Family Reunion (of a sort)

Since my last post, I'm confirmed to attend Lithuanian Days at Lakewood Park with my two cousins from Michigan, one from Harrisburg PA and my friend from bowling league who visited Lithuania several years ago looking for her family's Lithuanian village.  My Michigan cousin, Ken, is still trying to contact a few other family tree members to make the trip in August.  

I am hoping I hear the Lithuanian language at the August 2021 festival. It will remind me of my grandmother's conversations with her sisters when they came to visit her in the summer from Schuylkill and Columbia counties. It all sounded like gibberish back then, but there are great memories attached to those summer days when my brother and I would stay for a whole week without mom's supervision. 

My brother and I knew that meant all things good and plentiful, like fresh fruits and veggies from her garden, chicken with homemade mashed potatoes and gravy, staying up late, "camping out" overnight on the enclosed back porch and swimming in the above ground pool  everyday the weather permitted. From the looks of it, no one lost their breathe blowing up the pool, it was just a cage and a liner.  Wasn't I cute?

Kristine, 1957

Nanny, Charlie, Mom and me 1957
(neighbor's house in background)

For a few years, before we moved from Muhlenberg Township to Oakbrook section of Reading (also known as the 18th ward), we lived 3 houses away (called the Cherokee Ranch development) from Nanny and PopPop Goodman during preschool age, pre-1959. So it was great to spend a summer week between school years with them and see friends we grew up with. 

Russell & Edith Goodman (Nanny & PopPop)
in their tile-walled kitchen, circa 1959

I have been focused on my paternal side of my family tree, but I haven't forgotten about my maternal side. In my next post, I'll share some kid stories about the German/Irish grandparents. Hint, they ran a mom & pop grocery store in Pottsville PA.  Until then...

Hello Again & The Garden

After a long hiatus from blogging and genealogy in general, it seems time to get back to swinging among the family tree branches again. ⸙ ⸙ ⸙ ⸙ ⸙

During my absence, I pursued genealogy blogs and caught up on newsletters not read. I'm getting the itch to plan a research trip again, but the Lithuanian brick wall gives me pause as does wearing a mask in those facilities still requiring one to enter.  It would also be more fun traveling with a friend or meeting up with family for a common tree branch dive once again. Still on my to-do list, though.

This August there is an event called Lithuanian Days at Lakewood Park in eastern Pennsylvania. The link here Lithuanian Days will take you to Facebook event page with more info. It's just over an hour from my location and during my birthday weekend! Attending is on my list, perhaps with a friend and/or family from Michigan. Maybe there's a polka or two in my future. 🎶♬♫🎝

This past year I met a new friend at the bowling lanes. We are both in the summer Senior League and by happenstance began talking about family history. When I found we both had Lithuanian heritage and she already traveled to the motherland, I wanted to hear more. After a summer lunch served in my friend's cozy townhome, we spent an afternoon sharing memories and family histories. Maybe there's a polka in her future too. 

And I want to mention that my gardener, aka my husband Carl, is successfully tending to the plot located in the SE corner of our backyard. His green thumb gives us a chance to enjoy fresh vegetables all summer and to share the fruits of his labor with friends and neighbors. In abundance now are cucumbers and peppers. Soon we will have eggplant and tomatoes. Lastly, and new to the garden, is cantaloupe. One plant has taken over the garden, competing with the single cucumber plant for half the space! 

In fact, a current third picture would show almost no back fence from all the trails of vines from these two plants, much like a FAMILY TREE !

I'm personally looking forward to the tomato harvest to make as much pasta sauce as I can. Perhaps I should research recipes my Lithuanian "Nanny" Edith Jamitis Goodman made from her garden harvest in the 50s and 60s.  Like tomato jelly, cold tomato salad and pickles. Her entire pantry was full of many varieties of canned vegetables at summer's end each year. I can picture her garden and the pantry as clear as day.

Well, I've made myself hungry talking about the garden, so off to make lunch. If you got this far, thanks so much for hanging out with me. Talk to you soon!

Elementary School Grades 5 & 6

1963 - 64 school year was a favorite of mine. Subjects were more interesting and social interactions important. Going to the Reading Public Museum for history and civics was awesome, mostly because we were served a taste of the foods original to the country we we studying. 

Our neighborhood had many children and my friends were close enough to visit everyday without getting permission to go off the block. The previous summer's fun didn't wear off until the second report period. Then it was back to soaking up all that came at me. I feel this year I realized I wanted organization in my day. Everything was black or white, no gray areas. And still today I balk at the gray areas in all aspects of life. 

The school chorus became my extra curricular activity.  Mr. George Yorgey, my 5th grade teacher and only male teacher in the building, was also the chorus director. The highlight was the holiday music show at the school gym in December 1963. Being on stage with my mom and brother in the audience was thrilling. Chorus members were split by gender, traditionally to keep the similar voices together. Boys with higher pitched voices and girls with lower pitched voices (like me) were in the center still next to our gender group. Mr. Yorgey was premature bald and we tried not to giggle when we saw the colored stage lights above us blinking on and off his head. Doesn't take much to amuse a 10 year old.

