Sunday, August 31, 2008

August Featured Relative of the Month, Part 2


Riddle: What flower is in between your nose and your chin?

I was born in the first year of World War II. Let's look back at that eventful time.

The Wayback Machine
Step in and we'll go to August, 1942:

WW II events in the month I was born:
Aug 4, 1st train filled with Jewish people departed for Auschwitz.
Aug 6, Soviet city Voronezh fell to Germans.
Aug 7, US Marines landed on Guadalcanal in the Solomon islands. 1st American amphibious landing and 1st major allied offensive in the Pacific of the war. Initial landing party included Navajo Codetalkers. This was 1st Japanese defeat on land; Japan building an air base here to isolate Australia.
Aug 8, U.S. Marines captured Japanese airstrip on Guadalcanal.
Aug 9, Carmelite nun Teresa Benedicta executed by Nazis at Auschwitz for her Jewish heritage. Made a Catholic saint in 1998.
Aug 11, Vichy government official Pierre Laval publicly declared "The hour of liberation for France is the hour when Germany wins the war."; German submarine attacked British convoy, sank one of world's 1st aircraft carriers; SS began exterminating 3,500 Jews in Poland.
Aug 12, British premier Churchill arrived in Moscow to meet Stalin.
Aug 14, Eisenhower named commander for invasion of North Africa.
Aug 15, Japanese submarine departed Japan with a floatplane in its hold, assembled off US West Coast and used to bomb US forests.
Aug 16, US Navy patrol blimp crash-landed in CA after drifting in from the ocean. Crew was missing, no trace of them ever found.
Aug 17, US Air Force bombers attacked France; Marines attacked Makin Island (Kiribati) in Gilbert Islands
Aug 18, Japan sent army to Guadalcanal to repulse US Marines.
Aug 19, Several US Marines died during commando raid on Makin atoll, 2,000 miles behind enemy lines. The 1943 movie, “Gung Ho,” based on the raid, starred Randolph Scott; 5,000 Canadian and 2,000 British soldiers launched a disastrous raid against the Germans at Dieppe, France; 3,600 men perished. Information gathered from this landing considered valuable for planning successful Allied landings in Northern Africa, Sicily, and Normandy, France. The attack was aimed at gaining experience for the later D-Day invasion.
Aug 20, Plutonium was first weighed.
Aug 21, US Marines turned back the first Japanese ground attack on Guadalcanal in the Battle of Tenaru.
Aug 22, Brazil declared war on the Axis powers, only South American country to send combat troops to Europe.
Aug 23, 1st US flights landed on Guadalcanal; German forces began assault on Soviet city of Stalingrad. From now to Feb 1943, Battle of Stalingrad was fought, ending with encirclement and destruction of German 6th Army. 600 Luftwaffe bombers killed 40,000 people in the first week of fighting. My parents 1st wedding anniversary.
Aug 24, Battle of the Eastern Solomons, 3rd carrier-versus-carrier battle of the war, US Navy defeat Japanese.
Aug 26, 7,000 Jewish people rounded up in Vichy, France; Japanese troops landed on New Guinea.
Aug 27, Cuba declared war on Germany, Japan and Italy.
Aug 29, US Red Cross announced Japan refuses to allow safe conduct for passage of ships with supplies for American prisoners of war.
Aug 31, British army defeated Rommel’s Afrika Korps in Egypt; U boats sunk this month 108 ships (544,000 ton).
Aug, Following Battle of Midway, American forces at Guadalcanal--code-name "Cactus"--took delivery of 12 dive bombers and their escort of 19 air fighters, advance squadrons of Marines Air Group. Within 12 hours the new "Cactus Air Force" helped vanquish a Japanese infantry assault; Aug-Feb, 1943, The Battle of Guadalcanal.

Songs popular in 1942 included:
Deep in the Heart of Texas, Bing Crosby; Jingle Jangle Jingle; Stardust, Artie Shaw; Racing with the Moon, Vaughn Monroe; Chattanooga Choo Choo, Tex Beneke; You Made Me Love You, Harry James; I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire, The Ink Spots; That Old Black Magic; Paper Doll; There'll Be Some Changes Made, Irene Daye; String of Pearls, Glenn Miller & His Orchestra.

