MEMORIES PT9

There were plenty of things to do growing up in Dorchester. I’d play stickball with
Barry Solomon and Arnie Black and other kids in the alleyway between the two
apartment building across the street. We’d either use half a “pinkie” rubber
ball or a “pimple” ball. Eventually those were replaced when the first “wiffle” balls
came out. We’d also play “Three Flies Out” off the cement front steps of a building
across from Barry’s house. If we didn’t have a rubber ball, we flip baseball cards
on the front porch.

Another game we played was “Buck, Buck” but you really needed a bunch of kids
to make up two teams. We played “Redlight” and Dodgeball, and of course “Hide
and Seek” which was best played around twilight on summer evenings. We didn’t
play much basketball when I lived on Capen St because the basketball courts
behind the Thompson School was where the older kids hung out.

Winters after a snow storm we’d go around the corner and sled down Selden
St.  Back then they seldom plowed the side streets down to bare pavement
on the side streets tight away, but then again, there weren’t quite as many
people driving cars as there are today. We played street hockey before they
came up with plastic pucks and stick blades, and we “skated” our shoes on
the icy streets.

And if there was a rainstorm or it was snowing out, then you read a library
book, or a comic book, or maybe watched some black & white tv if there
was something good on to watch, like one of the Tarzan movies Channel
7 showed on Sunday afternoons on ”Cinema 7”.(This was the age before
Sunday afternoons were taken over by the NFL)

These days I look at all the technology we have around to entertain ourselves
and our kids, but at one time people could do that with far less. All we needed
was a rubber ball, or a piece of chalk, or a favorite book.

((335 words))

Written for Family History Writing Challenge

MEMORIES PT8

My first school in Boston was the Frank V.Thompson School which had
originally been a high school and was massive. It’s front entrance was
on Maxwell Street and the back fence bordered on Selden St. Basically
the school was only one block from our home which was only one house
away from the corner of Capen and Selden Sts. The Thompson was
very different from the Linden School in Malden.  It was old with huge
windows and old radiators that creaked. The desks were the old fashioned
kind with wrought iron legs and inkwells. There was no cafeteria and we
brought milk money to pay for our milk.


My first teacher there was Miss May, who was the vice principal and third
grade teacher. I’ve never forgotten the first day in class there. In Malden
they had been teaching us math in a new fashion, teaching us the
multiplication tables and long division at the same time. My first day there
I came into class in the middle of the math lesson. Miss May introduced
me to the class. Then she asked what number I was up to on the tables.


“We were up to doing the 4’s, Miss May.” The other kids laughed.


“”Only 4’s? What number are we up to, class? “


“8’s, Miss May!”


Of course, none of them could divide by 4, but it didn’t matter. Miss May
told my mother I’d need to catch up, and Mom took that seriously.
Unfortunately, our kitchen table math sessions didn’t go very well and
from that point on Math was my worst subject in school.


Miss May also has the dubious distinction of being the first teacher to
give me the rattan, which was administered on my open palm with a
ruler. I don’t remember the reason why I got it, just that it hurt like
hell. I made it my business to not get another one and managed to
avoid them for the rest of my years at the Thompson.


I should mention that while I can remember Miss May vividly I can’t
recall the name of my fourth grade teacher although I can see her face.
I had Miss Montesari in the fifth but don’t remember much about her,
either, but I recall my sixth grade teacher Mr Mombardi for reasons
I’ll discuss later. 


((388 Words))

Written for the Family History Writing Challenge.

MEMORIES PT7

As I wrote earlier, my parents had originally planned to move someplace
where we'd be living on the ground floor so that my grandmother wouldn’t
have to climb stairs. Her death changed that and when we moved to 101
Capen Street in the Dorchester section of Boston it was into the third
floor apartment. Our landlords the Wittlesteins lived on the second floor and
their daughter Molly lived on the first floor with her husband Barney Blonder
and their three children.

Back at the end of the 19th and the start of the 20th century immigrants
who came to American cities lived in polyglot communities where people
from many countries lived side by side. But gradually they separated into
neighborhoods. East Boston and Somerville had heavy Italian populations,.
South Boston, Irish, and Dorchester had Irish and Jewish sections. When
we first moved to Capen St we were one of the few Catholic families in
that end of the street. It was interesting living there, where the Blonder kids
would come upstairs to help decorate our Christmas tree and we’d go
downstairs at Hanukah. To this day my vocabulary includes some of the
Yiddish phrases and words I heard in that neighborhood.  

