Small Memories

The very first memory I have is going into the kitchen to get a bottle of milk from my mom, returning to the living room and flopping on the couch to watch cartoons...always the TV, right? And this would have been back to around 1956 or 1957!

I also remember a dog named Sweetie who wasn't sweet at all. Whenever I would run, she would chase and snap at me. She had to go when she attacked my knees and bit me so hard they bled.

I remember my grandparents would come and pick me up to take me berry picking with them. I loved it! Blackberry bushes weren't as much fun, if I remember correctly--the branches could scratch you. Grandma used to take me to the grocery store with her on Saturdays and there I could pick out a Little Golden Book to bring back to her house. All the books were shared with my cousins and I got over that minor annoyance by telling myself that I was the one that got to pick them out.

I was luckier than most kids nowadays because families tended to live within close proximity of each other. Until I was 10, my cousins were also close playmates. In this picture, my mom holds my brother Pete. My arm is around my cousin Robert and that's my cousin Anne to our right.



When I was 5, I went to kindergarten. Our bus driver was a Ketcham, a distant relation of mine through my grandmother's family. Everyone knew everyone else back then. I could go to the corner deli by myself as a very little girl and buy red licorice whips with money my parents gave me.

This is my kindergarten picture. My hair used to be a shade of auburn!



This handsome young man is my very first fiance, Glen. Everyone thought we were so adorable saying we were going to get married when we grew up. We would sit together on the bus and it wasn't always so great. Once Glen stepped into a pile of dog poo and it didn't all quite come off his shoe. He was pretty stinky and I think I would have sat somewhere else except that we were engaged and I felt obliged to stick by hi. Pee-yoo! We would visit each other for play dates and here we are, graduating from kindergarten!



I've often wondered what happened to Glen and if he is happily married now. Before second grade, my parents bought a house in Brentwood and we moved from Islip. I remember how my grandmother cried and my mom tried to reassure her we'd just be 10 minutes away. I think Grandma enjoyed the fact that we could walk back and forth to visit. This picture was taken while I was in first grade but I'm not sure if I was still going to Islip or if we'd already moved to Brentwood.


This picture was taken in third or fourth grade. My hair had already darkened to brown and I'm now totally brunette except for the gray.

My Grandparents

Here are my grandparents as I remember them. They'd moved from their big house to this little cottage. My grandma had to give up her grand piano and was so sad about it. None of her grown children had room for it either and so she had to sell it. They don't look thrilled, do they?

I remember my grandfather was dour and stern and so I rmeember he always looked grumpy. My grandma, though, usually smiled for pictures.

This is more the way I remember my grandma. She loved her garden! Grandma is a mixture of heritages. One side of her family has lived on Long Island almost from the beginning. She was related to the Smiths and Ketchams, two prominent Long Island famillies.

She is also descended from a French Huegenot, Ruel Rulon. His brothers smuggled him out of the country by hiding him in a wine barrel headed for "the colonies". He landed in Barnegat NJ and went on to found a family that eventually included my great-grandfather, a lighthouse keeper.


Here Grandma looks very serious again but she's in her kitchen. I thiink she loved this room best of all. You can't tell it from this picture though!


I don't know a lot about my grandfather except that:
He was from Arendal, Norway; was a fisherman and a carpenter (hmmm); was a Seventh Day Adventist and read from his Bible daily; was totally against guns; had two deaf sisters, was hearing impaired and suffered from diabetes; and raised sunflowers. He just loved them. I learned from my grandma's diary that he was an abusive man, beating on not only Grandma but his own children as well.

I'll write more stories as I remember them.

Then and Now

Today John Lennon would have been 67. Sixty seven!!!

This song is ageless. There's always been a war. There always will be. I remember when this song came out at the height of the Vietnam War. I was so sick of all the killing and seeing soldiers' bodies being carried off the screen. Maybe that's why coverage of the Iraq war seems so limited? We're not allowed to see bodies in bags or in coffins as they come off the planes anymore ... why? So we don't get as sick of it now as we did then?

If only...

Imagine....