52 Weeks Of Personal History: Cloths

Playing catch up again.

Week 24. Clothes. What types of clothes did you wear as a child? What was “in fashion” and did your style compare?. What types of clothes did you wear as a child? What was “in fashion” and did your style compare?

When I think of my life and cloths I think of uniforms.  I went to Catholic school and nursing school and worked as a nurse.  I wore uniforms.  When I was a out playing I wore pants or shorts with shirts.  And lots of dresses for Sundays and special events.  I was in my twenties when I purchased my first pair of blue jeans.

I don't have a picture in the uniform I wore at St. Luke's Elementary school.  It was a blue jumper with a white blouse with a peter pan collar.  Topped off with a clip on navy blue bow tie with tales.

When we moved to Florida and I went to St. Clements Elementary school we had a light green and white stripped jumper with white a blouse, no tie.  No pictures of those either. 

And because I like pictures in my posts here comes the fashion show. 


Mary in Cardinal Gibbons HS uniform on campus



Same uniform in front of my home



LPN Graduation 1966



Mary in Scrubs giving chemo 1992

Mary 2008

 Here I am in my last uniform that I wore as a Clinical  Informatics Coordinator.  My current job, this picture was taken in 2008.  Now we don't wear these any more.  I miss them.  Only because it was easy to pick out and put on, no decision of what should I wear today. 

Do I follow cloths trends, no, I just wear what makes me feel comfortable.  At home I wear my old scrubs, they are comfy.  When I am out and about I am in jeans when it is cool, slacks or Capri's when it is hot with a blouse or polo shirt. Of course on Sunday it is a dress.

Not my Journey

This is not my journey but another person's journey.  I meet this person for a few minutes but I want to wish him luck on his journey.  Maybe if all my genealogy friends reads this story they will wish him luck also. 

I was traveling for work and while site seeing, you can read more about my trip on my quilting blog.



Plaque Outside Fort Laramie

 We stopped so I could get out of the car and take a picture of this plaque. Here I meet a Welshman who was following one of his ancestor's.  His ancestor had "joined the Mormons and he was following the trail all the way from Omaha, Nebraska to Salt Lake City, Utah". We were having a hard time getting the picture. He ended up standing on the fence rail in front of the monument and he offered to take one for me. I noticed his accent and asked where he was from, he said Wales. I mentioned I have a second cousin in Wales but of course I don't know the area he where lives. My other second cousin told me but I forgot. This was all the conversation we had. But the exchange left an impression on me. I wished we had exchanged names or something. He seemed to be on a hurry or was it a sense of determination I felt. 

I have thought of him often and wonder how his trip is going. What did he hope to accomplish and has he accomplished his goal? I wish him well on his journey!  I hope he finds all the answers he came in search of. 

Google News Timelines

I found this video about Google News Timelines thanks Lisa Louise Cooke. I checked it out and found it very interesting to see some of the top news items of the year my Great Grandfather Joseph Hartmann immigrated to New York City from Germany in 1868. 
I remember thinking when I learned the year of his immigration that things had to be pretty bad in Germany to come to the United States only three years after our Civil War.



I saved my search closed out of the news timelines and went back in and it opened to my search.  I will have to see what happens when I do several searches. 

Here are some of the top news items I saw that were interesting to me.  Unfortunately the links didn't work, but maybe that is a good thing or I would have spent a lot of time reading about them all.

The last one is my favorite as a kid I loved to go to the Museum of Natural History.  When I went back to New York when I was 20, I also sent a couple of days there. 

One small step for me and my family.

This Is The Face of Genealogy

Without Genealogy and the connections I have made I would have never seen the gentle face of my Maternal Great Grandmother (center sitting) Mary Ann Holmes Chaplin. 

A Shout Out to one of my Followers

On Saturday I was adding photos to my memorials on Find A Grave. When I notice a little flower by my Mom's name.

Flower in the red circle

So I went and checked it out and this is what I found.  

