfather had moved out.  He married Elizabeth Leatherberry Sundermier on December 18, 1923.  They had three children, but after the Great Depression began, Grandpa had moved back in with his mother, and the four family members (the first child died as an infant) were enumerated in four different places in the 1930 census.

I don't know how his father dying so young affected my grandfather, as he never talked about it.  I learned a little about his life during the Depression because I interviewed him for a high school civics class, but he didn't volunteer other information.  I didn't learn details about Elmer until after my grandfather had died.

I do know that losing a leg at age 12 didn't slow Grandpa down.  He fathered five children with three different women, only two of whom he was married to (he and my grandmother were never married), and he was married to his third wife before I was born.  He drove a stick shift and worked through the Civil Service for the Army and Air Force as a mechanical and civil engineer.  He worked hard his entire life.

My grandfather was certainly an interesting character.  I suspect he got that from his mother.

Nanny Ireland and her adult children
Back row:  George Moore (Dickie) Sellers, Bertram Lynn Sellers, Sr.
Front row:  Catherine Marie Sellers, Laura May (Armstrong) Sellers Ireland, Nellie Elizabeth (Betty) Sellers

One Ringy Dingy

I'm going to date myself here.  Are you old enough to remember when you did not actually own your telephone, but you only leased it from Ma Bell (American Telephone and Telegraph Company or AT&T, which many years earlier had started as Bell Telephone Company)?

Today is National Telephone Day, and I am old enough to remember that.

In fact, those were the days when in order to be able to get phone service, essentially you had to already have phone service, or you had to have someone personally vouch for you.

My family ran into a problem with that when we returned to the United States in 1973 from Australia, where we had lived for two years as potential immigrants.  My parents had decided not to naturalize as Australian citizens, and my father told me we left two years to the day after we arrived.

But when we returned, we wouldn't have had phone service in the United States for two years, which was going to make it difficult for us to then get new service.

So we had to choose somewhere to live where we would have someone willing to personally vouch for us — for my parents, really.  I will never know exactly how that decision was made, but we ended up going to Niceville, Florida, where my father's father lived, and he must have convinced Ma Bell that my parents were trustworthy, because we got a phone.

But it wasn't our phone.  It belonged to AT&T.  We officially leased it.

Even after I graduated high school and went to college, I didn't own my phone then.  I also leased it from Ma Bell.

This really sounds ridiculous nowadays.  What do you mean, you didn't own your phone?  What was so valuable about that equipment?

I wish I knew.  That tight control over even the telephones themselves may have been part of the reason AT&T was judged to be a monopoly and was broken up into the seven "Baby Bells" after the 1982 United States vs. AT&T antitrust lawsuit.  (Of course, the Baby Bells have been slithering back together over the years, so that wasn't really effective.)

And somewhere I think I still have my old AT&T phone.  It was a teal trimline phone.  I remember I wanted to keep it, because it was actually mine.  I finally owned it.

Umm, Beer . . . .

"The cause of and solution to all of life's problems." — Homer Simpson

Well, I'm not sure Homer is entirely correct, but good beer is well worth enjoying.

Did you know that April 7 is National Beer Day?  According to the National Day Calendar, beer is the world's most popular alcoholic beverage and third most popular beverage overall, behind water and tea.

My favorite choice for good beer is Guinness Stout.  I have had the excellent fortune to enjoy Guinness at the St. James's Gate brewery in Dublin, Ireland, and yes, it does taste better there.  I don't know if it's really because of the water from the River Liffey, which is what they tell you, but it definitely tastes better.  It's smooth and malty and goes down just like that.

When I went to the brewery, I was with a friend.  He took two sips of the Guinness, pushed it away, and said, "I don't like it."  What??!!  Are you crazy??!!  On the one hand, to each his own, but on the other hand, there's no sense wasting good Guinness, so I took his and drank it after finishing mine.

When I participated in the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Southern California several years ago, we were told that the beer they drank in Elizabethan times in England was like liquid bread, and that's how I think of Guinness.  It doesn't just quench your thirst, it's actual nourishment.

I remember, though, when I was a kid living with my family in California, when we visited relatives on the east coast, we had to promise to bring Coors with us, because you couldn't get it on the other side of the country then, and everyone wanted it.  Now when I taste a Coors (well, rarely), I wonder if they actually liked it, or if it was just better than the other choices available (such as Bud, eww!)?  Or did they want it only because they couldn't buy it?

I admit, I like my beer malty, not hoppy, and Coors and Bud are far hoppier than Guinness.  Maybe if you like hoppy better they're perfectly fine.  I'll stick to my Guinness, thank you.

I'm not happy that Guinness is now owned by the multinational conglomerate Diageo.  But I guess it's better than not having Guinness at all.