April 1962

Mary Jane was born April 17 1962. I was 5 and I kind of remember Mom and Dad bringing her home the first time. Can you even imagine 5 children younger than 6? Yikes.



John Glenn was in the news alot since the space race was in full swing. West Side Story just won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Walter Cronkite started as the CBS Evening News anchor. Sounds like a really long time ago, doesn't it?



A terribly tragic mixup with the infants at a hospital in Binghamton must have really put doctors and hospitals on the alert for newborns and their parents. Click here for the Time Magazine article. I always remember Time Magazine around the house so I feel like Mom and Dad probably saw this.

So here's a little clip I found. It isn't a birthday clip but it shows a happy kid! Happy Birthday Mary Jane.

So now I'm thinking about that house on Buffalo Street. We must have moved there in '69 or '70 and it was such a different experience living "in town"! I think Chris and I were released from school to help with the move. We were hardly ever early released from school. I must have been in 8th grade.



I think this was a great house for us. As you entered the front door the stairs led up to 3 bedrooms, a bathroom and a pretty good sized storage closet. There was a nice big open area in the center upstairs and we could have done alot with that, if we'd thought of it! It would have been great for a playstation or maybe a foosball table. If I recollect, there was quite a bit of evidence of hand made drawers, closet doors etc. Anyone else remember it that way? The bedrooms were a good size and so was the bathroom. Kathy and I shared a room that had a pretty cool storage area. I don't really remember much about the other two rooms up there. The bathroom was a decent size as well. Great space for kids.



Nice big living room and dining area downstairs with the master bedroom off the dining room--I remember it always being very cool in Mom and Dad's room. I understood it was Mom's sleeping preference -- do I remember correctly? These days I wonder why that big old space was mostly unused. I remember Mom sitting on the couch in the living room reading the paper but I don't recall much else going on in there too often.



The kitchen was very neat. Weren't there some funky cabinets or some such kind of between the counter space and the normal cupboard space? Under cabinet lighting, maybe? Pink? Sink in the corner (no window) in that corner. There was a divider with counter space and cabinets overhead. The picnic table was our normal dinner table.



From the kitchen into the hallway where the big old sink was (where we would wash hair etc) and the washer/dryer. There was a small bathroom there. Right there near the kitchen but in that hall I think was the phone with a very long cord. I remember one time Mom was on the phone making appointments for us when someone (I think it was Judy) got hurt and she just dropped the phone mid sentence and ran.

Down the hall was a small room on the left that was the den. This is where Dad ironed (I still remember the smell and the beer bottle with the sprinkle cap) and their chairs were facing the TV. Smallest space in the house for the "family room"--odd I think.

The garage was attached at that end of the house and there was a standing freezer out there. I thought that was really cool (pardon the pun). Out the back end of the garage was a fenced in yard where we kept the dog run. Yard full of poop all the time. I think I recall stairs to the basement from this garage but I don't really have a clear memory of a basement in this house.

There was another building at the end of the driveway that wasn't ours somehow. I remember it like a multi car garage and some band practicing in there. Just adjacent was the dairy (Seegert's maybe) and there was a lot behind where we'd play soemtimes. It was cool to just walk over to the dairy for milk.

At the bottom of Buffalo Street was a market I loved to go to for treats when I had any money. Just beyond the market was the foot bridge which took you down into town. Up the hill was the school bus stop, but I remember walking to school many times. I liked that walk even though I think it was kind of far to the high school.

It was a great location for all of us since we were older. I liked sitting on the front steps to watch the world go by. I remember sitting there a good long time just before we moved because I knew I'd really miss Silver Creek.

In some ways I still miss it. More than 30 years later and I still miss the vineyards and orchards and having Lake Erie nearby. It was so much flatter and even though I appreciate the varied landscape closer to central NY, whenever I visit western NY I realize how much I miss it for its physical geography.

George Clooney's Inspiration

Our very own Leatherhead! Can't wait to see that movie. I think Weenie would have given George a run for his money "back in the day".

Another Easter for you

I'm going to try again to post a video clip. I think this might be 1962 since Janie is an infant. It's a wild time on Dennison Road! Check out the bathroom scene!

Poor Judyhasn't appeared too much yet in this stuff I'm doing--I'll have to make a special Judy post!! Thanks, Paula for the comment! I also remember that enforced quiet time on Good Friday afternoon.

Happy Easter!! Brrr.......

Easter 1963. Easter seems way too early this year. I think we are going to Kutztown for the weekend because Amy has to work Easter Sunday. I hope the Easter bunny doesn't go to Gloucester by mistake!

I don't remember Easter celebrations too specifically except getting new hats (at Ludeman's maybe?) and our pictures taken for the newspaper Easter Sunday out in front of the church. What do you recall?

Have a great weekend.

Happy Birthday to Aiden, our

St. Patrick's Day boy!

Happy Birthday to Amy, too.

(I did not mean to forget her)

Next year, she'll be 21!