Many songs reflected the separation caused by the War:
White Christmas, Bing Crosby; I Don't Want to Walk Without You, Helen Forrest with Harry James; I'll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time, The Andrews Sisters; Miss You, Dinah Shore; I Left My Heart at the Stage Door Canteen, Don Cornell; This is the Army, Mr. Jones; Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree, The Andrews Sisters; He Wears a Pair of Silver Wings, Kay Kyser; Somebody Else is Taking my Place, Peggy Lee; Der Feuhrer's Face, Spike Jones; White Cliffs of Dover, Kate Smith; Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition, Kay Kyser; Just as Though You Were Here, Tommy Dorsey; Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, The Andrews Sisters.

Movies of 1942 were:
Casablanca; Bambi; Walt Disney's Bambi; Yankee Doodle Dandy; Holiday Inn with "White Christmas" sung by Bing Crosby

My Timeline To High School Graduation:
1933-1945: Franklin D Roosevelt was US president until I was 3
1939-45: World War II, until age 3
1942-45: Manhattan Project by US to develop atomic bomb to use in the war, until age 3
1942: Magnetic recording tape invented; T-shirt introduced; First nuclear reaction reported; Anne Frank went into hiding; Year-round Daylight Savings Time (called War Time) in effect in US to conserve energy, from Feb 9 until Sept 30, 1945; Sugar and gasoline rationed. Sales of new cars and trucks banned. On Feb 10, the last new civilian car was made; Jeep invented.
1945: Harry Truman made president; United Nations formed; US drops A-Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; first Hypertext, age 3
1946: First Bikini bathing suit; Microwave oven invented (called Radar Range), age 4
1947: Israel created when UN partitions Palestine into Jewish and Arab sections; first Transistor, age 5
1948: 33 1/3 rpm musical recordings, age 6; Arabs attack Israel on the day it is inaugurated
1949: First 45 rpm musical recordings, age 7; Soviets detonate first nuclear bomb, age 7
1950-53: Korean War from age 8 to 11
1950-54: McCarthyism from age 8 to 12
1950: World population reaches 2.4 billion, age 8
1951: Electricity first made from atomic power, age 9
1952: 1st thermonuclear device, a hydrogen bomb (H-Bomb) detonated by US, age 10
1953-60: Dwight D Eisenhower president of US from age 11 to 18
1953: First color televisions go on sale
1954:Racial segregation in schools ruled unconstitutional; Ray Kroc opens 1st McDonalds (Des Plaines, IL), age 12
1955: Salk polio vaccine; Invention of velcro and fiber optics; Disneyland opens in California, age 13
1956: Ocean liners Andrea Doria and Stockholm collide, sink, age 14
1957: Sputnik launched - 1st (artificial) satellite, age 15
1958: Explorer I, 1st U.S. space satellite, launched at Cape Canaveral; US space agency (NASA) established; first integrated circuit; 1st stereo LP records and FM stereo broadcasts, age 16
1959: 1st nuclear powered vessel; Castro becomes head of Cuba; Alaska enters US - 49th state, Hawaii enters US - 50th state, age 17
1960: Laser; World underwater circumnavigation by US sub Triton; 1st weather satellite; Pantyhose, age 18

Some Events In My Lifetime:
I was 57 years old on the first day of Y2K; at 48 Operation Desert Storm began, 47 during the fall of the Berlin Wall; 41 when Apple introduced the Macintosh; 38 when President Reagan shot by John Hinckley, Jr.; 37 when the Iran hostage crisis began; 33 on US Bicentennial 4th of July, 31 when President Nixon left office; 26 as first man stepped on the moon; 25 when Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated; 21 when President Kennedy assassinated; 10 at end of the Korean War; 9 when President Truman made 1st coast to coast TV broadcast using then state-of-the-art microwave technology; and 2 years old when atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

When these songs and events occurred, my age was:
The Doggie in the Window, Patti Page: 10; Rock Around the Clock, Bill Haley and His Comets: 13; Don't be Cruel, Elvis Presley: 14; American Bandstand first airs nationally: 14; Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper die in a plane crash: 16; The Twist, Chubby Checker: 18; Big Bad John, Jimmy Dean: 19.

For these TV shows I was:
5 years old when Texaco Star Theatre 1st aired; 10 when TV Guide magazine started; 13 for Gunsmoke; 15 during 1st Leave It To Beaver; 17 for 1st Bonanza; 20 when Beverly Hillbillies 1st aired; 22 when the Addams Family appeared; 24 for 1st Star Trek episode; 28 when All in the Family 1st shown; 30 when M*A*S*H began; 46 when Roseanne started; 49 when Home Improvement began.

