Pittsfield, MA

Pittsfield, MA
  One thing I have learned to never under-estimate is the power of old family photos.  The emotional impact, and story-telling power, of a single photo is always incredible to me, even when the photos are of another person's family. So imagine how hard it was for me to breathe when...
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1891 Views
2 Comments

Birth and Early Childhood (0 - 12 years)

I was born on March 28, 1950 at 9:30 A.M.. at the City Hospital in Manhattan, New York. Better known as "Welfare Island". My mother, Alta Virginia, aka Bunny, lived at 311 West 94th Street in New York City. Her maiden name was Beach. Mom was 24 years old at the...
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1151 Views
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Home

  Home   The memory comforts me Home, a house set in a garden, abounding in seasonal colors and fragrances A mixture of old and new- wood, glass and trim The back yard-tall pines Fresh fallen pine needles Its essence, the purring of the attic fan On  a hot summer night...
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1385 Views
1 Comment

Miss Ruth

  Miss Ruth Hide Details FROM: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. TO: Tom Tirrell Message starred Thursday, January 31, 2013 2:20 PM Miss Ruth Price Sometime about 1950 when I was ten years old, a unique person came into my life. Like many of the good things that happened to me, this came about because...
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  4 Comments
1598 Views
4 Comments

You Can Be My Kid Any Time ...

               In my spare time I do some volunteer work as a secretary for a fairly large church organization.  There is always someone to do for, as there was one day recently.             I arrived late, and I found a little girl quietly minding her...
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892 Views
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Fur

  FUR           My wife and I had wanted a little piece of farm land for years, and we ended up buying a 14 acre piece which was crowned with the biggest mistake of our marriage: a small, used double-wide mobile home.           Now, don't take offense, ye salespersons of "manufactured...
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  2 Comments
2549 Views
2 Comments

A Special Pet Memory

A Special Pet Memory
I have a special memory of my first pet when I was 10 years old.  Her name was Gigi.  I have no idea how I came up with that name.  Gigi was part poodle and who knows what else, maybe terrier.  She was small and black with slightly curly hair and...
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1357 Views
3 Comments

Ted's Clunkers and the Rumble Seat

Ted's Clunkers and the Rumble Seat
Ruth reminices about how her oldest brother, Ted, would get old clunkers with a rumble seat to fix up, and when they were in the backyard on Seventh East and later on Bryan Avenue in Salt Lake City how they would "stargaze" at night (and in the summer daytimes she and...
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1435 Views
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My Teenage Brothers' Streetcar Activities

Ruth tells of activities of her brothers Ted and Hank who were in their teens when she was in her early childhood, and how she worried about their involvement with the streetcars that ran in front of their home on Seventh East in Salt Lake City, Utah.
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1210 Views
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"Fishing" at Nibley Park

"Fishing" at Nibley Park
Ruth remembers how she and her older brother, Joseph, would walk to Nibley Park, Salt Lake City Utah and fish in the lake at the golf course when she was about eight years old.  Joseph was three years older.  
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1781 Views
1 Comment

Board games, favourite books and outdoor activities

Jill talks about playing board games as a child, her favourite books and outdoor activities and her friend, Maria.      
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2047 Views
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Childhood Games

Jill talks about her carefree childhood growing up in Clare South Australia.  She tells us how she played dolls and dress up with her friends and describes a variety of other childhood games.
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1561 Views
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My Childhood Home

I have so many fond memories of my childhood home at 70 Rockland St, Natick, Massachusetts.  Surrounded by family farms, the little home was the first for my Mom and Dad to own. As their family grew to 10 kids Dad had to keep adding space. We were all packed into...
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1243 Views
1 Comment

The Clubhouse

The Clubhouse
Boys will be boys. Oh yea. At the Cormier home the three oldest boys, Jimmy, Johnny and me, were fit to be tied. We knew Mom was too busy tending to the 7 other kids to be paying very close attention to us boys and Dad was always at work. What...
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  1798 Views
  4 Comments
1798 Views
4 Comments

Early Childhood Memories on 7th East

 It cut her head wide open and she went screaming to her house. When I saw all that blood, I ran into my house to hide

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1409 Views
1 Comment

Earliest Childhood Memories

Earliest Childhood Memories
  The brain and memories are a funny thing.  I don’t have a good memory.  I’m also horrible with dates, and names.  Yet, I can still pull out of my brain commercial jingles from early childhood - like Libby’s, Oscar Mayer, and Fig Newton’s and songs from the radio. Yep, I'm...
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1573 Views
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What do army men, darts, wooden stairs and 3 bored boys have in common?

You might be thinking, "What the heck is he talking about?" As I was growing up in North Conway, N.H., the most common type of home in the area was a Cape Cod style with a full basement.  Most people never finished off the basement so the steps downstairs were usually...
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  5 Comments
1386 Views
5 Comments

Growing Bamboo

Growing Bamboo
On the road…again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   Growing Bamboo Almost every time that he passed the dwarf bamboo thicket planted alongside his house in Pennsylvania, the Footloose Forester was reminded that bamboo was part of his family life. At one time or another,...
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  2775 Views
  3 Comments
2775 Views
3 Comments

An Earlier Christmas

When I was much, much younger, and that was a long, long time ago, because I have always been as old as I am now--life was lived at a different pace.  For one thng, we lived in black and white and often the contrast between those colors was muted.  I remember...
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  1258 Views
  2 Comments
1258 Views
2 Comments

An Unusual Ticket to the Movies

In the 1930’s, Central Oklahoma would have made any film director looking for an “On Location” site for a movie depicting the seven plagues of Ancient Egypt drool with desire.   Most of Oklahoma, after enduring the destruction of the Dust Bowl, foreclosures on family farms and double-digit unemployment had one...
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1117 Views
1 Comment