Flower and Note left on my Mom's Memorial

Words can not express the appreciation I felt to see those kind words there.  It touched me very deeply and I was a little surprised by the depth of those feelings.  It made me think of my mother in a different light.  What I remember of my Mom as a nurse was a women who came home tired from work.  Believe me I have had those days myself.  I felt that Mary who left those kind words represented to me all the people who if they could have said those words of thanks to my Mom would have.  I know how that feels to have someone come to you and thank you for the good care you gave to their family member.  I also know how it feels to take care of others and do the best you can for them especially in difficult situations.

Mom died when I was 16 and a Senior in High School so she never saw me become a nurse.  She didn't want me to be a nurse because it is such hard work.  I am glad I didn't listen to her nursing has been a good to me.

I sent Mary an email of appreciation and asked how she came to leave a comment on my Mom's memorial.   She replied she follows my blog on Google Reader and saw my Memorial Day post and I quote, "I liked that she was a nurse during WWII and the sacrifice she endured there and she was prompted to put the flowers on the memorial."

Thanks Mary for following my blog and for the flowers! 



Fun as a Find A Grave Volunteer

Today I was able to go the Mesa City Cemetery and take some pictures I had claimed on Find a Grave.  I really do enjoy the opportunity it gives me to help someone else.  This was only my second time to take pictures for someone else.  I had 6 requests, 5 from the site and one sent to me privately.  I wish I could say I found them all but I can't.  I even went back to the area it was suppose to be a second time and still didn't find it.


The graves with the flags is the one I was looking for

So bright and early this morning after my work out at the gym I went to the cemetery armed with my camera, my copy of the cemetery map of block numbers and my list of request.  Before I went I checked out the cemetery website to gain some insight on how to find graves.  It was helpful information and did made things easier.  I also highlighted the blocks I was looking for and numbered my requests in the order I had plan to search them out. 

The fun thing was how closed I parked to the area I needed.  On two of the stones I was looking for the number marked of the area and I looked down and there was the grave stone I needed.  Above is a picture of my car and one of the graves I was looking for was this close, it is the one with the two flags.  I guessed right on to the area I needed to look.  This is an older part of the cemetery so there are a lot of trees.  I was also very lucky that the area I was working at was not being watered while I was there.  I was suddenly surprised when I heard the sprinklers come on right across from where I was.  

After I was home again I was looking at the pictures I took and noticed dirt on the grave stones, today's were all flat.  So the next time I am going to take a little dust broom with me to clean the stones off before I take a picture.  Today I had to take them all looking at the stones upside down because the sun was to my back and would have casted a shadow over the stones.  Aren't computers wonderful where we can rotate pictures so they are right side up?  The other thing I have decide is during the summer I need to go right at 7 AM when the gates open because it was getting very hot when I was there between 9 & 10 AM.

I would recommend to any one who hasn't volunteered to do so, it is very satisfying and much appreciated.

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History Restaurants

Restaurants. What was your favorite local restaurant as a child? Where was it located, and what was your favorite meal? Did you know the staff personally? What is your favorite restaurant now?

I don’t remember going out to eat until after we moved to Florida and we found this good pizza restaurant and we went for pizza many Friday nights. I have no idea what the name was. My favorite restaurants now are Mi Amigos, Serrano’s, Matta’s, Nando’s, Outback Steak House, and Texas Road House. Do you notice a trend? If we go up to Pine Top Arizona my all time favorite restaurant is Charlie Clark’s.
I always order the filet with butter blue cheese sauce. The first time I saw this I thought meat has enough fat without adding more, but I love blue cheese, so I tried it and of course love it. Well if it tastes good it has to be bad for you!


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52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History Sports

Sports. Did you have a favorite sports team as a child? If so, which one and why. Did your parents follow the same teams? Do you still support the same teams?

I had no interest in sports as a kid neither did my parents, but I think they were Yankee fans or my Dad was. I still have no interest in sports, I have been to games, and they are fun in persons but I don’t follow them. My Mom made me take tennis lessons so I would be well rounded when I was a teen. I hated to run and I hated to sweat. I only work out because it is good for me, not because I like it.