When these movies were released I was:
All the King's Men: 7; Old Yeller: 15; Ben-Hur: 17; West Side Story: 19; The Sound of Music: 22; Guess Who's Coming to Dinner: 25; American Graffiti: 30; Jaws: 32; Star Wars: 34; Star Trek The Motion Picture: 37; ET: 39; The Terminator: 42; Top Gun: 43; Home Alone: 48; Wayne's World: 49; Jurassic Park: 50; Forrest Gump: 51; Toy Story: 53; Saving Private Ryan: 55, Toy Story 2: 57

Riddle answer: Two lips (tulips)

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Today is Dot and Nick's 67th Wedding Anniversary


Riddle
: Take away my first letter, I remain the same. Take away my second letter, I remain the same. Take away all my letters and I remain the same. What am I?

Great-Grammy and Great-Grampy were married for 62 years, and always lived in the same house, where Dorothy Trout had lived since 1937. Their five oldest great-grandchildren visited them there. They, Dorothy Marie Trout and George Gilbert Nickerson, were married in this house, in the Oak Hill section of Scarborough, Maine, on August 23, 1941. In this wedding picture they are standing on the steps of the front porch.

The Wayback Machine
Let's step in and travel back to the year 1941:
Franklin D Roosevelt was President of the U.S. since 1933, the Second World War was being fought in Europe since 1939 when Germany invaded Poland, nuclear fission of plutonium was accomplished, and the U.S. Manhattan Project would soon start in Los Alamos to develop the atom bomb.

It was the Big Band Era, so Dot and Nick listened and maybe danced to new songs like: I Don't Want to Set the World On Fire, by Horace Heidt; Chattanooga Choo Choo, by Glenn Miller; There'll Be Some Changes Made, by Benny Goodman; Frenesi, by Artie Shaw; Intermezzo, by Guy Lombardo; Dream Valley, by Sammy Kaye; There I Go, by Vaughn Monroe and Green Eyes, by Jimmy Dorsey.

They went on dates to see some of these new movies: Disney's Dumbo; Sergeant York; The Maltese Falcon; Citizen Kane; The Wolf Man; and Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion. Abbott and Costello had 4 movies - Buck Privates; In the Navy; Hold that Ghost; and Keep ‘Em Flying. The Academy Awards Best Picture of 1941 was How Green Was My Valley, Best Actor was Gary Cooper in Sergeant York, and Best Actress was Joan Fontaine in Suspicion. Adult movie tickets were expensive - 25 cents - so were only an occasional treat.

There was a radio in Dottie's mother's home, and it was the most popular form of entertainment and news. Since they lived near the largest city in Maine, they had the biggest choice in the state, at least 4 local radio stations. Many programs were popular: crime shows (The Shadow, Gangbusters, etc), comedy (Fibber McGee and Molly, The Jack Benny Show, Baby Snooks, Bob Hope, The Aldrich Family, etc), quiz shows (Truth or Consequences, Information Please, etc) and favorite singers had their own shows (Bing Crosby, Kate Smith, Dinah Shore, etc). As they listened, the nightly news reported German invasions of Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Popular books in 1941 were: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers; Daniel Boone, by James Daugherty; The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck; Finnegan's Wake, by James Joyce; Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler; Call It Courage, by Armstrong Sperry; I Married Adventure, by Osa Johnson; For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway and Oliver Wiswell, by local Maine author Kenneth Roberts. They couldn't afford to buy luxuries like books, since Nick earned less than the average yearly income (remember, this is Maine) of $1,800 a year. The minimum wage was 30 cents/hour. Nick worked at the Todd-Bath Ironworks Shipyard in South Portland, and Dot was a part-time saleslady in a Portland department store.

Some 1941 prices were - bread: 8 cents a loaf; milk: 34 cents a gallon; eggs: 60 cents a dozen (they saved this cost by having their own chickens); gasoline: 11 cents a gallon; hamburg: 20 cents a pound; a postage stamp: 3 cents. Plain M & Ms and Cheerioats (later renamed Cheerios) were first sold this year, but not to Dot and Nick, who didn't buy candy during my childhood, or cereals other than oatmeal, Maltex (hot cooked ground wheat) and Shredded Wheat.

