Easter In the 1950's

I have been spending very little time online lately.  We have a small window of opportunity when it comes to the weather and the occasional lower humidity/lower temperature days.  One of my favorite places to go is Brazos Bend State Park and I've probably been there six times in the last month or so.  It's an hour from here, but well worth the ride.  Lots of walking trails and I really love it, but not when it gets real hot!  Then I walk inside at the mall.

No time for an Easter scene with my dolls this year.  I know I've shared some of these before, but I thought I'd stick a few up here anyway.

And I thought I'd share a little Easter in 1957.  Yes, this is how we dressed.  I remember when there was no mall and we had to go to Newark, New Jersey for our Easter outfits.  It was always a big deal to go shopping for our complete outfits...dresses, hats, gloves, shoes, etc.

I hated to have my picture taken.  Can you tell?  Do you like the hat I chose?  It looks like a plate turned upside down.

This is my sister in her Easter finery.  She was two years older so she got to wear stockings.  There were no panty hose back then.  She had to wear a girdle so there would be those funny clip things to hold up the stockings.  Does anyone else remember?  I guess she picked out her hat too.  I think her hat is a little more attractive than mine.

That's us with our neighbors...Johnny and Diana Ingemi.  Gosh, I had forgotten that even some of the boys wore hats.

I hope you enjoyed my little trip down Memory Lane.

OH NO! Say it isn't so HoJo?

I had no idea the Howard Johnson's restaurant chain was down to two restaurants in the entire United States.  Come September 6th they'll be down to only ONE.  I couldn't believe my eyes when I read that in this morning's Houston Chronicle.

I guess I should have realized since I haven't seen a Howard Johnson's in years.  When I first moved to the Houston area in 1981 there was one on the Gulf Freeway, but I guess that's been gone for a number of years.  I just assumed they still existed somewhere else.

When I was growing up in the 1950's we went to Florida every year for either Christmas or Easter.  We drove from New Jersey to Florida and back again.  My mother insisted that Howard Johnson's always had clean ladies rooms, so that was a regular stop along the way.  I didn't mind one bit since I loved their hotdogs.  Back then there weren't that many chains.  No McDonald's, Burger King, etc.  It was more of the Mom and Pop type places.

This slide was taken in July of 1954.  I don't know exactly where, but I'm pretty certain it must have been somewhere between New Jersey and Florida.  (You can click on it to enlarge for a better view.)

From left to right:  my sister Carol Sue, my mother Betty Durgin, and me Betty Jean.  (As soon as my sister and I were old enough we got everyone to drop the Sue and Jean from our names.)

Of course, my sister and I were always dressed exactly alike...right down to our underwear I'm sure.  In a lot of the old slides we are often dressed up.  I think we must have gone all the way to Florida in dresses and patent leather shoes.  My mother is often wearing high heels just like June Cleaver.  Times sure have changed!

Although I'm now 70 years old I can still close my eyes and smell and taste a yummy Howard Johnson's hot dog.  It was covered with grease and so so good.  I always enjoyed those Howard Johnson's stops because it was a nice break from my parents arguing.  My mother never liked the way my father drove and found it necessary to correct him.  For the first day or so he didn't mind, but after that the arguments would begin.  I'd watch for that familiar orange roof in anticipation.  Yea!  We could get out of the car!

According to the newspaper after September 6th the only Howard Johnson's restaurant in America will be in Lake George, New York.  If it wasn't that far I'd sure like to go one more time for old time's sake.

I did find a couple of websites with Howard Johnson's memories.:  America's Landmark: Under The Orange Roof and HoJo Land.

If you'd like to own some Howard Johnson's memories of your very own there's always eBay.  I took a look and there are postcards, plates, glasses, matches, etc. up for auction.  Perhaps you could use a Howard Johnson's ash tray?  Click here.

Anyone else with Howard Johnson's memories?  If so, you're probably over 60!

"V" as in VINTAGE for Alphabe-Thursday

I wonder how many people will use the word VINTAGE for Alphabe Thursday this week?  VINTAGE is really hot right now.  Just look at all the blogs you see that feature VINTAGE furniture, VINTAGE clothes, just about VINTAGE everything!

In case you're interested in seeing for yourself how many others use the word VINTAGE head over to Ms. Jenny's blog at Jenny Matlock..."off on my tangent" for a list of this week's participants.

I'll admit...I was stumped.  What kind of a post could I quickly put together using the letter "V" this week?  Finally, I googled "letter V" and found a list of words that began with V.  When I saw VINTAGE I thought I just might be able to pull this off. 

