Stories from the past.

Sometimes my friends (who must love me or something) ask me to write stories we've shared. So Amelia, this one's for you. I must add when Amelia and I go out to dinner the main course is laughter.
My grandmother who I called Nanny, was a character, and had a great sense of humour. The last year of her life she was living in a nursing home, at age 90 she had her first physical, no one had physicals in her day. So Mum was with her, and told me this story. the doctor was giving Nanny a rectal exam. In order to keep her relaxed he kept talking to her. He asked what she thought of the Royal family? Did she think the Queen was doing a good job? and so on. Nanny got tired of it and said, "If you're looking for the crown jools they're not up there!"
Mum was so embarrassed I just think it's a priceless, Nanny story. I found a picture of Nanny. It was the group photo from my wedding in 1955. It looks funny everyone in coats, not me of course, I must have been freezing. Nanny is in black and 3rd from right, front row.

This is a memory check for my children. When we lived in MD we went to dinner at a nice restaurant in Annapolis, I think it was Mother's day. I had shown the children how to make music with wine glasses, putting a little water in them, and running a wet finger tip around the rim. The restaurant was crowded, the kids decided to demonstrate their talent, and soon the four of them were making this ear piercing noise. People must have complained and the manager came out and attempted to fix the juke box. Thankfully I stopped them before anyone found out the culprits.

Maryland and Pennsylvania 1972 - 1973

We left NC and headed for Maryland. We bought a nice house at Riviera Beach, it was across the street from the Maryland Yacht Club. Close to Baltimore, I loved our time there, anywhere near the water I'm happy, of course I really prefer the ocean. Cher was 17, Steve 11, Kim 9, and Karen was 8. I worked for Amerco Corp. that was the head office for U-Haul. Appropriate for someone who was constantly U-Hauling from state to state.

I remember our first experience with MD crabs. We were at a crab house and were seated at a picnic table covered in newspaper, utensils were a wooden mallet, and nut crackers. Karen whacked her first crab with the mallet and Old Bay seasoning flew into her eye. She said she would never eat crabs again. I can vouch for the fact, she fibbed, that crab was the first of many. We even had our own crab fisherman. Steve used to put out lines and the first time he brought them into my kitchen, they were capering around on the counter. I used to think it was cruel dropping live crabs into boiling water, but I had a change of heart, that was preferable to having them run around.

This is a picture from our crab feast. All the great friends I worked with.

Outside a neighbors, their house was on the waterfront.










This is Cher and Gary enjoying the beach.






One more picture from MD only it was Washington DC outside the Smithsonian. We were on a field trip.
Ray wanted a boat so bad, and we were short on funds, so he bought a 10 man rubber raft. First of all it was a pain in the butt to inflate, and it was kind of embarrassing with all the yachts going by. We even had a 1 HP motor on it. The main thing was the kids loved it.

Steve really got into football, and played on a good team.

We later used to commute from PA back to MD because they still wanted Steve on the team. More about that later. I previewed what I've written and I hate the way the pictures are showing, of course I don't know how to edit them?

Ray by this time was working for Danskin, and they wanted us to be closer to NYC. So they moved us to PA and told us to just rent and not buy. By this time I was really getting tired of moving, with 4 kids and a dog, it was not fun. Only when we moved we were down to 3 kids. Cher was in her senior year in MD and preparing for college, she didn't want to move. So she moved in with her in-laws to be. People have asked how I could let that happen. It wasn't easy, I cried a lot. By this time Ray had been commuting from MD to PA. We used to play tennis and he broke his ankle, I have a picture of a dance we went to, he has a crutch and I had the biggest platform shoes ever. My dress would be in style for today, complete with cut outs, one problem my body is no longer in style.

We settled into a nice house, I mostly remember the fireplace, that opened on two sides, one in the kitchen and one in the living room. I don't have many pictures from that time, I think we were only there for about 6 months, during which time Steve had appendicitis, and almost died. I worked for a company I have no idea what they did, but it was my first experience with computers. It was an IBM and was so huge it had it's own room. My boss was Cuban and inclined to being volatile, he told me if I ever messed up the computer I would be there in my pajamas until I got it right. What a way to instill confidence? I found out they had a back up system at the public library, and I found all kinds of short cuts after that. If I did mess up I just put a card in out of sequence, and re-ran whatever I was doing.

One of the women I worked with, was such a gossip. Her husband was a bank manager, and she would tell us stories about the bank. The funniest thing ever was when they were building a new bank and were using a wide trailer to house the old bank temporarily. Someone hitched the trailer to a truck and stole the whole bank. I thought that was pretty inventive. Funny the memories you have, I know at that time they started making beauty products with fruit flavors. I loved peaches so I bought peach talc about mid afternoon it was getting warm, and "gossip girl" said, "I keep thinking I can smell peach pie cooking." I still get the giggles thinking about it, I was too embarrassed to tell her it was me.

Not so funny when I got a call at work, Steve telling me Kim had been injured playing football, and that she was lying on the couch and couldn't move. I packed up my desk and high tailed it home. I was picturing her paralysed? Thank God she wasn't but she had broken her collar bone.
I have to remember the snakes, Steve's two pets. He used to lie on the floor watching tv with a coiled snake, resting on his back. When we left PA the snakes had disappeared, for years I had visions of them coming up out of the heating vents, and scaring the new tenants.

We bought a little camper from someone I worked with, she showed us all the features and pointed out where the "spare tare" was. Another language to learn? They didn't iron they aironed. If something was wrinkled, "it needs pressed". We drove that trailer to Orlando, our first visit to Disney World. I drove part of the way, and fish tailing is not my idea of fun. It did come in useful when we camped in NJ while we looked for yet another house. Here's a photo of Karen, Steve and Kim.

Steve had everything Steelers. We loved that team, I still remember Lynn Swan and Franco Harris. I believe crazy Terry Bradshaw was the QB.