In the summer of 1941 news of the war in Europe got worse. On May 27 an Unlimited National Emergency was declared in the U.S. after Germany invaded Yugoslavia, Greece and Crete. On June 22, Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

In August, both their wedding day and war came even closer:
Aug 3 - gasoline rationing begins in parts of the eastern U.S.; Aug 3 - Joe DiMaggio's streak went to 74 baseball games on reaching base; Aug 14 - the Atlantic Charter was signed by FDR & Winston Churchill; Aug 18 - Concentration camp Amersfoort opens in the Netherlands; Aug 22 - Nazi troops reach Leningrad; Aug 23, Dot and Nick marry, Aug 25 - English & Russian troops attack pro-German Iran; Aug 25 - German troops conquer Nowgorod, Leningrad; Aug 29 - Germans in Russia kill 1,469 Jewish children; Aug 30 - the Siege of Leningrad by Nazi troops begins; Aug 31 - the radio show The Great Gildersleeve, a spin-off of Fibber McGee & Molly, debuts; Aug 31 - 23 U-boats were sunk this month (80,000 tons).

By year's end, three momentous event will occur:
1.) December 8th, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the U.S. declares war with Japan.
2.) Dec 11th, the U.S. declares war with Germany and Italy, after these countries declare war on us. These actions lead to a huge loss of lives.
3.) Penicillin, one of the first antibiotics, is synthesized and mass produced, which will lead to a huge saving of lives.

Today as we think of Dot (1919-2003) and Nick (1920-2004), we remember them with love.

Riddle Answer: A mailman

Friday, August 22, 2008

Music is a Tradition in our Family, Sung & Played


Today's Riddle:
What musical instrument is found in the bathroom?

Singing and Playing
My two oldest grandchildren had practice with their bands two thousand miles apart yesterday, and are perhaps a little (or a lot) sore today. My third oldest grandchild auditioned and (of course) got into a prestigious choral group, and is now in practice (perhaps yesterday also) for their upcoming Carnegie Hall performance.

Three granddaughters and a daughter sang and won in their categories in their hometown ‘Idol’ contests two or three years in a row, one performs at nursing homes, and two recently sang at a Senior church luncheon. Two auditioned for and sang the Irish national anthem for a professional troupe of Irish dancers at their performances (one dances in this troupe, the second youngest to ever pass the audition). One writes songs and sang them, accompanying herself on the guitar at five county fairs in her state this summer.

Among my eight descendants, they play piano, organ, guitar, soprano and alto recorder, alto and baritone saxophone, flute, ukulele, Irish pennywhistle, Irish flute and perhaps one other instrument whose name escapes me. We are so proud of you all!!

Again, I hope I haven’t left anyone out. I always want corrections and additions to this blog.

Singing
We had a piano in my childhood home in Scarborough, Maine, and on the rare occasion that my grandmother sat down, she usually played from the many hymnbooks she brought with her from New Jersey. From the time I was tall enough to see the keyboard, I stood beside her and she taught me songs like The B-I-B-L-E; Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam; Jesus Loves Me; This Little Light of Mine; What a Friend We Have in Jesus; A Little Talk With Jesus; Do Lord; Happy Day Express. Once I had learned regular hymns, she sang alto with me, as she had when my mother was young and they sang in the choir at Trinity M.E. Church in Trenton, New Jersey.

Besides hymns, my grandmother taught me many spirituals (Jacob's ladder, Golden Slippers, Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho, Down by the Riverside, etc) and folk songs (Home on the Range, Hush Little Baby, Polly-Wolly Doodle, Suwannee River, My Grandfather's Clock, etc.) Born in 1889, as a girl she taught in a one-room schoolhouse, and knew many children's songs of that time (The Swing Song, Come Little Leaves, Bicycle Built for Two, The Old Oaken Bucket, etc).

When I started school, I brought home the songbook and she taught me all the songs. They’re still as fresh in my mind as when I learned them 60 years ago.

In high school I auditioned for and was in Choir as a second soprano, then 2 years as a first soprano. In December each year the Choir went in a school bus (the only time I ever rode in one) to all the elementary schools in town, including a one-room schoolhouse way back in a backwoods part of town I had never been in before or since.
Photo: age 15

Olden Times
Grampy says:
In grade 7, 8 and 9, music was very popular in the combined Junior and Senior High School that I attended in Gorham, Maine. Many of our teachers were from the nearby Gorham Teachers College. The combined music class filled the auditorium and balcony, and we sang in 8-part harmony.

