White Gloves

Pat in the back. Joan, Bill B, Maureen and Barbara. April, 1955

We are posed in front of a famous Cincinnati monument, a reproduction of a statue of Romulus and Remus being suckled by their mother wolf. We are obscuring the boys. It's probably Easter and we are still dressed for church.

A nice contast between being raised by wolves and being raised by Catholics.

Jane in 1953

Hats were required for women's church wear by some ancient law, perhaps the 11th commandment. Women wearing white gloves to church was also a requirement.

Peggy and Cele, Pat B. in white gloves 

May, 1945

You can tell when people are dressed for church.

Someone is always wearing white gloves.

Cele is seven months pregnant here and covering up the condition.

Things have changed.

Dorothy in 1945

White gloves always seemed pretty Mickey Mouse to me.

They were hot and awkward. I liked to chew on the finger tips however.

But they were fashionable in the 1950s

And more important they marked you as someone who knew what to wear---a class thing.

Or someone whose mother knew what she should wear.

Queen Elizabeth and her mother in the 1930s

Proof that it wasn't just Catholic girls who had to wear them.

Father's Day

Cece, Jane, Kay, Warren, Barbara

1983

Just the other day---well maybe it was 27 years ago---we videotaped an interview with Uncle Warren and Aunt Kay. We asked them about our parents Cele and Ben, whom we have a hard time remembering.

Warren had a wonderful afternoon telling us about the years right after the War. He spoke of his two older brothers-in-law Biff and Ben with great affection. Warren was 24 in 1945, Ben 35 and Biff 32.

1943

Because he'd been injured he was one of the first soldiers to come home in 1945. He was required to wear his uniform everywhere he went and he and Biff and Ben went to a lot of bars. Everyone would buy Warren drinks as thanks for his service. I imagine Ben and Biff got many free drinks too.

1942

Tom Berry on the left, two unkown women, then Cele and Ben.

Warren and Kay didn't have the money to get an apartment so Warren apparently spent many nights on the couch at Ben and Cele's. Occasionally Ben and Cele would go out of town so Warren and Kay could have their apartment (The kids WERE married, you know.)

Ben also loaned them their car---a Nash, Warren emphasized. A nice car.

Although he had a variety of memories about the good times, Warren loved to talk about how much they drank. The drinking tended to wear on Cele. He was, after all, sleeping on her couch and driving her car, and she was pregnant. I'll spare you the details, which involved Cele, a bucket and a rag and her car and her couch.

Listening to him talk recreated another time and place, when you could drink and drive, and drink...and drink.

So raise a glass of Rheingold for those guys on Father's Day. They did have fun.

July, 1953

Pat B, Ben, Lora, Vera, Biff, Peggy and Patty N

The Big Rock

This is not the Big Rock.

When we all lived on Russet Lane in Halesite there was a giant rock across the street behind the Harrison's house.

This is not the Big Rock

I remember it being so large that it was an accomplishment to climb up it.

Small fry like Moe and Jane (on the right) couldn't possibly get up to the top.

Neighbors Chris and John, the boys in the picture, were also too small to get on top or stay there. (We may have shoved them off.)

This is not the Big Rock.

Ten years ago Jane and Bill and I went back to look at the Big Rock.
No surprise----it wasn't that big.

Maybe about this big.

My boyfriend the geologist says it's a glacial erratic.

A definition of a glacial erratic:

After a glacier melts, rock debris is left behind. In the New York region, the Wisconsin Ice Sheet deposited tons of gravel, pebbles and sand—moving, for example, boulders from the Palisades to Central Park—plowed up topsoil, and leveled the earth, filling in depressed areas with glacial till. Individual stray rocks called “glacial erratics” were rounded by the glacier and left behind after the ice melted away. Today these rocks are found across New York City and Long Island.

I'm not going to ask him why it's called the Wisconsin Ice Sheet. We don't need to know.

Love Stories: Ann and George

Ann in 1939 at 22

Anna Marie was born in 1917, her mother Anna Marie's seventh daughter. She married George in October, 1942 when she was 24 and he was 30 years old.

In the 1940s, from Jack's box of photos

Bambi says those bikes are still in the garage.

She'd had her eye on him for quite a while. According to Bambi:

They lived a block away from each other in Queens Village. Mom was on 215th St and 89th Ave and Dad was on 216th St and 89th Ave. Mom would see Dad around in the neighborhood. I think she decided at an early age (like 14) that he was the one for her, but she didn't actually "meet" him until July 4, 1935 when she was 17 and he was 23. [Bambi's quotes in blue; Ann's in red.] In Ann's words:

"George lived on 216th and there was a stationery/candy store on 217th and 90th? that all the neighborhood teens hung out at. I used to see him there and liked him. Thought he was the one for me. I went to Walcliff pool with friends on 4th July and bumped into George there. I dove off the high board and bumped into him on the way up. We talked, and he walked me home, and never got away."

1960 - 1965

George carried this photo in his wallet, his favorite picture of Ann. He took it with a timer.

　"Hugh McDougal was a neighborhood friend of George's. Nice looking guy but I had no interest in him, only George. Hugh was walking with me one day on the way home and he grabbed me and kissed me and I slapped him - slugged him really. Hugh protested why I hit him because he saw me on the front stoop at Gracie's house sitting on George's lap. And I told him that that didn't count because I was going to marry George. Hugh asked if George knew that.....I told him not yet. Hugh never bothered me again."