Of course it wasn’t an easy process, moving into a new place and making
new friends and learning the rules of the neighborhood. This was where I
got into my first fistfights. I don’t remember what my very first fight was
about but I do know it was during the day while Dad was at work because
it was Mom who showed me how to make a fist while we were waiting for
Dad to come home and teach me more.

I do remember the next one. It was over the famous Blackfeet Indian story.
My Dad had told me we had Indian blood, and when I asked what tribe we
were, he told me we were Blackfeet. When I told one of the other kids this,
they called me a liar, and it ended with me getting a bloody nose. When
Dad came home I told him what had happened and asked if we were
really Blackfeet.  He said of course we were,.

My Mom made him tell me the truth. It was a joke. “We’re Bllackfeet
because we never wash our feet.”

It was my first encounter with a genealogical myth.

((395 words))

Written for the Family History Writing Challenge

MEMORIES PT6

Before I start reminiscing about our family’s years in Dorchester, there’s
one aspect of our life in Malden I want to talk about:school.

The first school was a nursery school and I don’t remember anything
about it except a dim memory of being picked up in a really old car
once and  that I rode in the rumble seat with some adult. After that I
attended the ABC Kindergarten and I have a few recollections of that,
one of which is significant in our family history. I remember that the lady
who ran the school had a brown cocker spaniel that nipped me once.

And there was the girl I had a crush on. I remember she had curly red
hair, but that’s all. What was important about her, though, was that when
my sister was born, my parents let me pick out a name for her, and I
named her Cheryl after my crush. My parents added my Mom’s name
and that’s why my sister is named Cheryl Anne.


My next school was the Linden School which was a fairly new building, I
have no memory of my first grade teacher. I know we were taught to read
using the “Dick & Jane” books and I believe the teacher was a middle-aged
lady whose name I can’t recall. But the second grade teacher was Miss
Murphy. My Mom told me later I had a crush on her too. One of the things
Mom saved of those years was a page of math problems that I’d accidentally
torn taking it out of my desk. The missing area looked like someone had
taken a bite off the corner and Miss Murphy drew an arrow on  the paper
pointing at it with the note “Hungry?”

It was also in Miss Murphy’s class that we learned to play the flutaphone.

We moved to Boston shortly after I started third grade. I was in for a bit of
educational culture shock.

((329 words))




Written for the Family History Writing Challenge

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR GENEALOGY BLOG CHALLENGE

In about a month and a half it will be April 12th, 2011, a very important
day for two reasons: one, it is my sister Cheryl's birthday and two, it marks
the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War at Fort Sumter, South
Carolina.

Did you have ancestors in America on 12Apr 1861? If so, where were they
and what were their circumstances? How did the Civil War affect them and
their family? Did the men enlist and did they perish in battle or die of illness?
On which side did they fight, or did you have relatives fighting on BOTH sides?
How did the women left at home cope, or did any of them find ways to help
the war effort? Were your ancestors living as slaves on Southern plantations
and if so when were they freed?  Or were they freemen of color who enlisted
to fight?

If your ancestors had not emigrated to America as yet, what was their life
like around the time of the Civil War?

The 150 year celebration of the Civil War is a great source for those of us
blogging about our family history. So, let's do a little research over the coming
weeks between now and April 12th. Find out the answers to the questions
I asked and write about them. Or if you think of another topic to do with your
family history and the Civil War, write about that. Send me the link when you
publish it on your blog, and on April 12th I'll publish all the links here.

I'm issuing the challenge now to give all of us plenty of time to
work on it, so I'm hoping to see a lot of folks take part.

Thanks!

'WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?'" PREMIERE WITH VANESSA WILLIAMS

A few thoughts on the season premiere of "Who Do You Think You Are?"
with Vanessa Williams:

-- As many geneabloggers noted, the producers did away with the annoying
summaries of the preceding segments when the show came back from commercial
breaks. Obviously someone took note of the criticism of the summaries from
the first season!

--The "Gloves Or No Gloves" controversy rages on. I've taken the view that the
experts displaying the documents are knowledgeable enough to decide when
gloves are needed. Last night was a perfect example of that when they used white
gloves to handle the daguerrotype at the National Archives.

--I thought Vanessa Williams' ancestry showed that there are many facets to
our ancestry. Not every Irishman came over because of the Potato Famine. Not
every African American was a freed plantation slave. Sometimes we have
preconceived notions on who our ancestors were which hinder our research.

--I felt Vanessa Williams was more involved herself with the research than
some other celebrities from Season 1. I like that she took notes and that she
visited the family cemetery to get some clues as to where to start her search.
I also like that she did much of the voice over narration herself. Whether this
was her decision or the producers' we'll find out in the next episode.

