An archive of posts by Lillian about cooking, quilting, knitting, and memories of family and the past. Open her cupboard and discover the treasures she stored there.
I have four children and when I turned 70, I sorted all of their childhood photos, records and ephemera into bins and binders so it would be easy for each child to have his/her own stuff when I was ready to part with it. Now, 12 years later, in my 80s, I thought it might be nice to have the material on a blog where the family, even great-grandchildren, could see it. Also, most of the notes I made when they were children involved more than one kid and I needed copies for all of them. So, I started the monumental task of sorting, scanning and posting on a private blog.
I’ve completed the first baby year for each child ….
…and now have started on the preschool and grade school years.
This is my goal for this year – to complete posting the pictures, records and keepsakes for each child through college. It’s time-consuming but also very pleasant to look back and live those days over again in my mind.
Throughout the years while I was raising my four kids (beginning in 1954), I kept a journal where I periodically made notes about holidays, school, vacations, etc. As an occasion arises where I think one of my journal entries would be pertinent, I’m going to post it just as I wrote or typed it back in the day (except for an explanatory note or correction of a typo).
The children will be known here by the nicknames their grandfather used when they were toddlers: The oldest daughter will be Newsie (because she was as good as a newspaper for finding out the latest happenings), the oldest son is Bar (because he called Grandpa’s truck Bar and Grandpa called him Bar), the youngest son is Jackson, and the youngest daughter is Shanty (as in Shanty-Boat).
Summertime and the living is pretty hectic most of the time. The days are filled with sounds of kids out playing – riding squeaky bicycles, fighting over possession of the sand pile, hitting baseballs off the garage roof, playing “mudders and fadders”, slamming screen doors, protesting the boys’ teasing.
Jackson and the water hose
The days are filled with the sights of wet bathing suits, soggy footmarks on the floor, barefooted and bare-chested boys, tan and healthy looking faces, dust two inches thick in the backyard and grass two inches long in the front, blooming petunias and marigolds, a veritable forest in the back hollow with lush trees, squirrels, birds, chipmunks and a family of raccoons.
The days are filled with the smells of summer – the harsh chlorine smell of a carful of wet kids coming home from the pool, the smoky fragrance of wieners and hamburgers on the grill, the smell that permeates the neighborhood when someone bakes a cake, the fresh fragrance in the air after the grass has been mown.
Lillian and Penny, the dog
Summer is filled with knothole games and the undefeated Sweeneys in their green and white uniforms, the much defeated Reds whose progress is followed avidly on TV and transistor, the harness horses at the night races and soon at the fairs, the neighborhood pools swarming with kids, the parks filled with families and picnic baskets, the roads overflowing with people and paraphernalia.
A knothole game at Oakley Park
Life is hectic, true, and fun and as the song says, “lazy, hazy and crazy”! L – July 11, 1964
Throughout the years while I was raising my four kids (beginning in 1954), I kept a journal where I periodically made notes about holidays, school, vacations, etc. As an occasion arises where I think one of my journal entries would be pertinent, I’m going to post it just as I wrote or typed it back in the day (except for an explanatory note or correction of a typo).
The children will be known here by the nicknames their grandfather used when they were toddlers: The oldest daughter will be Newsie (because she was as good as a newspaper for finding out the latest happenings), the oldest son is Bar (because he called Grandpa’s truck Bar and Grandpa called him Bar), the youngest son is Jackson, and the youngest daughter is Shanty (as in Shanty-Boat).
Bar and NewsieJackson
“Jackson saw a plump robin on the front lawn today and with the confidence of childhood announced: ‘There’s a robin. It’s spring!’ And I’ll have to agree with him that the miracle of spring has come to Maple Drive. The sky is a pale clear blue, serving well as the background for tender green buds and leaflets appearing on so many of the trees. Each lawn is the fresh green of spring and the gorgeous color compensates for the bare patches of earth. Daffodils, dandelions and violets are blooming, and the tulips are budding. The leaves of the iris are straight and sure and reassuring. The temperature is 80 degrees this afternoon and the kids are wearing shorts and crop-tops, and Bar and his friend Danny are tossing a baseball. Our dog Penny ran with great glee over newly-seeded lawns and through flower beds, and dug a foot-deep hole in the dusty patch beside the back porch. Newsie and her friend Rosanne came in with nosegays of violets, dandelions and large leaves, picked in the hollow and carefully placed in a yellow plastic cup on the refrigerator.”
Precious memories of a spring almost 50 years ago.
Throughout the years while I was raising my four kids (beginning in 1954), I kept a journal where I periodically made notes about holidays, school, vacations, etc. As an occasion arises where I think one of my journal entries would be pertinent, I’m going to post it just as I wrote or typed it back in the day (except for an explanatory note or correction of a typo).
