First of all, Happy Birthday Ryan Patrick. I hope you guys have a great time on your trip next week.
As promised, here's what I remember about Gloucester. Add your own comment. The picture is in the backyard on Haskell Street I believe from the trip Chris and I took alone. It says 1966 on the back so it was probably the summer we were 8 and 9 years old.
I remember
Flying (must have been from Buffalo to Boston) with Chris –just the two of us about 9 and 10 years old. This was a very big deal. I recall stopping in Albany and fussing at Chris to neaten up because this was the state capitol and there might be important people boarding. I remember getting wings and I think a pack of playing cards on the airplane. Funny I don’t really remember any details about Mom and Dad taking us to the airport or being picked up by anyone.
For this trip, being drilled about memorizing the address 34 Haskell Street. At some point it was changed to 24 Haskell Street as I discovered much later when visiting as an adult. Also I think it was on this trip that Chris went out fishing with Grampie (Paul M. Ryan Senior) and I went fishing with the neighbors. I caught a fish and Chris did not. We all got a chuckle out of that.
I remember going to the beach and finding starfish. Nanny (Catherine Pierce Ryan) wasn’t overly thrilled because she said they would stink. I laid my treasures out on the cellar doors to dry out. The cellar doors were those kind that extended in a slant from the house and you opened it up kind of like a barn door. I think of them as tornado protection probably from “The Wizard of Oz” farm house. You don’t enter the cellar directly from the inside, but from the outside of the house through these doors down close to the ground.
I remember Aunt June and Aunt somebody else living in a house directly behind Nanny and Grampie’s. One of these women had extraordinarily long fingernails. They seemed kind of exotic these two. I think I remember a pretty fancy beehive upsweep hairstyle on one of them. Clearly bleached hair if I remember right. They weren’t rightfully aunts by blood but were related in some way.
Nanny was a cook at the golf course sometimes when we visited. I believe she was also a school lunch lady, but that wouldn’t have been when we were there mostly because it would have been off school time. I remember that she did go to the golf course sometimes and I think I remember going there one time to the kitchen in the clubhouse. It was just up and around the corner.
She had a great pantry in her kitchen. She would give me dinner mints to ease the stomach ache I would get from eating too fast. I loved those pillow mints and they always make me think of her.. The kitchen was in the back part of the house. There was a dining room kind of in the middle and opposite a parlor type of room. I remember a beautiful Tiffany style lamp hanging in the dining room. There was a living room area just inside the front door. The stairs were right by the front door also and I can’t really remember the rooms up there too well. I do remember Judy in a crib in one of those rooms making a mess just before Tim’s wedding. What a mess and I really felt for Mom, even at however old I was then (probably about 12) that her youngest was making this mess in her mother-in-law’s house.
Grampie seemed kind of eccentric to us. Little did we realize he came by it honestly. It must have been on the trip that Chris and I took alone together that Chris would tell me that Grampie had taken him out drinking and what-not with him sometimes. It was a big secret to keep from Mom. I’m betting it was an open secret and drove Nanny crazy.
I recall some kind of bookmobile up on the corner near their house.
I remember going to Good Harbor Beach. We must have walked from the house, around the corner and past the golf course down the hill to the beach. I remember walking across a footbridge and there being lots of sand—very flat and open from the bridge to the water.
Flying (must have been from Buffalo to Boston) with Chris –just the two of us about 9 and 10 years old. This was a very big deal. I recall stopping in Albany and fussing at Chris to neaten up because this was the state capitol and there might be important people boarding. I remember getting wings and I think a pack of playing cards on the airplane. Funny I don’t really remember any details about Mom and Dad taking us to the airport or being picked up by anyone.
For this trip, being drilled about memorizing the address 34 Haskell Street. At some point it was changed to 24 Haskell Street as I discovered much later when visiting as an adult. Also I think it was on this trip that Chris went out fishing with Grampie (Paul M. Ryan Senior) and I went fishing with the neighbors. I caught a fish and Chris did not. We all got a chuckle out of that.
I remember going to the beach and finding starfish. Nanny (Catherine Pierce Ryan) wasn’t overly thrilled because she said they would stink. I laid my treasures out on the cellar doors to dry out. The cellar doors were those kind that extended in a slant from the house and you opened it up kind of like a barn door. I think of them as tornado protection probably from “The Wizard of Oz” farm house. You don’t enter the cellar directly from the inside, but from the outside of the house through these doors down close to the ground.