I'm VINTAGE.  If you don't believe me...here I am in Kindergarten in Westwood, NJ back in 1951. That's me in the front row on the left.  I was always in the front row when class pictures were taken.  That's where the short kids usually went when they lined us up.  My teacher was Miss Cornell and she lived right across the street from us on Mill Street.  I think I've posted this picture before, but hopefully you've forgotten or there are some new people that haven't seen it before.  I already had some of these pictures scanned and ready to go.

Here I am in first grade at Ketler Elementary in Westwood, NJ.  I believe it was a brand new school that year.  That's me all the way to the left at the front of the classroom with the braids and glasses.  My teacher, Miss Moore, was VINTAGE.  She had been my mom's teacher too.

And this was second grade with one of my favorite teachers, Miss Lichtenstein.  I thought she was beautiful and very, very nice.  That's me at the beginning of the second row with glasses.  See the little boy at the beginning of the third row?  That's Alan Friedman.  He was also in my Kindergarten class and he told me that there wasn't a Santa Claus.  Isn't it funny how you can remember something like that many years later?  I remember it as if it were yesterday.

I actually have VINTAGE pictures from all my elementary school years, but these are the only ones I have scanned.  Since I'm VINTAGE I'm not sure if I've put all of these up on my blog before.  Hopefully, a lot of you are also VINTAGE and won't remember if I did.

Here's a VINTAGE picture of my older sister, Carol, and me sometime in the early 1950's.  We were playing a game and she was probably winning.  She always won.  Do you think she cheated?  I still sometimes wonder.  Does anyone have any idea what game we were playing?

I've always loved playing with dolls and now collect some of the VINTAGE dolls I grew up with.

Yes, I know it's silly, but I enjoy setting them up in scenes.  Here's a Build A Bear Workshop that I created for them some years back.  Most of these dolls are Vogue Ginny dolls and some are VINTAGE and from the 1950's and some are modern day dolls.

I don't play with them as much anymore and it's been a while since I set up a scene.  In fact, the last scene I set up was last Valentine's Day and I still haven't taken it down.  But, I still enjoy just looking at my dolls.  They always make me smile.  I've probably put a few of these pictures up on my blog before too, but my VINTAGE mind isn't sure which ones.

And this is my childhood Ginny.  She's certainly VINTAGE!  She's a 1954 painted lash walker. You can see that I cut her hair when I was little, but I've re-wigged her since this picture was taken.  She's still a redhead, but she now has braids.

Thank you for visiting and please visit Ms. Jenny's blog for more information on Alphabe-Thursday.

Easter Blessings on Pink Saturday

I haven't participated in Beverly's Pink Saturday in a while now, but decided to hop in for Easter this week. (There is supposed to be a little seasonal humor there.)

I really don't have time to "play" much with my doll collection these days, but I had some pictures that I took a few years ago and decided to share them. Not much pink, but they are Easter pictures. I have some of the same pictures on my sidebar, but you'll be able to click and enlarge them in this post to see the little details better.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter.

Here are my Vogue Ginny Dolls...vintage, modern, and vintage reproductions. I made their Peeps just for the occasion. (You probably wouldn't believe it if I told you how long they took.)

Thanks for visiting and be sure to head over to Beverly's blog for a list of this week's participants.

 See how we dressed for Easter circa 1950?  L-R: Me, my Mom, and my sister, Carol Sue.  It was a big deal to go shopping for new Easter outfits each year.  New dress, gloves, hats, shoes, coats...imagine walking into church today dressed like that?  I think people would do a double take.  Times sure have changed.  Happy Easter!

Alphabe Thursday..."P" as in Penmanship

It's time again for Alphabe-Thursday sponsored my Ms. Jenny at Jenny Matlock..."off on my tangent." Today's assignment is the letter "P" as in PENMANSHIP.

Is PENMANSHIP becoming a lost art? So many things are going by the wayside with computers. Even the post office is in trouble because mail volume is going down due to E-mail. How often to we drop someone a handwritten note?

I was reading about vintage autograph books that Cheryl over at My Sister's Cottage had and it prompted me to go looking for my grandmother's autograph book. Back in the 1980's I became interested in genealogy and worked on it for quite a while. My mother would find pictures and other memorabilia that she thought might help me in my quest to learn more and I guess I somehow became the official family historian. One of the things she sent me was my grandmother's autograph book. I've recently become interested in genealogy again and I'm slowly but surely entering all that 1980's information into Family Tree Maker and hope to eventually jump onto Ancestry.com to try and learn more. All of my research was done before I had Internet access. Meanwhile, I'm also digging out my mother's old notes and the little treasures she sent me.