Report card cover

☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺

My 6th and final school year at Thomas H. Ford Grade School 1964-65 seems like eons. My first thought then was dancing to the top 40 on my transistor radio at WRAW 1340-AM. Miss Eshmont, as I recall, was the most stern teacher I had. Definitely different in character and teaching than the others. She presented herself as a younger Granny from the Beverly Hill Billies show on TV. That's how I remember her.

May Day Celebration in the spring of 1965 was the highlight of this grade. It's a European festival of spring celebrated by our ancestors including singing about the new growth of the spring season and dancing around a large pole while weaving long ribbon streamers from the top to the bottom. These ribbons were held by the dancers as they lifted them over a dancer and then under the next. Until now, that's what I always thought it was.  I found this after Googling the subject:

"May 1 marks the Celtic festival of Beltane, also referred to as May Day, which many neopagans and Wiccans around the world observe to celebrate the onset of summer. Beltane may refer to the “fires of Bel,” in honor of the Celtic sun god, Belenus. Though the origin of the practice of wrapping a tall pole in ribbon and woven tree branches is difficult to pin to a specific time and place, historians agree that the Maypole began as a part of the Pagan May Day festival known as Beltane in the UK and Ireland and Walpurgis in Germanic European countries."

The 6th grade students voted for the May Day Court. It may have been by a show of hands, though I could stand corrected. I was hoping to be selected and at the same time preparing for disappointment. I made the cut, phew!  

Then I found out I had to wear a real pastel dressy-dress! Ugh. My tomboy tendencies made this process unpleasant for everyone involved. I was in tears when I first put on the blue chiffon dress with shoulder streamers and a big gaudy fake rhinestone pin on my chest. Fake rhinestone, that's pretty bad, right?  If I had to wear this dress, I made sure that pin was not part of it! Including the pin, the only other thing missing in pictures below is the May Pole. Darn.

The May Queen was Margo, sitting front and center in a white dress pretty as a picture, and my best friend Margie was runner-up on her left in a pink dress. There were several pink dresses worn (parents did not coordinate) so it's easy to spot me in blue.

Oh yeah, my grades. Apparently my 'self control' was in question early on, as well as reading independently and my singing voice. I figure it's just the summer fun taking a while to wear off. 

Getting out of "grade school" was exciting and scary.  I had to find a way to get to Southwest Jr High School in town because the school district did not provide transportation that I can recall. Public transportation, before they called it BARTA, was ten cents one way. 

And last but not least.... my report card cover.  I have NO WORDS for this piece of art! 👀

Elementary Grade 4

School year 1962-63

I'd like to say I remember Mrs. Kamarousky, but I do not. I do remember German class. Not in a good way. To me, the language always sounded harsh. Perhaps the teacher presented it that way. We sang songs to learn counting and grammar rules. I skated through and glad it ended. But how dare I talk; my oral skills in English and Reading needed some improvement, too.

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 There is really nothing to see here. My grades have improved and more consistent. It was the year of book bags carried like an attache with buckle closures, saddle shoes, Crayola No. 8 crayon pack, vaccines, dental hygienist visits to the classroom, civil defense practice, analog clocks, and the Weekly Reader.

The finger-painted report cover this year cannot be commended either. My love for creativity in all things art was not represented well as I critique it 58 years later. However, mom didn't get a chance to write my name on the black border, so that's a win!

Elementary Grade 3

Well, there are two elephants in the room this year! My singing career is at an all-time low and those childhood diseases are back.

Which disease I had this year, I do not know for sure. Had to be Measles, German Measles, Mumps or Chicken Pox. This was still the days of doctor home visits and Dr. Gilmore showed up with his little black bag full of unknowns every time.  And no doubt kids were confused by these names.  I didn't live in Germany nor did I have a pet chicken. The adults weren't any help explaining it either. Had the internet been invented, this would all be moot.

I don't profess to be a great singer, then or now.  But I could belt out a song I knew in full voice on the playground or in the tub.  I'm pretty sure I learned many pop songs listening to WRAW 1340 AM when I was sick in bed and during summer vacation, which brings to mind "VA-CA-TION", the 1962 summer song by Connie Francis.  WRAW published the TOP 40 song list every week as a one-page bulletin, available at record department in stores like Two Guys, Nichols, W T Grants, and Woolworth's Five & Dime to name a few.  The bonus for me was the printed lyrics of a popular song on the back of that bulletin. Imagine if we could sing pop songs in music class. Those Cs would be history...well, either way I guess they still are.

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Miss Dawn Schaeffer was a short-haired blonde of average height with a nice smile. She took her vocation seriously and was fair to both boys and girls in the classroom. At the end of the school year, extra supplies of pencils, crayons, construction paper, erasers and glue were the incentive to school kids picked to help the teacher clean up the classroom once school was no longer in session. It's one of my favorite memories of grade school. Going to school in shorts and sneakers to help the teacher put chairs on desks, clean blackboards and remove everything from the cork boards didn't feel like work, it felt special and I was lucky to be picked twice.

Mom insisted on rewriting my name on these works of art!