I remember Aunt June and Aunt somebody else living in a house directly behind Nanny and Grampie’s. One of these women had extraordinarily long fingernails. They seemed kind of exotic these two. I think I remember a pretty fancy beehive upsweep hairstyle on one of them. Clearly bleached hair if I remember right. They weren’t rightfully aunts by blood but were related in some way.
Nanny was a cook at the golf course sometimes when we visited. I believe she was also a school lunch lady, but that wouldn’t have been when we were there mostly because it would have been off school time. I remember that she did go to the golf course sometimes and I think I remember going there one time to the kitchen in the clubhouse. It was just up and around the corner.
She had a great pantry in her kitchen. She would give me dinner mints to ease the stomach ache I would get from eating too fast. I loved those pillow mints and they always make me think of her.. The kitchen was in the back part of the house. There was a dining room kind of in the middle and opposite a parlor type of room. I remember a beautiful Tiffany style lamp hanging in the dining room. There was a living room area just inside the front door. The stairs were right by the front door also and I can’t really remember the rooms up there too well. I do remember Judy in a crib in one of those rooms making a mess just before Tim’s wedding. What a mess and I really felt for Mom, even at however old I was then (probably about 12) that her youngest was making this mess in her mother-in-law’s house.
Grampie seemed kind of eccentric to us. Little did we realize he came by it honestly. It must have been on the trip that Chris and I took alone together that Chris would tell me that Grampie had taken him out drinking and what-not with him sometimes. It was a big secret to keep from Mom. I’m betting it was an open secret and drove Nanny crazy.
I recall some kind of bookmobile up on the corner near their house.
I remember going to Good Harbor Beach. We must have walked from the house, around the corner and past the golf course down the hill to the beach. I remember walking across a footbridge and there being lots of sand—very flat and open from the bridge to the water.
2 comments:
I barely remember the Haskel Street house. I think I was only there two times. Once, when we went to Tim and Emmy's wedding, and once when I went with Dad to see Grampie after Nanny died.
The Haskel Street house I remember as you do, the living room to the left as you walked in the front door, the stairs straight on. The woodwork was dark, and beautiful. There was wood trim around all the doorways, the stairs were that dark wood with spindles. The frameway between the living room and the dining room was wide, like the separation between the dining room and living room in the Dennison road house, but it had that beautiful wood trim.
The tiffany lamp that you mentioned was beautiful. I remember someone telling me that Nanny had someone see it through the window and knock on the door and offer an outrageous amount of money for it, Nanny refused. The darn thing fell down and smashed to a thousand little pieces the very next week!
I was a little afraid of Grampie. He had the gout when we were there and he was quite miserable with it. He showed me his ankle, and it was all dry, and white looking. It didn't help that he chased me around the house with a live lobster, and it scared me to death! I never really felt the love from him, if you know what I mean. Nanny, of course made up for it in spades. She told me stories of the ships coming in and the women waiting for their men. She told me what a Widow's Walk was. I was facinated.
My recollection is that Pete and Velta had the Haskle St house, and then Velta alone. I never went there when they had it.
I DO remember the Judy incident also. That room was at the top of the stairs to the left. It faced the street. My memories are more of Tim and Emmy's house.
I was pretty young... That's my memories of Haskel Street!
P.S. I remember you (Patty Anne)talking of the "Aunts" that lived out back. Was the other one's name, Edith, or Edna? That seems to ring a bell for me, but it is my memory of what you told me. They were away when we went for the wedding. I remember you telling me about the long fingernails, and wanting to see them SO bad. I was dissapponited when they weren't around. They had a fat cat too as I recall...
Thanks Paula--great recollection on your part! I did a little sleuthing (a very little bit) about Ethel and June that lived in that house behind Nanny and Grampie. My old map seems to indicate that may have been Traverse St parallel to Haskell. The 1930 census shows two sisters 14 and 17 years of age living on Traverse St in 1930 named Ethel and June. I distinctly remember calling the Aunt so I've always thought one or the other was related to us in some way but maybe it's like Aunt Jean.
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