Goodbye 2010!!

As the year 2010 quickly runs down its final moments, I find myself trying not to remember the less pleasant moments and focus on the best ones. The best moments of course include sharing times with you. There has been some great sadness for some of us as loved ones were lost... from accidents, cancer, and other horrible causes... and some of us have struggled with persistent health issues... and those too, also affected how 2010 played out.

But through it all, thick and thin... We got each other and had each other's back - and over the past few weeks, trips to the mailbox, both snail and electronic, brought me plentiful reminders that a great bunch of people surround me - both far and near.


Beautiful cards and thoughts from from Ronda, Betty of A Corgi in South California, Rebecca of This Mom's Many Hats, Karen of Ryan's MommyNikki of Aunt of 14, Lynne of Ramblin' Southern Woman,
Martha (and Tara) of The Daily Grind, YaYa who finally has a son! Wonderful, left- and right-handed handmade cards from Rita of SoulComfort's Corner and her daughter-in-law Leah, Parsley of Seasons of My Mind, Alison and Leland of Adventures of a Yankee Girl, Tori of Torizworld, Karla, Punkn of My loves My Life, and Lickety of Pukka Purl, Pamela of The Dust Will Wait, LadyStyx and Ranger of The World Can Be Amazing..., Alice Kay of Alice Kay Is Here, Jeannie of Jeannie's Happy World, Anne of Anne's Phamily, and last but by no means least, a Marvin the Martian.


Alice Kay sent an awesome photo book - the pictures of her hometown area remind me of the times I've been able to get upstate and see her beautiful corner of the world. Pennsylvania is a beautiful state. As I slowly turned the pages, I could feel the presence of a friend wrapped around me.


Ladystyx and her husband Ranger sent a box containing an unwrapped, really nice book about "What Christmas is all about" and a gift wrapped box that simply said, "For Later". When Christmas day came, I unwrapped it and beamed a huge smile. The complete, first year's episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants on DVD! Do you know how long it took to watch a complete, first year's season of SpongeBob SquarePants? Well, I'll tell you. 3 days. :)

Jeannie sent a spectacular box of Italian goodies. Biscotti, olive oil, candles and other select goodies. Those that know her, know her move from Georgia to Italy wasn't the smoothest - and that was but part of the sacrifice she and her family make, serving in the Armed Forces to protect and preserve our freedoms. In that box of goodies was one of her handmade cards. Her cards are always amazing.

I put it with the two handmade ones from Rita and Leah. Having four thumbs on each hand, I can but greatly respect and appreciate their talents. Rebecca made a wonderful necklace/glasses holder for my mom - and a matching zipper pull. You can see some of her handmade works of art (here). My mom was thrilled - not so much by the fact she needed the "old librarian glasses chain" but by the beautiful bead work. YellowDogGranny sent a West Texas Cookbook that my niece is taking great delight in. In fact, she's sending another copy!

The next week or so will likely see more surprises. I, like everyone else, enjoy good mail - but more so, I celebrate the thoughts behind it.

A while back, my brother saw me looking at an old map on-line one day at work - and he asked, "What is that?" I replied, "It's a map printed in 1922 showing the neighborhood that 3-great-grandfather Mousley lived in - see? See how it shows what business is in the buildings? And right there... see that alley? That was called 'Mousley Street'!".

He looked closely and said, "Hey! That's really cool! Can you e-mail me the link?"

So I did, and then I pretty much forgot about it. See that big red tube on the left of all those cards in the first picture? That was his Christmas present for me - inside it were two of the maps we spend the day looking at. This time my smile was a little goofy and choked up...


My great-grandfather, grandfather, and father ran the foundry located at Cedar and Boston (lower left corner where it says "Brass Foundry"). The railroad tracks to the right that create a freight yard (above the "rights" in "all rights preserved") are long gone - and the location is a small mall parking lot at the end of the Girard Avenue exit ramp (northbound) of Interstate 95. My grandfather speaks of Cramp and Sons Shipbuilding which dominated the area - of which only a single small building survives today.


Remember the old rundown brewery I wrote about (here) and the "at least it's clean parking lot" that was my 3-great-grandfather's home? You can see where they are/were on this map - in the upper left corner just below the word "W. Oxford" where it crosses Germantown Avenue. Granddaddy's house was the 3d, 4th and 5th buildings across the street (to the right) from the brewery.

I plan to frame these maps, they are about 2 1/2 feet by 3 feet in size, and put labels on the glass/plastic indicating where what is or was.

And then it's time to look forward - what will 2011 bring?

I suspect a good deal more of the same that 2010 brought - and it wasn't all bad.

:)

May all of you have a wonderful new year!

