Prompt 4: Favorite Season(s)

I would have to name spring and fall as my favorite seasons. They are both fairly mild and in my opinion the most colorful seasons. During the spring I mark the passage of time as the buds develop on the trees and then the blossoms begin to open. In the fall there is also a lot of color change. The leaves of the oak and maple trees change to such wonderful colors. It is the main reason that I have fond memories of my wedding even though the marriage ended in divorce. It was October and the trees were at their peak color in Ohio. My cousin and I carried bouquets of fall-color flowers. I also loved the marquee at the hotel where the wedding dinner was held. It was rather humorous not only in its wording, but also in the fact that my now ex-husband hated all music produced after 1950!

Prompt 3: Your Physical Self

I have battled my weight for most of my life. Right now I have maintained this approximate weight for 14 years. I would describe myself as “dumpy”. The medical establishment may even call me morbidly obese based on my Body Mass Index.

I am not a “girlie” girl. I am just me. I prefer jeans and t-shirts to any other clothes. I think the last time I wore a dress was at my nephew’s wedding in 2000. I have tried wearing make-up at various times, but it itches. I wear lipstick when I leave the house now. That is I wear lipstick, if I remember to put it on.

I know most people are uncomfortable with their bodies, but I keep thinking that I deserve to be uncomfortable more than most. I started having pain in my legs when I was 8, started developing breasts at the same age, have had surgery 16 times so far, suffer from chronic pain, was diagnosed with hydrocephalus at 47 and have Psoriatic Arthritis. I try to do yoga to keep my body moving, but I would rather bird watch.

The Book of Me, Written By Me Prompt 15: Snow

I made a conscience decision to move away from snow in 1978. My then husband and I moved from Ohio to Georgia. I always joke that I moved here to get people to understand the spelling of my first name more easily since the Atlanta transit system name is the same as mine.

I was a summer baby so I probably did not see snow until the age of 5 months. I may have even noticed it, but just don’t have any memory of it that first year. I probably remember the next winter. I do remember a dark blue quilted snow suit, but my family could not afford boots for me so I remember my parents putting old bread bags over my shoes and then placing rubber bands around my ankles. I wasn’t doing a lot of walking so it didn’t make any difference. I do remember making a snowman with my brother and 2 sisters. Winters did not become clear in my memory until about the age of 5. By then we lived next door to my paternal grandmother and I rated a pair of snow boots. Most of our neighbors had coal furnaces so the snow did not remain white for long, but was quickly speckled black with soot. I thought for years that snow had an odor, but I think it may have been the smell of burning coal.

I vaguely remember someone riding a sleigh through town, but it was a very rare sight. What we did see and we members of the memory pages on Facebook discuss often was sled riding. I don’t think any of the streets were officially closed off for sledding, but I think people realized they would be very unpopular if they ruined our sledding hills by driving on them. There were injuries every year, but it was a given that some would suffer for our fun.

When I grew up I learned the work that Ohio winter brought. I was very happy to escape to Georgia. Now I get to see videos of the excitement of my grandchildren when we have rare snow or ice in Georgia. I don’t think they will suffer for not having the same winters I did as a child.

Prompt 11: Military

I did not have any personal experience with the military so I decided to interview my cousin Arlene d’Arbonne. Arlene was born at Ft. Benning, GA while her father was in the Army. We were rather close growing up.  She is about 18 months younger than me. Arlene was in Reserve Officer Training Corps while she was a student at Bowling Green University in Ohio. After graduating in 1978, Arlene was commissioned as a 2^nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army. She not only served, she became an Army wife.

Arlene and her husband Greg now live in New Hampshire. Greg is retired from the Army, but recently donned his dress uniform again when their daughter Jess was married.  Jess was born at Ft. Bragg and grew up with her dad in the Army, so her desire for him to be in uniform for her big day is understandable. When I think about my cousin’s family there is always a link to the Army even though neither of Arlene and Greg’s children Jess and Paul are in the Army.

We spent part of a morning talking about her Army experience. http://youtu.be/7cVX089gB_A

Prompt 2: Your Birth

I was born on Sunday, August 15, 1954 at City Hospital, East Liverpool, Ohio. My mother’s obstetrician was Dr. Gladys McGarry. My mother always told me that her labor with me was very easy and very quick. Afterwards she requested something to eat, preferably a steak!

I was born with a nearly full head of black hair that I never lost. That hair was a trait that ran in the family. When my father brought my siblings to visit, which in those days meant standing on the sidewalk while my mother held me up to the window, my brother Ralph turn his back in anger because I was not the brother he had been promised.

I was the youngest of four children. At the time of my birth my 2 webbed toes on my left foot and my “outtie” belly button were only things that were remarkable about me.  That is until I came home from the first day of kindergarten and announced that I was a genius which is something that my sister Zoe would never let me live down.

A birth announcement sent to my mother's Aunt Bea

Prompt 1: Who Are You?