In 9th grade, the music professor from the college who taught us chose me to be in a special 16-person group singing 8-part harmony, called The Gorham Madrigals. She said that besides my voice range, she picked me because I had perfect pitch. I sang second bass, and we toured the state of Maine in music competitions, performing at the University of Maine in Orono, Bowdoin College in Brunswick, and Portland City Hall. We always won, and were Best in the State.

Playing Music
As a young boy, Grampy lived in Portland, and lugged an accordion that weighed half as much as he did on the bus each week for years to the Starbird School of Music in Portland, Maine. He once played in a music recital at Portland City Hall. His parents came to see him, and the program with his name in it was mailed to his grandparents in Bar Harbor, ME. He always played for them and for his uncles, on visits.

This photo was taken in his backyard at 48 North St. on Munjoy Hill.

Grampy started out with a rented half-size 12 bass accordion, then when his Dad saw how well he could play, he purchased a full-sized 120 bass accordion for him.

Besides having individual lessons, at the music school Grampy practiced in an accordion band, and performed at Scarborough Downs. They played on the green in the center of the horse racetrack for a celebration, perhaps Opening Day or 4th of July.

He also played in talent shows at the (Portland, Maine) Emerson Elementary School in 4th, 5th and 6th grade.

Olden Times
Grampy says:
When I was 10 years old, I played my accordion in a Minstrel Show in the Thornton Heights section of South Portland, Maine. My grandaunt Estelle Packard lived there and got me into the show. I was chewing gum when I went on stage, and in trying to chew and play music at the same time, without meaning to I created a comedy act!

As I played my accordion solo, I was surprised when people started to laugh. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. Why I couldn’t play that song? The stage manager came out and took away my gum, which made the audience laugh again. I kept my jaw clenched tight and did much better on my second solo!

Note to grandchildren: We are so proud of all of you and your accomplishments. Ask your mothers about their childhood memories of music in their home and our family's music traditions, like the songs they learned from their mother and taught to you when you were little (Bushel and a Peck, Abba-Dabba Honeymoon, etc).

Answer to Riddle: A tuba toothpaste

Thursday, August 14, 2008

I'm the August Featured Relative of the Month


Today’s Riddle
(answer at the bottom)
I first heard this riddle from my grandmother when I was a little girl, so it‘s a very old one:
You throw away the outside, cook the inside, eat the outside and throw away the inside. What is it?

Featured Relative of the Month -- Me!!
Being born in August meant I always knew I was getting school supplies and clothes for my birthday. Yay, a pencil case!

As an adult, any large purchase made around the time of my birthday counted as a present. I remember at least twice getting new car tires.

Photo: 1946, 4 years old

The following is from the Internet (where else?). I’ve made some additions and changes.

I Was Born In 1942 B.C. (Before Computers) Grampy, too.
I was born in 1942, the first full year of World War II. It was before television, before penicillin, before polio shots, frozen food (except ice cream), plastic, Xerox, contact lenses or Frisbees.

I was born before radar, credit cards, split atoms, laser beams or ballpoint pens; before pantyhose, dishwashers, clothes dryers, electric blankets, air conditioners, permanent-press clothes -- and my children were born before man walked on the moon, handheld calculators or home computers. Spam came in a can, not in a computer.

In my time, rabbits were not Volkswagons. Designer jeans were scheming girls named Jean, and having a meaningful relationship meant getting along with your cousins.

‘Fast’ food was what you ate during Lent, a 'Big Mac' was an oversized raincoat, and outer space was the back of the movie theater.

I was before Polaroid cameras or disposable diapers. Gay meant happy. I was before day care centers, group therapy or nursing homes. I didn’t have FM radio, cassette tapes, electric typewriters, artificial hearts, word processors, yogurt, and the only guys wearing earrings were pirates in stories and movies. ‘Time sharing’ meant togetherness - not computers or condominiums; a chip was a piece of wood; hardware was stuff sold at a hardware store, and software wasn't a word yet.

In the 1940s, "Made in Japan" meant junk, and "making out" referred to how you did on your exam. Pizza, McDonald's and instant pudding weren’t heard of yet.

I hit the scene when there were 5 & 10 cent stores where they sold lots of things for 5 or 10 cents. Ice cream cones sold for a nickel, or a dime for 2 scoops. For a nickel you could also ride a bus, make a phone call, buy a bottle of soda or enough stamps to mail one letter and two postcards. A movie ticket cost ten cents, you could stay all day if you wanted to watch the double feature again, and there were cartoons and a newsreel before the main feature.