All in all, it was an excellent episode with an interesting story and displaying
good research techniques. I give it an A+!

MEMORIES PT5

I was the first of Aggie’s grandchildren, but my cousin Wiinnie was only a few 
months younger than I. Then my sister Cheryl was born when I was five, and 
cousin Richie around the same time. Finally another cousin, “Little Eddie”, 
came along so there were five cousins living at 37 Beach St.

Uncle Eddie, Aunt Emily and Winnie

Cheryl and her godparents, Gaetano Cappodana and Anna Bruno

Aunt Emily,Winnie, Bobbie McCue, Richie, Mom & I

Cheryl & I

Winnie, Richie, and Eddie

My grandmother had suffered from rheumatic fever as a child and as a result
had a rheumatic heart. This was making it more and more difficult to negotiate 
the stairs up to the second floor where she lived with us. Then one night we 
went to visit two of her cousins, Mary Carr and Lizzie Sampson. I think the
house we went to belonged to the Sampsons. It was in a neighborhood in 
Boston and the entrance way was sunken, a few steps below street level. 
As we were leaving that night, the Sampson’s dog came bounding out and 
knocked Nana over from behind, and she broke her nose in the fall.
Shortly afterward her health began to deteriorate. I remember the oxygen
tank in her bedroom which was in the front of the house. She died on 12Feb 
1957.

Our grandmother Agnes McFarland White

The irony was that my parents had sold their half of the house to Uncle Ed 
and Aunt Emily. The plan was that we’d move someplace where my
grandmother wouldn’t have to climb stairs. Mom used to say that if they had 
not made the decision to move before Aggie died we’d have still been living
there on Beach St.

Not long after we moved out my Aunt and Uncle sold the house and bought a 
single family home in Arlington.

We moved to the Dorchester neighborhood in Boston and an apartment at 
101 Capen St.

((289 words))

Written for the Family History Writing Challenge

THE 102st EDITION OF THE CARNIVAL OF GENEALOGY IS UP!

Once again the amazing Jasia has put together another edition of the Carnival
of Genealogy at her Creative Gene blog,  namely the 4th Annual IGene Awards
edition:

"This is the award show for genealogy bloggers. This is when we look
back at 2010 and select those posts that appeared on our blogs that 
deserve special recognition. It's our chance to highlight blog posts in 5 
categories, Best Picture, Best Screen Play, Best Documentary,  
Best Biography, and Best Comedy. These are the best of the best!"

19 geneabloggers took part in this edition and you should go right over now
and check them out for some great reading!

Like every CoG edition, this one ends with a call for submissions for the next
one:

"Call for Submissions! The topic for the next edition of the Carnival of 
Genealogy will be: Women's History! The COG traditionally honors women
in March each year in conjunction with National Women's History Month. 
This is the perfect opportunity to write a biography about a woman on your 
family tree, research an aspect of history that relates to women, or create a 
collage of photos featuring the women in your family. However you choose
to honor women, post it to your blog and submit it to the 103rd COG by 
March 1st. International Women's Day is March 8th!

Submit your blog article to the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy 
using our carnival submission form. Please use a descriptive phrase in the 
title of any articles you plan to submit and/or write a brief description/
introduction to your articles in the "comment" box of the blog carnival 
submission form. This will give readers an idea of what you've written
about and hopefully interest them in clicking on your link. Past posts and 
future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page."


I'm looking forward to seeing what posts folks come up with for this one!

MEMORIES PT4

It’s always puzzled me why I have such vivid memories of those years in Malden
while I’ve fewer about places I’ve lived as an adult. Maybe it’s because when you’re
younger there’s not as many worries and distractions to keep you from living “in the
moment?” I can recall the day I was sitting at the kitchen table when I had a fleeting
glimpse of something falling past the window. My grandmother kept me from looking
out because what I had seen was one of the men re-shingling our roof falling to the
ground. He was lucky; he missed the picket fence that marked the boundary with the
Corielli’s and broke his back, but he didn’t die.   

There was the back yard. It had a small dip in the middle and a large lilac bush. I
remember one summer night when there was some party going on and we kids
chased fireflies outside. One of Aunt Emily’s Italian relatives, Uncle Luigi, played
mandolin and sang.

We had a dog, a fox terrier named Saddles who had been with my folks since
before I was born. I was 5 or 6 when he was killed in a dogfight with the boxer that
belonged to the man who owned the grocery store across the street from our house.
A year after that Dad brought home an Irish Setter that had belonged to one of his
coworkers who was Polish. The dog only answered to commands in Polish, and
a few months later, Dad gave up and returned the dog to the previous owner.