"The Book of Me, Written By You" is a GeneaBloggers project created by Julie Goucher of the Anglers Rest blog. The concept: a series of blogging and writing prompts that help family historians capture their own memories and write about themselves.

• Middle-aged woman
• Mother
• Sister
• Daughter
• Niece
• Cousin
• Grandmother
• Caregiver
• Systems Analyst
• Student
• Wife (ex-)
• Family memory recorder
• #1 troubleshooter of computer problems (retired)
• Friend
• Dog lover
• Bird watcher
• Me

Oh yeah, a klutz!!

Prompt 12: The Year You Were Born

This week’s prompt is The year you were born
What happened:
    •    Historical
    •    Films
    •    Music
    •    Books
    •    Television

****If the events of 1954 that I copies are showing as white lines, I will fix them Monday morning. I have not used this blog for several months and I don't know why it is so wonky!

Television always played a big part in my life. My mother admitted she would use it to babysit me when there was a working television in the house. Much of the historical events of 1954 seemed to revolve around television which was still in its younger years. It was difficult to choose which events to list here, so I tried to stay with the ones that dealt with television, popular entertainment and the development of computers which became very important in my life.

Jan 1 – KSLA TV channel 12 in Shreveport, LA (CBS) begins broadcasting

Jan 1 – Rose & Cotton Bowl are 1^st sport colorcasts

Jan 4 – Elvis Presley records a 10 minute demo in Nashville

Jan 7– Georgetown – IBM experiment the first public demonstration of machine translation system is held in New York at the head office of IBM

Jan 12 -Queen Elizabeth II opens NZ parliament

Jan 17 -Jacques Cousteau’s first network telecast airs on”Omnibus” (CBS)

Jan 26 - groundbreaking begins on Disneyland

Feb 1 – first TV soap opera ”Secret Storm” premieres

Feb 2 – Bevo Francis from Wellsville, Ohio (my hometown), Rio Grande College, scores 113 points in basketball game

Feb 14 – Sen. John Kennedy appears on “Meet the Press”

Mar 1 - US explodes 15 megaton hydrogen bomb a Bikini atoll

Mar 15 – “CBS Morning Show” premieres with Walter Cronkite and Jack Paar

Apr 1 – first Army helicopter Battalion forms, Ft. Bragg, NC

Apr 1 - earthquake/tsunami ravage Aleutians, 200 killed

Apr 1 - US Air Force Academy forms

Apr 6 – TV dinner was first put on sale by Swanson & Sons

Apr 23 – Hammerin’ Hank Aaron hits first of his 755 homers

May 24 – IBM announces vacuum to “electronic” brain that could perform 10 million operations an hour Jun 12 – Bill Haley’s “Rock Around The Clock”, is originally released

Jun 14 – Pres. Eisenhower signs order adding words “under God” to the pledge (which explains why I always knew the pledge of allegiance with those two words)

Jun 19 – Tasmanian Devil debuts in “Devil May Hare” by Warner Bros.

Jul 12 - Pres. Eisenhower put forth a plan for an interstate highway system (where would we be without them?)

Jul 30 – Elvis Presley joins Memphis Federation of Musicians Local 71

Aug 15 – WCHS TV channel 8 in Charleston-Huntington, West Virginia (ABC) begins

Aug 15 – I was born at City Hospital, East Liverpool, Ohio

Aug 31 – Census Bureau forms

Sep 20 – first FORTRAN computer program is run

Sep 27 – Steve Allen’s “Tonight Show” premieres

Oct 3 – “Father Knows Best” premieres

Oct 18 – Texas instruments Inc. announces the first transistor radio

Oct 22 – West Germany joins North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Oct 23 – Britain, England, France & USSR agreed to end occupation of Germany

Oct 26 - Walt Disney’s first television program, “Disneyland” premieres on ABC

Nov 7 – US spy plane shot down north of Japan

Nov 22 - Humane Society forms

Dec 10 – Albert Schweitzer receives Nobel Peace Prize (28 years later I become a mother)

Dec 23 - first human kidney transplant is performed by Dr. Joseph E Murray at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts

Dec 26 - “The Shadow” airs for the last time on radio

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books were published. The second James Bond novel “Live and Let Die” was also published. The book was very different from the movie. And the most important to me the book “Horton Hears A Who” by Dr. Seuss was published. It was an excellent year for literature.

The films of this year were also very memorable. Two of Alfred Hitchcock’s best-known movies were released “Rear Window” and “Dial M For Murder”. Dial M was originally filmed in 3-D but because Hitchcock was a very meticulous director the movie ran past its deadline. 3-D was passé by the time the movie was ready to be released, so it was released in normal format. The other well-known movies of that year include “Seven Samurai”, “On The Waterfront”, “White Christmas”, “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea” and “The Creature From The Black Lagoon”.

The most important television show to me was “Capt. Kangaroo” but it didn’t start until 1955. I can remember being in my jumper chair watching TV for hours at a time. The drooling one in the picture below is me.