The only sport I really enjoyed doing was scuba diving. I loved being on the ocean in a boat, I loved being in the water. I had a dive journal and made a total of 19 of dives.  I did most of my dives in the Atlantic Ocean around the Florida Keys. I can still remember to this day the pains in my arms I had after I passed the swimming test to take the class. I do not remember how many laps I had to swim, but it was a lot and I didn’t swim daily. The instructors need to know we could swim, of course that makes sense. We also had to tread water for 10  minutes or more, first with our arms over our heads then down. When I finally was finished and I went home to shower and shampoo my hair my arms where so sore I could not lift them higher than my shoulders to wash my hair. So I bent my head down to reach my hand, first one side then the other.

 I wasn’t crazy about the classes in a pool and my first open water dive was in a narrow Florida canal and that was no fun either, lots of murky water and nothing to see. But after my second open water dive off the Florida Keys I was hooked and in love with it. The openness of the ocean was wonderful, the coral reefs and the fish were wonderful. I was never attached by a barracuda or a shark. Though my dive instructor came up and pinched me on the leg once when I had just swam by a school of barracuda and I almost sprouted wings and flew right out of that water.



The most interesting dive I ever took was a night dive. In our diving manual we had this night dive cartoon of a scuba diver in a totally black picture except for his eyes in his dive mask and his flash light beam. Doing a night dive feels just like that, you can see what is only in front of you in your flash light beam. There are lights on the bow and the back of the boat, and one flashes and one is a steady beam so you know which end of the boat to come up at, otherwise it is dark. On my first dive of the night I was so nervous I sucked my air tank dry in no time. I was more relaxed for my second dive. We dived the Benwood wreck in the Keys and saw fish sleeping in between the ribs of the ship and night shrimp moving around with their bright bands of red and white.

http://www.shipwreckexpo.com/fkbenwood.htm

This link tells you about the ship and how it sank of the coast of Florida, a Germany U Boat was involved.



Inside of Log book with the first of my two night dives.


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Created by Amy Coffin http://wetree.blogspot.com/

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History: Commercial Jingles

Commercials. Do you remember any commercial jingles from your childhood? Share them here.

Oh do I remember those jingles! 

My favorite was probably the Alka Seltzer one,
Pop, pop, fizz, fizz
Oh what a relief it is!
Pop, pop, fizz, fizz

Oh what a relief it is!

See the USA today in your Chevrolet that was a good one also. 

And what about Snap, Crackle & Pop for Rice Crispis

Oh and how about Brylcreem a little dab will do ya.

Here is a fun link to a lot of these jingles from the early 60's, enjoy!
 http://the60sofficialsite.com/Great_TV_Commercial_Jingles.html

And here is a TV commercial just to bring back the memories.



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Created by Amy Coffin http://wetree.blogspot.com/
 

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History Illness & Injury

Illness and Injury. Describe your childhood illnesses or injuries. Who took care of you? Did you recuperate in your own bed, on the couch in front of the television, or somewhere else?

Most of my childhood illness I sent in my bedroom listening to Soap Operas on the radio. I use to enjoy the sound effects, like doors opening and whatever. I don’t think I care much for the stories themselves because I never watched Soap Operas on TV.   Unless I was home sick.

There was one time when I was able to lie on the couch in front of the TV. It was after a car accident and luckily no one was seriously hurt but I had a shoulder injury. It was the one time my Dad let me sit in the front seat of the car and believe me it was the last time until I was a lot older. This was before the age of seat belts. What I remember watching was the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.





I was only 5 but what I remember was her walking down the long aisle of the Abbey and the long train that was carried for her.  It was really fun to watch this You Tube clip of the coronation. 

A strange coincidence, I was home sick from work and watched the wedding of her grandson this year. 
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Created by Amy Coffin http://wetree.blogspot.com/