Dennison Road

I actually remember visiting the Dennison Road house must be before we moved in but maybe after Mom and Dad bought it. Nanny and Weenie were there—I think it was their first visit to the house. I remember there was covered-up furniture sitting around. That was a little spooky to me. I do not really know when we moved there but I have pictures of Chris and I from the house on Oliver Street but not Kathy so I’ll guess it might have been around ’58-’59.

The Dennison Road property was really cool for several reasons: the barn, the guest house, the woods, the field,the gorge, the apple trees (picking apples off the ground for a nickel each to make way for lawn mowing).

The barn must have been a lot cooler than I took advantage of. We used it for storage of bicyles and other outdoor stuff. The outside was covered in this sand paper shingles that would burn if you scraped your skin against them. I remember there were windows in it so it was built with care. I wonder what it was used for originally—I don’t have the feeling the property was a farm but maybe it was.

The guest house was lots and lots of fun. There was a bed in there and the sewing machine. There was a connecting door to the garage and another attached room on the backside that we used for storage. There’d be holes in the plaster board in that storage area big enough to use as a doorway—and Dad hated that. I clearly remember playing in that guest house quite often but don’t have a recollection of what that back storage area was used for exactly.

One time, I found a Barbie doll in the drawer of the sewing machine and thought it must have appeared by magic. I think she had new clothes on and I kind of remember thinking she’d been lost but now whe was found. I have no idea what was going on with that. It did occur to me that maybe Mom was making new clothes for the Barbie –but can you even imagine that?? That’s not likely!!

We had the swing set and sand box in the area between the woods and the barn near the guest house. One apple tree was behind the barn on the edge of the field and I think there was another in the same line between the house and the barn.. Dad grew his flowers in a garden under the bedroom window (the girls room with Paula, Kathy and I) facing out to the field.

There were flowering bushes along the front part of the house facing the road. I still would like to have bushes like those at my own house. White flowers. There were a couple of trees along the side of the road in front of the house and a corn field directly across the road.

That window in the living room facing the road was a good size I think. Full length drapes covered them. One time I recall there was a very bad (loud) thunderstorm with lots of lightning. Mom had us huddled up in the middle of the floor in the living room for safety I believe. I think I remember Dad was at work at the country club. It seems like it was nighttime because it was dark but maybe it was a power outage.

There was a door in the living room out to the porch. That was a nice porch. I think we had the freezer out there. A sidewalk led up to it from the driveway. There was a sign at the end of the sidewalk—must have had our name on it.

The master bedroom was off the living room and there was a nice big closet the whole length of the room. There was an archway between the living room and the dining room. That’s where the photographer set up that group picture of us in those red and white checked tops and shorts. The bathroom was SMALL teeny tiny and off the dining room.

We would always it in the same places for meals, Mom at the end and to my left. Sitting at the table was where I first noticed something strange in how Mom’s belly was growing—must have been Judy. Couldn’t put anything past this 9 year old!!

The other entry on the same wall as the bathroom was into the den—which became Mary Jane’s room. I think I remember a bookcase in there and maybe the desk was in there too. The stairs up to the attic were in that room.

Chris’ room was at the base of those stairs to the immediate left and the girls room right in front of those stairs. A closet connected those rooms. Judy’s crib was in Chris’ room as well as a door to the outside that we didn’t ever use.

The kitchen was also off the dining room. It must have been kind of narrow—stove, washing machine and dryer on one side—sink and refrigerator on the other. I remember Mom pre-heating the oven (electric) and cooking a mouse. Oh the STINK of burning fur! The phone was also in the kitchen..

The main entrance was off the patio into a mud room which led into the kitchen. The cellar stairs were right there on the left. The patio was concrete. Milk in glass gallon containers would be delivered there and they would break but good when dropped on that concrete. There was wrought iron (probably not really wrought iron but metal) fence on that patio. I grew my 4H gourds at the base of that fence facing the barn.

I don’t remember that much about the cellar but I didn’t like going down there too much. We stored the dog food in that stairwell. I don’t remember much about the attic either but since it was a ranch style house, it couldn’t have been very much of anything.

There were all kinds of cool play areas outside. There were a couple of pretty big evergreens not too far from the house near the driveway outside the dining room window. On the other side of the driveway near the road, there was a small hill to roll down. There was a path in that woods but I don’t think we ventured too far into those away from the house. One time I fell down a little hill in those woods off that path and got a big old scrape on my back. I most definitely tried to hide that from Mom.

The woods in the back in where we would go off and explore. I remember a big tree fallen down and extending out over the gorge. We’d find stuff back there—Chris found some money I think and Kathy found some gum or candy or something. We went to the base of the gorge and followed the creek to Shirley’s house one time. (Shirley the babysitter was a student of Dad’s—I actually found her on the internet through the Silver Creek website –but Dad taught in Forestville ?!?!?)

There was a woman up the road (Mrs. Hamburg?) who could cut hair so we’d walk up to her house sometimes. When we took that trek in the winter, we’d take great delight in jumping into the snow piled at the roadside to stay out of the way of traffic. Some lady with a zillion cats lived across the road. Hazletons just down a little ways. For some reason Hazeltons went to Forestville and we went to Silver Creek even though we were actually a tad closer to the opposite schools.