In 1952, when my husband and I returned home from his brief stint in the Navy, my parents offered to let us rent the upstairs portion of their two-family house at the rate of $12/month (cheap, even in 1952). By 1961, I had 3 children who were 6, 4 and 10 months – we had outgrown the apartment and were looking for an affordable house that was big enough to accommodate our growing family. While the oldest girl was in school, I had been on numerous outings with the real estate agent, grasping the four-year-old by one hand and carrying a very heavy baby in a snowsuit on one hip. Nothing we had seen was right for us. Then, one February Saturday morning, an ad in the paper caught my eye – and we were on our way to our home on Maple Drive in the Oakley suburb of Cincinnati.
The picture and the following description are from the 1961 real estate flyer. (Click on picture to enlarge.)
“If all goes well with the building and loan, I think we have finally started to buy our own home. On a rainy Saturday morning, I looked through the ‘House for Sale’ ads quickly and suddenly ‘Oakley – $11,250’ leaped at me from the page. I could hardly wait to call the real estate office, and was even more excited when I heard it described. It was in a driving rainstorm that Frank, the three kids and I turned onto Maple Drive. At once, I felt it was too good to be true – such a pretty, quiet, dead-end street, with well-kept homes. Then we saw the number 4108. ‘Oh, it’s a shingle!’ Frank said disgustedly, but then we noticed the shingle was only a small amount of trim on the gable and the rest was gleaming white frame. There was a nice lawn in front and some short pine-like bushes close to the house. Cement steps led up to a large front porch and on the small second-floor windows were green and white aluminum awnings. A driveway at the side led to a two-car garage and in back was a small fenced yard, with more property going over the hill.
L. – February 26, 1961″
My parents had been so good to us and I hated to leave, but we needed more room and to have a house with a nice yard for the kids was just a dream come true. We added another baby girl in 1970 and lived there for 21 years.
Throughout the years while I was raising my four kids (beginning in 1954), I kept a journal where I periodically made notes about holidays, school, vacations, etc. As an occasion arises where I think one of my journal entries would be pertinent, I’m going to post it just as I wrote or typed it back in the day (except for an explanatory note or correction of a typo).
The children will be known here by the nicknames their grandfather used when they were toddlers: The oldest daughter will be Newsie (because she was as good as a newspaper for finding out the latest happenings), the oldest son is Bar (because he called Grandpa’s truck Bar and Grandpa called him Bar), the youngest son is Jackson, and the youngest daughter is Shanty (as in Shanty-Boat).
In January, 1964, we were a family of five: mother, father, 9-year-old daughter Newsie, 7-year-old son Bar, and 3-year-old son Jackson. We lived in a 1922 two-story home in the Oakley suburb of Cincinnati with a nice backyard for the kids to play in. Jackson was prone to the croup and didn’t get to go out and play in the big snow that greeted us on the first day of January, 1964.
Maple Drive greeted 1964 wearing a thick blanket of white as seven inches of snow covered Cincinnati early on New Year’s Day. The street is rutted deeply with tread marks and the cars are all wearing top-pieces of snow which occasionally tilt rakishly on the side as the sun grows warmer. Most of the walks are neatly shoveled and salted so the kids troop gleefully across lawns and up the middle of the roads. Our kids got an extra two days of vacation due to the snow and showed their appreciation by wallowing in it all day. As a surprise for Jackson and me, Newsie and Bar fashioned a plump snowman with all the trimmings—limb arms, rock eyes and buttons, plaid scarf and Bar’s green leather cap. Jackson can look through the dining room window and see friend snowman staring back at him from the yard, which is pocked with footmarks of various sizes.”
L – January 2, 1964
Jackson had six more years to be the baby before another daughter came along and I love to read in my notes where the two older children went out of their way to surprise and please their little brother. Happy memories of almost 50 years ago.
In 1989 my oldest daughter made up a little booklet for family members with her memories of Christmas in the 1960s. Since then, I get it out every year and read it – and cry. It’s a very accurate depiction of our family’s Christmas and this year she put it on her blog in PDF form. For those who grew up in the 1960s or who raised children in that era, it might be a fun read.
Thanksgiving is so much about family traditions – like baking pies – two of the pie tins go back to the mid-1950s…
….getting out the 1952 wedding china….
…my oldest daughter embroidered the tablecloth in the 1960s…
….having the youngest kids check out the turkey.
This tradition began in the mid-1950s with my two pre-school children posing for the movie camera, gently poking the turkey with large forks to see if it was done. It continued with another son and daughter in the 1960s and 1970s and now the youngest grandchildren are somewhat bewildered looking at the turkey. Grandson is happily contemplating turkey breast, cranberry sauce and apple pie. Granddaughter doesn’t eat anything.
