Sharing Memories Week 12: Gardening

Olive Tree Genealogy blog has a Genealogy Writing Challenge. It's 52 weeks of writing your own memoirs.  Lorine will be posting a weekly prompt each Sunday on Olive Tree Genealogy blog under the topic Sharing Memories

The first week's prompt was about Kindergarten. You can read Lorine's blog post for the first week at Challenge: 52 Weeks of Writing Our Memories - Kindergarten Days

This week's prompt is Gardening

For some reason I didn't inherit the Gardening gene that runs in my family. My paternal grandparents loved to garden, as did my great grandfather Massey. My grandparents always had a huge vegetable garden chock full of tomatoes, potatoes, even asparagus.

My parents always had a vegetable garden and grew their own tomatoes, beans, onions, cucumbers and more. My sister is the same. But not me. I hate weeding and all the work involved. The sun is too hot, the bugs are thick, all in all it's not fun.

Flower gardens are the same thing. Many of the females in my family have beautiful gardens. In fact my mother's garden was on a Gardening Tour in town. I appreciate how great their gardens look but it seems like an awful lot of work!

The only kind of gardening my wife and I do is a small herb garden. That's my wife's thing but I help out with watering. Other than that, I keep away from it!

52 Ancestors: Crabby Uncle Bill Massey

I'm writing about my Uncle Bill Massey as part of Amy Crow's Challenge: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks .

 

Bill Massey in WW2

Every family has its characters and one of the characters in my family was my Uncle Bill. Everyone called him Groundy but I don't have a clue how he got the nickname or what it meant. A life-long bachelor, he was one of the crabbiest people I ever met! 

He was my grandfather's brother and was the second oldest of 9 children. I remember Uncle Bill vividly because my grandfather took me to visit him frequently. But I didn't know him well at all because I was very young and he never spoke to me, nor did I speak to him. I just sat and listened. He probably didn't care for children much. And I was only 13 when he died.

What I remember most is the image in my head of him at the kitchen table drinking with my grandfather. Uncle Bill was a heavy drinker and always had a whiskey nearby. His house was almost empty of furniture but he kept it very tidy and clean. I remember sliding in my sock feet on his hardwood living room floor. You could get a good run at it and slide a long way as nothing got in your way. Everything had its place and nothing was ever moved.

His early life is a mystery to me but someone once told me he worked at the St. Mary's Cemetery at some point in his life. I have a vague memory of being told that he once lived in a trailer by a gas station. It seems sad to not know anything more. 

He volunteered in WW2 and I was told that he drove a jeep in Europe as the driver for a film crew. But the one and only time I asked Uncle Bill if he ever got any medals, he scowled and told me it was all a bunch of "BS". So I never asked again. My grandmother told me that the only time Bill talked about his time in WW2 was when he was very drunk. 

While Bill was a life-long bachelor I know that during the war he had a girlfriend. It didn't work out but he must have cared for her very much because he kept her photograph until he died. I now own this photo but I don't know her name.

Uncle Bill was an amateur woodworker and a blanket box that he made is in my house. 

When I was 13 years old, Uncle Bill died of a heart attack while shovelling snow. His death came as a shock to me because he was a family character and as such you figure they will always be around. In some ways he is still with us because he's one of the members of our family whose name comes up most frequently when I'm talking with anyone else in the family. Everyone remembers Uncle Bill.

Sharing Memories Week 17: One Ringy Dingy Two Ringy Dingy

Olive Tree Genealogy blog has a Genealogy Writing Challenge. It's 52 weeks of writing your own memoirs.  Lorine will be posting a weekly prompt each Sunday on Olive Tree Genealogy blog under the topic Sharing Memories

The first week's prompt was about Kindergarten. You can read Lorine's blog post for the first week at Challenge: 52 Weeks of Writing Our Memories - Kindergarten Days

This week's prompt is One Ringy Dingy Two Ringy Dingy  All about telephones.

When I was little all the phones were rotary dial. I don't know if pushbutton phones had been invented but no one I knew had one. I imagine there are lots of young people who have never seen or used a rotary dial telephone.

My mother told me that when she was a little girl they had an old-fashioned crank phone and were on a party line. She said everyone on that line listened in on everyone else's conversations. You had to memorize your ring (2 short or 1 short 2 long for example) as everyone on the party line had their own ring.

My grandparents had a party line and I could never figure out whether or not we were supposed to answer it. I couldn't remember our pattern of short and long rings. But that didn't matter because my grandparents didn't believe that children should be answering the phone anyway.

My grandmother, who lived in a very small town, was an operator for Bell Telephone for many years. I remember her telling me how the operators liked to listen in on other people's phone calls even though that was strictly against company policy. She said that way they knew all the gossip. So if you are worried about Google and big tech companies looking at our stuff online, guess what? It's been going on forever, just in a different format!

Credits: "Vintage Telephone" by Daniel St.Pierre on FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Sharing Memories Week 10: Movie Time!

Olive Tree Genealogy blog has a Genealogy Writing Challenge. It's 52 weeks of writing your own memoirs.  Lorine will be posting a weekly prompt each Sunday on Olive Tree Genealogy blog under the topic Sharing Memories

The first week's prompt was about Kindergarten. You can read Lorine's blog post for the first week at Challenge: 52 Weeks of Writing Our Memories - Kindergarten Days

This week's prompt is Movie Time!