You can click on the pictures below to enlarge them...

Here's my grandmother's old autograph book and some examples of PENMANSHIP. Sadly, as I was scanning some of the pages the cover fell off. I'm afraid that was inevitable considering the years. The first autographs were written in 1905. I have no idea what the April dates on the left hand page mean. I think Willie Volz might have been her cousin. Perhaps those are the dates her cousin and Uncle John died? Maybe I'll discover something when I dig into the family roots again. I think the book might have been a gift from her Momma?

Here's another page from June 15, 1905.

And the page on the right is from my autograph book and written by my sister in 1954. Obviously, that poem had already been around for a long time. Do children still have autograph books today? If so, they might be still writing this poem.

I found this page from my grandmother's book interesting. In the poem she talks about dipping her pen in the ink. I'm afraid that's something that's long in the past now.

And this was written by my grandmother's cousin. I did know that one of her father's sisters was married to a man named Grode and this must have been their daughter.

I was also surprised by some of the artwork people took the time to include with their autographs. (In the first picture that's a real four leaf clover that my grandmother had between the pages of her book.)

I also came across a newspaper clipping my mother had sent me. It was from my grandparents wedding on January 1, 1919. (You'll have to click on the article in order to enlarge and read it.) The article talks about the PRETTY wedding.




And here's their PRETTY wedding.




I think I'm going to take a vacation from posting on Blogger for a couple of weeks. I'm having trouble putting pictures in posts since Blogger made the changes to Blogger In Draft and I went back to the previous version. For some reason my pictures will no longer appear in the post where I put the cursor. When I upload them they appear at the very top of the post and then I try and drag them or I have to go into the html version and copy and paste where I want them to go. It's also messing up the spacing and although I fix it I find that when I publish it's still sometimes wacky. It's taking way too much time to put up a simple post with pictures, so I'm taking a break in hopes that things will magically improve while I'm gone. I had intended to show more pages from my old autograph book, but decided to save it for another time when things might be working better.

Now head over to Ms. Jenny's blog and visit some more Alphabe-Thursday posts!

Working on some family projects...

I've been thinking about working on genealogy again.  I originally did some work back in the 1980's BC (before computers).  At that time we even visited some of my relatives in New York cemeteries.  By doing so I even found where a great-great grandmother was buried next to a great grandmother and no one in the family ever knew it.

A few years ago I became interested in learning more about the Ziegfeld Follies since my great aunt had been a Follies Girl (as they were called).  She performed in the Follies and the Midnight Frolic.  This is a picture of her from the Ziegfeld Frolic and I believe this was called the balloon dance.  From what I understand gentlemen could pop the balloons. 

I came across a site called Find a Grave and decided to add my great aunt's information in case a relative of another Follies Girl stumbled upon it.  Then I forgot about it until a few weeks ago when I decided to take a look at the site again.

My Dad died this past September and I was surprised to find his information entered on the site.  I assumed my sister or someone in her family had probably stumbled across the site and decided to add it, but to my surprise they hadn't.  It was someone I didn't know, so I clicked on the name.  It was a man who lives in the next town and does volunteer work for the site.  He gathers information on local deaths and enters them so they'll be available for research.  I contacted him and he turned the listing over to me so I could update the biography.  That's when I decided to start adding information on my mother and other relatives.  I'm only adding the ones that I have first hand information about...either the cemetery plot information or graves I've personally visited in the past.  If I haven't documented it myself I don't add it.  I'm still not finished, but work on it whenever I have a little extra time.

I've also started going through old photos and writing on the back who the people are, where the photo was taken, etc., and then scanning them.  Does anyone know if there's a program that I could put on my computer for old photos?  I'm finding I can't list all the names, dates, and locations when I save the scans to my computer.  The titles would be much too long.

I enjoy old photos.  Here are a few I've come across:

Both sets of my grandparents together. 

My second grade class.  I'm the little girl with the glasses in the second row at the front of the class.  The little boy at the front of the third row told me there was no Santa Claus in Kindergarten.  I've never forgotten.

My Grandma Durgin with Hilda Sims in 1932 in Washington, DC.  I believe Hilda must have been a cousin since my grandmother's maiden name was Sims.

This is my Grandpa Morris' Christmas card.  He owned a gas station in Westwood, NJ.

Have a good weekend...