Mom used to say she and Dad rode [the bikes in the photo above] all over Long Island when they were dating. Mom's afraid of bridges and she said one route they used to take they had to go over this wooden bridge - the kind you could see the water below thru the slats - she was scared to death and only for my father would she cross it (walking not riding). Aaahh, the things we do for love.

1945

George and Ann were married during the War in a ceremony in the rectory of a church in Syracuse with sister Vera the family witness. Grandpa was opposed so Ann and George eloped.

Christmas, 1945

George was stationed in Gulfport, Mississippi in 1944 and 1945 and Ann joined him there. They moved back to Queens after the war.

Ann and George and Nancy (another Anna Marie), Christmas 1945

Moving to Queens

Tommy & Patty on the front stoop, 1930

Right after Tommy, the youngest of the 13 kids, was born in 1929 the McNallys moved out of the city to Queens Village.

Dorothy, Grandma and Patty.

Jackie in the front row, about 1942.

Jackie, born to Marie in 1937,

lived with his grandparents in Queens Village during the '40s

 

It was a brick house with a front stoop, nicely landscaped.

 It looks Tudor style, a typical Queens Village house.

Whose first communion? A cousin?

There was a yard with a trellis.

Grandpa seems to have been the gardener. The cigar was a period gardening accessory.

Grandma and Grandpa about 1942

The address was 89-02 215th.

It was as an impressive accomplishment at the beginning of the Depression for a man with 13 children to buy a house in Queens Village---and to keep it. I imagine the older kids worked to help.

The house may be the same one at 89-02 215th Place that sold in October, 2009 for $440,000. Records say it was built in 1925. Today it has approximately 2,432 square feet of living space and is listed as a three-story house.  A lot of room for a lot of kids.

In 1930 none of the girls had married yet. Marie, the oldest was 23. Billie and Vera were in their twenties. Cele, Lora, Peggy and Ann were teenagers, Dot was 10, Kay 8,  Jack and Buddy were 6 and 4, Patty was 2 and Tommy was a baby.

After Adelphi Street in Brooklyn, Queens with it's 2-story commercial areas and boulevards planted with trees must have looked positively rural.

The family was part of the suburban migration leaving the city.

The newspapers in the 1920s were full of ads for dream homes on the island.

Queens Village is on the eastern edge of the borough.

Does anyone know when they left this house and moved to Floral Park?

Love Stories: Bud and Ronnie

William Joseph, known as Bud, is the second boy, the 11th child.

Jack, Patty and Buddy, maybe in the forties.

Bud and Jack during World War II

January 1944

Lora, Buddy and Kay ? and Ann ? on the couch

Jackie and Smokey in front.

Several photos from that event were in Jack's box of pictures.

Below is Grandpa in the center of the couch and what looks to be a group of Buddy's friends.

Bud's on the bottom right.

Bud married Aunt Ronnie on November 25, 1948, Thanksgiving. They were both 22 years old.

Bud and Ronnie met on a blind date---August 29, 1947. Ronnie remembers the date exactly.

Jack was dating Millie a gal that I worked with in the telephone co. Bud didn't have a date one nite when their crowd was going out so I was it.

I refused at first because I was dating a guy who was recuperating in an Army Hospital down south after the war but my Mom talked me into it---I hadn't heard from him in awhile and she said that I was wasting my youth---Mothers know best!

 We became engaged [six months later] on Valentine's Day 1948.

We got in trouble because we picked Thanksgiving Day as our wedding day not realizing that some of his sisters had to leave their kids that day.That's young love--but I think that eventually we were forgiven.

Clockwise from the man with the cigar:

 Pat, Ronnie, Bud, Edna, Tommy, Peggy and Patty

Ronnie: I remember that picture well---I assume it was taken at Jack's as he is the only one not in it. The 8 of us did a lot of things together---and had so much fun.

Ronnie and Kevin

November, 1949

Ronnie: I know that I loved being part of such a sociable musical family. However being the first sister-in-law was a little scary.

There's a thought: Marrying a man with nine older sisters---nine out-spoken older sisters.

Billy M. and Kevin August 1952

Christmas 1955

1956

1959

 1967

The caption on the back has everybody's ages on it, including that of Tawny the dog.

But whoever wrote it didn't know how old Ronnie and Bud were. Ageless, I guess.

Photoshopping

A few of the old photos are in terrible shape. This one of Grandma, Grandpa and Teddy, taken in 1938 or 1939, is from Jack's collection of loose photos. Maybe he carried it with him in his wallet while he was in the Army during the War.

I can alter these with photoshop, getting rid of the spots and wrinkles, cropping the edges and adjusting the exposure and contrast to make them clearer.

I laid this one on a brown background which makes the tears less visible, erased the dots and cracks and darkened it a little.

Jack and Kathryn in July 1926 when he was two and a half and she was just four.

Ben occasionally cut some one out of the background.

He must have carried this picture of Cele in 1930 in his wallet.

For this torn picture of Lora from Jack I added some smudgy film grain and made it arty.

It's all reversible.

So don't throw out any photos. Send them to me and brother Bill and we'll work on them. Scan them if you like or just mail them to me. I'll scan them and send them back.