Post Christmas 2010

As most of you know, the east coast was hit by a snowstorm late Christmas Day and into the day afterward. The worse of the coastal storm passed to the east of me, sparing me the 10-18 inches they got in many places in New Jersey.

I wasn't completely spared of the white stuff. Monday morning meant going to work and shoveling out the company parking lot.


This is the only reason I dislike snow!

If it would only fall on the grass! While I was shoveling and shoveling and shoveling, I took breaks to warm my hands - the wind was gusty and the snow powdery - and laughed at some comic strips.

One of my favorites is Mutts by Patrick McDonnell.


The snow is actually melting away pretty quickly and the forecast calls for temperatures in the upper-forties the rest of this week. I guess Mooch found the thermoshtat.

I enjoyed this one too - as I've been researching cousins lately.


I had a nice Christmas. Both of my brothers were in town with their families and my older brother, my nephews and I went to visit my Grandfather in the afternoon. We did a bunch of crossword puzzles, took walks on the canal, had three dinners together, shoveled snow at my parents house, and they went ice skating (I can't).

I received some awesome presents - I'm very blessed with friends and family. I will write about a few of the gifts later - and yes, SpongeBob SquarePants got unwrapped.

Merry Christmas - From Me to You

I've finally decorated my tree!

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and the happiest of new years!

A Boy and His Dog

Every now and then, I take a picture that I actually like. I've made this one my computer wallpaper - it will be replaced by another picture eventually but for now, each time I look at my monitor I see this scene:


Unbidden the thought comes to my mind, "A Boy and His Dog". My dad recently had a follow-up check with the Heart Specialist and was told that things looked good, very good, indeed. Hearing that news was the brightest spot the past week... and this picture shows him on the beach with his "puppy" Zoey.

Zoey loves running up and down the beach, free as a bird, and pretending she is a Sandpiper, following the rush of foamy wave lather up and down and nimbly keeping her feet dry. My dad watches her frolic - something she can only do in the winter time as come sometime before Memorial Day, she will be banned from the beach for the summer.

My dad is proudly wearing his C-5 Galaxy cap - a rare change from his Captain Bob or Water's Edge caps. He got this cap from my younger brother while at the Air Transport Museum in Dover, Delaware. The trip being completely arranged by my younger brother as a father's day gift. It included a behind the scenes peek at some cargo plane maintenance activities and cockpit visit in a Boeing C-17A Globemaster III as well as a visit to flight simulator where he crashed his "virtual" C-5 Galaxy trying to land it.

This morning, however, I was in an odd place mentally - and I gazed at this scene on my monitor and thought to myself, "Why do I keep half laughing and calling this 'A Boy and His Dog'"? On the way home from work, it finally hit me - there was novella written by Harlan Ellison (a magnificent Science Fiction author) with that title. And furthermore, I not only read it, I had seen it in movie form very late at night while in college - I remember being totally mentally beaten - a 4 hour final exam that day on "The Principles of Heat Transfer" really did a number on me.

The movie was shown in the college union, free popcorn, and reduced prices on Worx burgers (which at the time, I thought was the only edible food the campus cafeteria had). I remember reclining in a beanbag chair and watching this ... horrible, horrible movie... it was made around 1975... and the boy was the very young Don Johnson (of later Miami Vice fame).

In the movie a boy named Vic communicates telepathically with his dog named Blood as they scavenge for food and sex, and they stumble into an underground society where the daughter of one of the leaders of the community seduces Vic. The citizens have become unable to reproduce because of being underground so long. They use him for impregnation purposes, and then plan to be rid of him.

I'll not spoil the ending for you - but the closing scene still cracks me up. Just remembering the movie and where I saw it, fill me with nostalgia and make me look twice when eating barbecue.

An Odd Hobby

In my attempts to locate my ancestors grave sites, I found a free website appropriately called "Find A Grave."

Being mildly curious about the "famous" people buried in the many cemeteries near my home, I signed up as a volunteer "grave stone picture taker". As a result, every now and then, I find a request in my e-mail box asking if I can take a picture of some one's gravestone.

While this may sound rather ghoulish, my thoughts are of the difficulty I had finding my ancestors - and of wanting to help others find their ancestors and to be, in a small way, helpful in their finding their roots.

What I did not realize was, that within just 5 miles of my home there are literally dozens and dozens of cemeteries - some dating way back into the late 1600's and that I would get a fair number of requests.

Many of the stones I've seen over the few months are weathered beyond readability, or nearly so, such as Matthias Rittenhouse's shown below.


It reads, "In Memory of Matthias Rittenhouse who departed this Life June the 3rd 1793 .. Aged 59 Years".

Matthias was a Mennonite ("nearly-Amish") minister in the town of Skippack, PA.