We were often visited by Jack Coyne, the boyfriend of my late grandaunt Winnie
and he brought us candy. I once ate a bunch of chocolate cigarettes and promptly
got sick.

Speaking of sick, there was the pickled beets disaster where I was ill all over Uncle
Ed’s  car interior. I still will not eat pickled beets after nearly 60 years since that ride.

Most of all, there were the comings and the departures of people. I’l discuss those
next.

(341 words)
Written for the Family History Writing Challenge

MEMORIES PT3

The recent nasty Winter weather has indeed been horrendous but sometimes
I think people have short memories. They have several mild winters in a row and
expect every Winter to be like that. Then when a harder Winter comes along it’s
a new Ice Age. Of course the television news nowadays doesn’t help, because
bad weather means good ratings so they play it up for all it is worth. (However,
this Winter has been exceptionally hard, so we’re all allowed to be ready for
Spring now!)

I’m not going to claim that we had bigger, badder storms when I was growing
up on Beach St. but we did have some memorable weather. Hurricanes
Hazel and Carol hit New England and during one of them the Linden Creek
flooded Beach St. My Dad drove through the water in his Pontiac right behind
someone driving a motorboat, and I can remember Vincent Corielli yelling
“Here comes Mr West in his submarine!” That was the same storm where the
cellar flooded and mice were floating around on top of cardboard down there.
That startled my Aunt Emily until Dad went down and stood on the cellar stairs
and calmly sank the mice as they floated by him.

I’m not sure how bad the winters were back then. When you’re a small child,.
every snowbank seems huge. I used to dream about our old back yard covered
with snow as it is in these pictures. Perhaps they were inspired by the pictures!

II have other vivid memories of Malden, some good, some sad, and I’ll discuss
more of those in the next post in the series.

(272 words) 
Written for the Family History Writing Challenge 

MEMORIES PT2

I had plenty of other kids to play with growing up in Malden. There was 
Mike Tedesco living in a house on one side of ours and the Corielli twins, 
Ronne and Richie, lived on the other side. I remember going over to Mike’s
place to play with his Lionel Trains. His Dad had a shoe repair shop further
up Beach Street in Linden Square. We shared our driveway with the Tedescos.


Ronnie and Richie had good imaginations and I remember playing “cowboys 
and indians” with them. I also recall the day their pet pigeon died and they held 
a funeral “Mass” for it under their back porch. Their mother quickly put an end 
to that sacrilegious act!  They had an older brother named Vincent and like me
they had a grandparent living with them, their grandfather who was called Dodo.
(This was pronounced Duhdo) 


Another playmate was my cousin Winifred who lived on the first floor of our
house, although I don’t have many memories of us playing. After all, Winnie was
a girl! But I do recall her being in the talent show we put on once in the back yard. 
(We must have seen a Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland movie on tv, or maybe 
a Little Rascals short.) She sang “The Wayward Wind” while I provided the echoing 
chorus from around the corner in the driveway!   


I have a reminder of those days although it’s pretty much faded now. Once while 
playing ‘cowboys and indians” with the Corielli twins, they got a little carried away. 
One of them tossed a tomato stake “spear” at me that hit me right on the bridge of 
the nose. I had a small scar from it and while it doesn’t show now, it used to be 
noticeable when I got a bad sunburn in my younger days.


(308 words)

Written for the Family History Writing Challenge 

MEMORY IN THE KITCHEN DRAWER

Writing about how my folks met reminded me about the oldest piece of
cutlery in my kitchen drawer:

I mentioned that my parents met each other through a blind date that my Mom's
cousin Nancy set up. She was going out with a guy named Bob at the time. When
I was born my folks asked Nancy to be my godmother, and as a christening gift
they gave me a little silverware set. The spoon and fork are long gone, but I still
have the knife.

The handle of the knife is engraved. One one side are the names "Nancy And Bob":

On the other side are my initials  "W.W." :

62 years later it sits in my cutlery tray in the kitchen drawer. Occasionally I may
inadvertently grab it and use it to butter something. It's not worth a great deal of
money, but it's a reminder of why and how I came to be here. 

MEMORIES PT1

I don’t have any memory of my birth.


But I’m getting ahead of my story.


Floyd Earl West Jr. married Anne Marie White on 29Jun 1947. Dad had been
born and raised in Maine but after his discharge from the Army following WW2
he found a job with a landscaping company in the Boston area. I’m not certain
on the details but I believe he met my Mom on a blind date set up by a coworker
who was dating Mom’s cousin Nancy.  One thing led to another and he ended up
marrying the “red headed city woman” from Boston. My parents spent a few
months living up in Maine but I don’t think Mom liked it up there and she and
Grandmother West weren’t all that friendly. So they moved back down to the
Boston area where I was born a little over a year after the marriage.