On July 13, 2012, my two daughters surprised me with a big box of wrapped gifts, informing me it was exactly 80 days until my 80th birthday and I would be able to unwrap one gift a day. The gift items would commemorate a year in my life in some way. This is what I received this week. 1968 – A double CD set of favorite songs from 1960s.
1969 – My oldest daughter put together a booklet of clippings from her 1969 scrapbook. There was quite a bit about Neil Armstrong and the moon landing.
1970 – This is something of a tongue-in-cheek gift – a David Cassidy/Partridge Family trading card. Although I was never much of a fan, my daughter who was born in 1970 is and was delighted to find this gift for me. The lyrics to the song are on the back of the card.
1971 – A Gordon Lightfoot songbook. This is perfect for me since Gordon Lightfoot is my all-time favorite singer.
1972 – A 1972 edition of Sport Story with Pete Rose on the cover. No one lived in Cincinnati in this era who didn’t know Cincinnati Reds star Pete Rose.
1973 – The book Secretariat. Secretariat was the Triple Crown Winner in 1973.
1974 – My youngest daughter knitted a pair of mittens in the classic colors of the 1970s from a vintage pattern.
All of my posts on this wonderful celebration are listed in Family – My 80th Birthday in my index on the right hand side of the page.
On July 13, 2012, my two daughters surprised me with a big box of wrapped gifts, informing me it was exactly 80 days until my 80th birthday and I would be able to unwrap one gift a day. The gift items would commemorate a year in my life in some way. This is what I received this week.
1954 – My oldest daughter embroidered dish towels from 1954 patterns. The Dutch Boy is from TheWorkbasket – April, 1954 (the same month and year she was born) and the girl with the umbrella is from a 1954 coloring book.
1955 – A 1-½ inch diameter tin labeled School Buildings 1955 and containing an actual film strip showing the latest improvements in school buildings in that year. 1956 – A TV Guide for February 4-10, 1956. A note is attached, “You were probably watching some of these shows waiting for your first son to arrive.” My oldest son was born on March 8, 1956, so I was spending a lot of time watching Gary Moore, Perry Como, Annie Oakley (a favorite of my toddler daughter), and Cincinnati’s local star, Ruth Lyons.
1957 – A Betty Furness Westinghouse Roast Meat Thermometer and Skewer. Betty Furness was best known in the early days of television for opening Westinghouse refrigerators and talking about all of their wonderful features.
1958 – A 1958 copy of Woman’s Day Cook Book of Favorite Recipes. I have a large cookbook collection but have never seen this one. I was interested to find a lot of canning and bake-from-scratch recipes.
1959 – A metal tin that had held a typewriter ribbon. It has an interesting graphic on the top of the tin and Feb 59 on the back. After all of the years I spent typing, I love anything dealing with typewriters, especially the vintage items.
1960 – A picture of President and First Lady Kennedy leaving the hospital with John Kennedy, Jr. The note attached to this picture says, “1960 – The year two important John-Johns were born“. This refers to my youngest son, John, who was born March 11, 1960. When he was a toddler, we did refer to him as John-John now and then.
As I was leaving the hospital with my baby John, I looked nothing like Jackie in her perfect suit, hat, gloves and pumps.
All of my posts on this wonderful celebration are listed in Family – My 80th Birthday in my index on the right hand side of the page.
Throughout the years while I was raising my four kids (beginning in 1954), I kept a journal where I periodically made notes about holidays, school, vacations, etc. As an occasion arises where I think one of my journal entries would be pertinent, I’m going to post it just as I wrote or typed it back in the day (except for an explanatory note or correction of a typo).
The children will be known here by the nicknames their grandfather used when they were toddlers: The oldest daughter will be Newsie (because she was as good as a newspaper for finding out the latest happenings), the oldest son is Bar (because he called Grandpa’s truck Bar and Grandpa called him Bar), the youngest son is Jackson, and the youngest daughter is Shanty (as in Shanty-Boat).
VISITS TO SANTA CLAUS
Soon after Thanksgiving, we got on a bus to downtown Cincinnati and the big Shillito’s department store to visit Santa Claus. This one was taken of Newsy in 1956. Newsy took one look at it and told everyone, “It is the most amazing picture I ever saw.”
Newsy, 2 years of age – 1956
Bar was shy around strangers and refused to have his picture taken with Santa. Instead we have a snapshot of him where he was happiest – straddling his mama’s hip.
Bar, 2 years of age, 1958
By the time Jackson was visiting Santa, we found him in a mall and the pictures were in color.
Jackson, 2 years of age, 1962
“Newsy and I took Shanty to town on 12/20 to see the decorations and to visit Santa Claus. She ate the two little candy canes almost immediately and pestered me to carry her the entire way through town. 12/20/72”
And now the great-grandchildren are having pictures taken with Santa.
LILLIAN'S CUPBOARD 