Willem (William) Rittinghausen (1644-1708) was born in the Rhineland, Germany, and lived in Amsterdam before he immigrated to America in 1688. He became the first Mennonite minister in America and builder of the first paper mill at Philadelphia in 1690. It is believed that all American Mennonite Rittenhouses have descended from him.

The most famous person bearing the family name was David Rittenhouse (1732-96), the Philadelphia astronomer and scientist and the first director of the United States Mint, who was a son of Matthias of the third generation in America. He lived in a farmhouse a few blocks down the road from me, very near the Methacthon Oak - which he may very well have sat under - it being on the church grounds that his father preached at.

In my strolls up and down the old gravestones looking for the one someone requested a photo of, I have encountered many of the same names - names that the nearby towns, streets, and businesses also carry. Bergey, Detweiller, Bean, Kreible, Kulp, Landis, Clemens, Heebner, Beyers, Cassel, (Christopher) Dock and many more.

Usually, it takes a bit of walking, up and down rows, to find the one I am seeking - sometimes I end up walking miles and miles and sometimes I don't find the grave - but when I do, I get a thrill and think, "Aha!" and take the picture and move on.

The grave stones however, do not tell the person's story. Recently I was asked to take a picture of the grave of Harry "Tom" Collins Jr. - the requester only knew what year he died - as he died tragically. So... I took this picture -


Harry J. Collins Jr. (1916 - 1946)

Buried nearby are his sister Bertha Collins Lake (1918-2003), his father Harry Jay Collins (1875 - 1956) and mother Rose Mae Collins (1889 - 1978) and unknown relatives Claude R. Collins (1907 - 1989) with Elizabeth M. Collins (1897 - 1988).

Harry Jr. died at the age of 29 - 10 years before his father - and more than 50 years before his sister. A short investigation led me to this newspaper story published August 3d, 1946.


Attempting to zoom by a driver in a 15-lap midget auto race at the Yellow Jacket Speedway, Harry (Tom) Collins of Norrlstown, Pa., was killed "instantly" after his midget racer locked wheels with another car and crashed into a fence. Collins, 29, was attempting to pass Carl Miller of Trenton, N. J.,on the eighth lap of the race, but he got too close. A wheel of Collins' car tangled with one of Miller's. Miller eventually won the race.

"It is hard to picture the city of Philadelphia as the center of racing. But, back in the late 1930s the city of Philadelphia was the hot spot in the world of midget racing. Race teams from across the country would tow to Philadelphia to race at the two race tracks located inside the city limits. The two tracks, Yellow Jacket Speedway on G Street in Frankford, or at the National Stadium, provided some of the best in midget racing action." The track closed in 1950.

Quoted from http://www.thevintageracer.com/articles/phila_midgets.htm

I asked my dad about this and he said, "Oh my yes!! I remember seeing a few races there with my father!" I then asked, "Why does 'G' street sound familiar?" and he replied, "'G' Street was on the way to the foundry - we commuted down that road for years. The race track was at Erie and G., where we drove over those nasty trolley tracks." Then I remembered. The huge Philadelphia Coca Cola Bottling plant is at that site today. I said, "The Coke plant?" and he replied, "That's the place."

So many connections - and so many more invisible ones.

Thanksgiving, Turkey and what's in the water?

As many of you know, I was "home alone" for Thanksgiving day. I wasn't feeling well and the rest of family was out of town - some as far as Florida and some in South Carolina. Unperturbed, as the date of the holiday is far less important to me than the actual celebrating it - I waited til they came home and suggested we go down the shore like we usually do, the weekend following Thanksgiving.

Well, that weekend didn't work out but I did see my younger brother play one of his annual "Old People's Home" gigs with the three guys he plays guitar with... and I saw my niece play some hoity toity tunes with her High School orchestra chamber music set - Haydn and Bach (ugh!) but they woke up the crowd with some Leroy Anderson tunes like Sleigh Bells and Syncopated Clock.

So it came to pass, that this weekend was "Thanksgiving Day" down the New Jersey shore with my folks. The weekend adventure actually started last Tuesday, when my mom called and said, "Can you buy a 15 pound turkey right after work today and start thawing it? My grocery store is all out of them!" Always willing to oblige, and knowing my folks live about 20 miles from the nearest other grocery store, I acquired a 17 pound "bird" and put in my refrigerator so it would be thawed by the weekend.

Wednesday I gave the bird a poke and it was still a solid chunk. Thursday morning it was slightly more yielding, and by Friday morning it was "well on its way to thawsville".

I have been very behind in my blog reading, and had only recently read Matty Thoughts where he tells us of his recent memory problems. He's a good sport and is able to poke fun at his own follies.