Eventually my parents bought half a two family home on Beach St in Malden. We
lived on the second floor along with my Mom’s mother, Agnes McFarland. My Mom’s
brother Eddie and his wife Emily lived on the first floor and were co-owners. My
earliest memories are of that house and of being watched by my grandmother while
both my parents worked for Atlas Engineering in Boston. I can remember “hiding”
from my parents under some newspapers as I sat on the couch with Nana. I also
recall brushing Nana’s hair as she sat in the big chair in the parlor.


It was a nice house in a good neighborhood, even though it was on a busy street.
Even now, over fifty years since we left that place, I still have many memories of my
childhood there, and I’ll discuss those next.


(291 words)

Written for the Family History Writing Challenge

HERE'S THE DEAL

So the Family History Writing Challenge begins today and I’m faced with a bit of
a dilemma: I hadn’t come up with something new to write about. The problem is
I’ve been at this blogging business for four years now and I’m closing in on post
#900 so there’s quite a bit I’ve already written about before on my family. But on
the other hand, there are places and events that fall in between what I’ve written  
that I want to write about and that might necessitate repeating the information in
those previous posts. Doing so might make for a more coherent narrative but I
run the risk of boring those readers already familiar with the stories.


Recently I mentioned that I wanted to pass along my memories of my parents
and other relatives to my niece and nephews. It’s that desire that has swayed
me to the decision to go ahead and repeat myself anyway. I’ll write a series of
posts entitled “Memories” and write it in chronological order. Since I’m committed
to writing 250 words a day, I’ll include the word count for each entry in parentheses
at the conclusion of each entry.


This doesn’t mean I won’t be writing about other things as well. Anything else that
I write having to do with my family history will also include the word count. But at
least this way, if you see the “Memories” heading, you’re forewarned that you may
have read some of the information before and you can skip reading it!


Deal?

THE 2010 IGENE AWARDS

((cue the Flutaphone fanfare))
 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Live, from Abington, Ma.,
it's the 2010 IGene Awards. Let's get right to the awards, shall we?

BEST PICTURE:

 This is from my A THURSDAY ROADTRIP TO WORLD'S END . I got out
and about a lot this fall and took a lot of foliage shots. I liked this one so much
I've made it the background photo for the blog!

BEST SCREENPLAY:
A FAMILY REUNION OF SORTS

While I was picking my cast for this I envisioned how this miniseries
would open. The camera would pan in through the entrance of Mt.
Vernon Cemetery and then focus in on the various gravestones
in the General Henry Dunham family plot, and then move further
down the lane to the Cornelius T. Dunham plot, after which the
flashback to the General's story would start.

And of course this would have to be a miniseries. It has it all:. 
Captains of Industry, the Civil War, an Inventor, a Rogue,
a Hardworking Sacrificing Mother and locales from Abington to
Boston to South Carolina to Brazil.These are the actors I'd like
to see in it:

General Henry Dunham = Hugh Bonneville (from Downton Abbey)
Mary Cushing Dunham= Glenn Close
Cornelius T Dunham= Paul Giamatti
Anne Poyas Dunham= Gillian Anderson

Henry Dunham Jr =Damian Lewis
Ella Bristol=?
Andrew Jackson Dunham= Christian Bales
Mercie Florence Dunham=Laura Linney
Sarah Dunham Dorr=Elizabeth McGovern
Richard C Dorr=Aidan Quinn

Now if I could only find a producer who'd like to film it!


BEST DOCUMENTARY:
WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT MY OFFINGER ANCESTORS PTS 1&2
This bit of research is my favorite because I discovered much I hadn't known
about my maternal great great grandmother Johanna Luick and her life.

BEST BIOGRAPHY:
DIGGING UP ALEXANDER AUGUSTUS BARKER

It's always exciting to discover new relatives. Considering Alexander's
occupation, perhaps my newfound appreciation of cemeteries is a family
trait?

BEST COMEDY:
WHY I STOPPED USING FOUNTAIN PENS
The sad details of an incident in college that was so traumatic the mere
mention of the words "cartridge pen" causes me to lose track of what
I am typing....er....where was I? Oh. Yeah.

Anyway, that concludes the 2010 WEST IN NEW ENGLAND IGENE
AWARDS show. Thanks for attending!

And remember, a blog is a terrible thing to waste!

((Written for the 102nd Carnival of Genealogy))