The first movie I remember going out to see was Star Wars. That was around 1977 and I went to the Drive-In with my sister and her boyfriend. I was only 6 years old and I fell asleep in the middle of the movie!

The first movie that I saw all the way through without falling asleep was Star Trek The Motion Picture around 1979. My sister took me to see it and since then my sister and I have gone to see every single Star Trek movie together. It's a tradition.

My parents weren't movie goers and I don't remember going with them to see any movies. I do know that the last time my parents went out to the movies was in 1973 to see Robert Redford in The Sting!

Credits: "Popcorn" by Salvatore Vuono on FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Sharing Memories Week 6: Games I Played

Over at Olive Tree Genealogy blog is a Genealogy Writing Challenge. It's 52 weeks of writing your own memoirs.  Lorine will be posting a weekly prompt each Sunday on Olive Tree Genealogy blog under the topic Sharing Memories

The first week's prompt was about Kindergarten. You can read Lorine's blog post for the first week at Challenge: 52 Weeks of Writing Our Memories - Kindergarten Days

This week's prompt is "Games You Played"

I grew up in a family that didn't play a lot of games. We didn't play card games or board games but I do remember the first video games that came out. 

I remember playing "Pong" on a television at a friend's house and then when the Atari home game console came out all my friends wanted it. If you were cool you had an Atari. I didn't have one. 

The Video Game Arcades were a big hit. My friends and I would go at lunch time and after school to spend all our quarters. That was in the days of games like Asteroid, Donkey Kong and Pac-Man. 

I often wonder if I'd taken all those endless quarters I spent and invested them, how much money would I have now some 30 years later! 

Week 2: Sharing Memories of Grade 1

I am 5th from the left

Over at Olive Tree Genealogy blog is a Genealogy Writing Challenge. It's 52 weeks of writing your own memoirs.  Lorine will be posting a weekly prompt each Sunday on Olive Tree Genealogy blog under the topic Sharing Memories

The first week's prompt was about Kindergarten. You can read Lorine's blog post for the first week at Challenge: 52 Weeks of Writing Our Memories - Kindergarten Days

As to my time in Grade 1 the first thing that comes to my mind is my teacher Mrs. McMinnimey. I thought she was a Witch. No she was NOT a nasty person. I was actually really fond of her.  However she always wore what I thought of as witch's boots. They had high heels and were high up her legs. She almost always dressed in black and she had very long hair. I guess at some point I figured out she was not in fact a Witch but the image still sticks in my mind almost 40 years later.  Mrs. M. was really strict and she didn't tolerate a lot of shenanigans. She expected a lot from her students and would let you know when she was not pleased.

It was in Grade 1 that I started to get an interest in art. The Teachers were impressed as I was way ahead of most people my age when it came to art. However as far as the other subjects went I was no Rhodes Scholar. It was at this time that I also started to realize I didn't really like school. This stayed with me until I graduated from Grade 12. School was not my favourite thing!

I have a weird memory of the smell. The primary end of the school with K, Grade 1, 2 and 3 had dirty orange shag carpet and it smelled musty. In fact I am told that a few years later the school had to remove the carpet for health reasons. Too much mold and must in it.

Accepting the Challenge to Write My Memories

I am back row, 6th from left. Blonde hair, weird smile

Over at Olive Tree Genealogy blog is a Genealogy Writing Challenge. It's 52 weeks of writing your own memoirs.  Lorine will be posting a weekly prompt each Sunday on Olive Tree Genealogy blog under the topic Sharing Memories

The first week's prompt was about Kindergarten. You can read Lorine's blog post for the first week at Challenge: 52 Weeks of Writing Our Memories - Kindergarten Days

I'm accepting the challenge and here is my memory of my Kindergarten days:

I remember my teacher, Mrs. Peet. She was really nice and we all liked her. I also remember my friend Greg Scott. He was the only kid I hung around with and played with in Kindergarten.

The Christmas Pageant sticks in my mind the most. I played the Innkeeper and had to tell Joseph and Mary there was no room in my Inn but they could sleep in my barn.

I still remember the ride to school on the bus. It was my first time on a bus and going somewhere. There was one little kid who was crying and didn't want to get on the bus!

Lorine will be posting a weekly prompt each Sunday on Olive Tree Genealogy blog under the topic Sharing Memories

Sharing Memories (Week 10) - First Day and Year of School

Well as I was saying yesterday I am taking part in Sharing Memories - A Genealogy Journey. This weeks journal topic is Sharing Memories (Week 10) - First Day and Year of School . So with that in mind.....

I actually do remember my first day of school. At least a little bit. I can remember walking down the street to the bus stop. A little girl crying. The stale musty smell of the bus. But what I remember most about that day is meeting my first school friend, Greg Scott. Greg and I became best friends that day and for that first year of school we were inseparable. Sadly a year or so later he moved to another school.

Its funny but as I write this, I find little bits of scatted memories are popping back in to my head. I remember playing the part of the innkeeper in the Xmas pageant, Making snow flakes out of paper. The large communal sink in the boys washroom that you had to use your feet to make the water come on. Strange what we remember.

My first teacher was Carole Peet. She was a nice lady. I think she still lives around here some place, but she is long retired now I am sure. I remember she lived on a farm. She would bring baby chickens to school and other small critters. Perhaps that's part of the reason I have a bunch of critters my self.