You could buy a new Chevy coupe for about $600, but who could afford one? A pity, because gas was 11 cents a gallon.

In my day, cigarette smoking was considered ‘fashionable’ (meaning recommended on radio and magazine ads by doctors and movie stars), grass was mowed, Coke was a cold drink and pot was a pan you cooked in. Rock music was a grandma's lullaby and Aids were helpers in the Principal's office.

Toothpaste tubes were made of metal, radios had tubes in them that had to warm up for several minutes before it would work, cars had knobby dashboards made of unpadded steel, and there were no seatbelts.

"Race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest, having a weapon in school meant being caught with a slingshot, taking drugs meant the orange-flavored chewable aspirin your mother gave you when you were sick.

Decisions were made by going "eeny-meeny-miney-moe", mistakes corrected by simply exclaiming, "Do Over!", catching fireflies in a jar could happily occupy an entire evening, and getting a foot of snow was a dream come true.

Other people born in 1942 include singers Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Bobby Rydell, Michael Nesmith and Paul McCartney, Mousketeer Annette Funicello, author Michael Crichton, actor Harrison Ford, boxer Muhammed Ali, and Barack Obama’s mother.

Riddle answer: An ear of corn

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Welcome Family and Friends, to my Shiny New Blog

Our family consists of me (Grammy); the love of my life for 51 years, husband for 48 (Grampy); 2 daughters (L and R); 2 sons-in-law (B and D); 6 wonderful grandchildren (S, B, R, C, L and A); brothers, in-laws, cousins and 1,000s of ancestors.

I can hear you all (especially you sons-in-law) saying, “Why does the most technically inept woman on the face of the planet want a blog?” Good question. I’m in over my head, I’m sure. But grandson S, my ‘tech guy’ set this up for me, so with his help, I’m going to try.

Photo: Jan 1964. We're 21.

Reverse Family Tradition
In writing for the Internet, I have many great family examples to follow. In fact, it’s a reverse family tradition. Five of my descendants and a son-in-law write and speak actively on the Net.

* One son-in-law’s blog has run for over 3 years. A blog reviewer wrote this about it: Distilled news, funny anecdotes and images, all with an optimistic and practical viewpoint. …enjoy his regular blogging and thoughtful insights. His anecdotes paint a picture that you easily get lost in.

* Daughter R, as part of her job, writes and publishes an on-line and printed newsletter each month.

* Grandson S has several clever, hilarious (just like him) videos on YouTube and an amazing (also like him) blog.

* Granddaughter B has had an intelligent, entertaining (just like she is) podcast for 3 1/2 years.

* Granddaughter C had an endearingly lovely, fun (just like her) 15-episode podcast with her witty Dad 3 years ago.

* Granddaughter L told her Dad that she wants a podcast after her next birthday.

* One son-in-law and the 4 oldest grandchildren Twitter regularly, 3 speak Utterz and one or two of them Twinkle.

I hope I haven’t left anything out. The only lack I see is theirs don’t have corny jokes, but I intend to make up for that!

My Topics
In each blog post I plan to write about some of the following:
Olden Times (Grampy’s stories)
Featured Relative(s) of the Month (birthday celebrants)
Riddle of the Day (for the kid in all of us) Riddle at the top, answer at the bottom.
Here’s today’s: What can run all day and never get tired?
The Wayback Machine (step in and travel back in time)
The Good Old Days (poems, etc) See below for the first.
An Ancestory (an ancestor story)

The Good Old Days
Remember When (author unknown)
The milkman used to go from door to door
And it was just a few cents more than going to the store.
The mailman knew each house by name and where things were sent
There were no loads of mail addressed “to present occupant”.

When the music that you played whenever you wanted jive
Was from a vinyl, big-holed record called a forty-five.
The record player had a post to keep them all in line
Then the records would drop down, playing one at a time.

For 20 cents a gallon you could travel near or far
In fact, across the country in your $2000 car.
Oh, the simple life we lived still seems like so much fun.
How can you explain a game, just kick the can and run?

And boys would put baseball cards in bicycle spokes,
And for a nickel red machines sold little bottled Cokes.
Life then seemed so much easier and slower in some ways,
I love the new technology but miss those good old days.

So time moves on, and so do we, and nothing stays the same
But I sure love to reminisce and walk down Memory Lane.

Riddle answer: water, also a clock (thanks, L!!)