It's Saturday Night -
time for more Genealogy Fun!
Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible music here) is to:
1) Have you written your memoirs yet? If so, please share with us one story from your childhood. If not, then start your memoirs! The story could be a memory of your family life, your schoolwork, your neighborhood, etc. It doesn't have to be a certain length - just something you recall.
2) Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a post on Facebook. Be sure to leave a link to your work as a Comment to this post..Here's mine:
First Trip
on a Plane
I took my
first trip on an airplane with my grandmother (Nana) in the summer of 1969. We
went down to southern California, primarily to attend a wedding of Nana’s
great-niece, Christine. We stayed three weeks with Nana’s sister, Loretta, in
Pomona. We then were driven down to San Diego to stay a week with Nana’s oldest
daughter, Lorene.
We flew from San Francisco International Airport, perhaps on Western Airlines or maybe Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA). I don't remember. We landed in Ontario, where we disembarked using stairs. Nana took a pair of grandchildren each year to southern California and this was the third time, but for some reason my cousin, Dick, didn't come with us. This was the last trip she took with grandchildren. I think that either she or her sister were too old to travel.
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| Me with my Nana at the San Francisco Airport |
My mother
said southern California would be very warm, so my suitcase was full of
t-shirts and shorts, along with a bathing suit. Well, I found out they have the
same morning fog we have up here that doesn’t burn off until the afternoon. Whenever
we went somewhere, I was freezing until the sun came out.
I visited
with second cousins, too. These were the children of my dad’s first cousins. We
went to Hollywood, Mission San Juan Capistrano, Long Beach, and Disneyland. In
San Diego, my aunt took us to Old Town, Mission San Diego, and Sea World.
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| Nana and me with some of my 2nd cousins |
It was fun
hanging out with Nana’s sister. Nana and Aunt Loretta would tell stories about their
childhood that had me laughing so hard. I truly wished I had been interested in
genealogy and had the foresight to record or at least write down these stories.
I do not remember a single one—only that they were very mischievous girls.
Aunt Lorene
had a Volkswagen Beetle and drove us all around San Diego. One time, she was
pulled over by a policeman. I don’t remember what she did wrong, but she talked
him out of giving her a ticket—because she worked at the DMV. Another time, we
ate at a Chinese restaurant and she spoke a few words of Japanese to our waiter
and he answered back! She had spent a year working in Japan in the 1950s.
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| Me with my aunt, Lorene at Sea World |
It was a
great trip but there were times I was lonely, and I missed my friend, Beth. To
make up for that, we wrote letters daily and included puzzles we made up. I
sure wish I had those letters still.
That sounds like a great trip with your grandmother! How lucky to have met all those cousins, too.
ReplyDeleteI was very fortunate. It was a great trip.
DeleteWhat a fun trip and it was back before SoCal got all crazy. My husband grew up in the LA area in the 1950s and 1960s and often talks about how great it was back then.
ReplyDeleteWell, since I was just a passenger (back seat one at that), I have no idea about the traffic and such. But it sure was a fun trip. It was the time when Disneyland had tickets--remember E tickets?
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