Matty's entry reminded me of my own father, who has on more than one occasion when leaving the houseboat to head for home, has forgotten his car keys, gone back down the dock and gotten them, forgotten his cellphone, gone back and got it, left the car keys on the counter on the boat when he picked up his cell phone and had to go back and get them, forgotten his medicine and gone back and gotten the pill bottles - and on one occasion, making no less that 7 trips up and down the dock! I sat there in the car rolling my eyes while waiting for him to get his act together and slowly started to seethe.

And then I encountered my other neighbor Martha's blog entry (both Matty and Martha live nearby) where she writes her horror tale about remembering concert tickets (or rather, not remembering them!) over at The Daily Grind I was sitting smug and thinking to myself, "Sheesh, I would never do that!"

Last Friday was one where the minutes felt like hours as I looked at the clock hundreds of times, eager to get home, packed, and on my way down to the seashore. It has been a long time since I've last been down there! Once home, I threw some clothes in a bag, grabbed my briefcase with a bunch of Christmas Cards I wanted to address, grabbed my camera, and checked my email when I found one from a dear friend asking me to keep a close family member in thoughts and prayer... and deep in thought, I got into the car and headed to the seashore - in the dark.

About 85 miles down the road and within 20 minutes of getting to the beach, I suddenly realized I had left the turkey in the refrigerator...



Martha, Matty, Dad... I hope you will forgive me for silently snickering at your memory woes. Maybe it's something in the local water?

P.s., I'm going to meet my mom tomorrow to give her the turkey - she plans to cook it and give my grandfather some when she and my dad meet him for lunch sometime this upcoming week.

P.s.s., My mom got an oven-stuffer chicken when I called her to tell her I screwed up and forgot the turkey. We all had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner.

A lost cousin is found...

A while back, I wrote about an accident in which one of my great-grandfathers was killed when the truck he was driving was hit by a railroad locomotive. I recently learned some things -

- one of those things is just where this accident occurred. If you look at the scene closely, you will notice that there are two tracks at this location.



I found a dusty old book which states, that the Camden And Burlington County Railroad (later the Pennsylvania Railroad's Pemberton Branch) was only double tracked between Smithville and Birmingham, New Jersey. This is the branch line that took hundreds of thousands of troops to Fort Dix during WWI and WWII.

I also found out where my great-grandfather was building a summer cottage. I've marked the street map I got from Google Maps below. If you click on it to "biggify" it, you will see two streets named Railroad Street and Indian Trail. These streets ran next to the tracks back when there were tracks there (they were removed twenty or thirty years ago).



On the satellite version of the map, I've drawn the length of railroad that was double tracked. The scene of my great-grandfather's accident is somewhere along that red line where a road crosses it.



This last picture was taken in 1961 and shows the remains of the Ewansville's train station. The second track has already been removed (around 1958)- and the trees and plant life is once again reclaiming what it can from man's impermanent works. Indian Trail Road is just to the left.



There are many visual "hints" of similarity between the first and last pictures.

And now for the what gave me goose-bumps. The main road in the area, Route 206 used to (and in my memory) go under a railroad bridge (removed in 1987) as it heads south from Ewansville to Vincentown - I've been down this road countless times from a tender age of weeks-old to the present - this is the route I take to go to the New Jersey shore. Could this have been the grade crossing? When was the bridge put in and the grade separated? I do not know - but the accident happened near here.

The second goose-bump causing result of my research into this accident was two-fold, I discovered the accident occurred November 9, 1924 around 8:30 AM. While trying to uncover this date with near desperate and quickly growing frustration, I encountered a family tree for the McClurken family on the MyHeritage website. And lo and behold, I discovered the date of death of my great-grandfather William Spence McClurken.

Having been stymied, mostly because every other male McClurken in my family tree name is "William" and every other female's name is "Margaret", I grew dizzy in my efforts to keep who is (or was) who straight. And there, on this MyHeritage website, was the many generations of Williams and Margarets all sorted out and neatly delineated. This glorious family tree is the work of the grand-daughter of my great-grandfather's brother.

I've never known any of my Grandmother's family beyond her brother and his children. I was beyond elated. And just to cap things off - she has a large picture of my great-grandmother's family - and once the rush of the holiday season is over - she will send me a reproduction of it!

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Today, I also heard one my college buddies had a heart attack over the weekend shoveling snow, and underwent triple-bypass surgery. My thoughts and prayers are with him and his family as well as with Rita of Soul Comfort's Corner's daughter-in-law, whose mother was recently diagnosed with late stage cancer.

"Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows."
- Helen Keller

Morning (and Evening) Affirmation

I've been a bit of a "Debbie Downer" of late - I blame it on the seasonal shortened daylight - and having to drive home in the dark (amongst a number of other things...)

But I placed one of my birthday presents in a location were it is sure to be seen each day - morning or night.

I have to say, it's bold, brash, toothy, and makes me smile despite my mood.

Thank you Tori!