Tag: 52 weeks

There is no better way to jump back into these prompts then with my childhood bedroom story!

Week 19. Bedroom. Describe your childhood bedroom. What furniture did it contain? Were there curtains, wallpaper or paint? Was it messy or clean? Did you share a room with your siblings?

I did indeed share my bedroom with a sibling. When I was in Kindergarten, the trailer we were renting was hit by lightning. I don’t think I remember much except my My Little Ponies burned up and that I was sharing the room with my sister and maybe even my brother. I can’t really remember and I’d have to ask my mother.

After that happened, we moved into the trailer that we would live in for the rest of my childhood. It was only a 3 bedroom trailer and not very big at all but it was what we had. I shared the middle bedroom with my older sister for many many years. I remember that we had stuffed two beds into the room but there was practically no room left after that. There was a built in dresser and closet. Part of the room was taken up by the hall “closet” which housed the furnace. I don’t actually remember our furnace ever working though. We always used kerosene heat from what I remember. A few years after we moved in, our neighbor was getting rid of his bunk beds and we immediately forced him to give them to us… Okay, so he was my brother’s best friend and he offered them. We needed them desperately though! So that’s when I think we started getting some breathing room in our shared environment.

The whole trailer had wood paneling on the walls the whole time we lived there. A few years before the trailer was taken out by a tree, we had started rehabbing it. Taking the paneling down and putting up sheetrock. We never painted the paneling, but I will admit to wallpapering them at one point… with my Teen BOP posters. I’m pretty sure Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Devon Sawa were my wallpapers. Every month I’d rip some down and add some new ones. I was obsessed!

Sometime when I was in middle school, I think about the seventh grade, my brother made a huge decision and moved to Miami for love. He did it quietly and quickly. He bought his ticket and said I’m going! He packed his clothes and said goodbye to his bedroom… I let him get a mile down the road before I said, “IT’S MINE!” You have to understand. We were two teenage girls living in the same space, it was a necessity! I had to do it or one of us was going to kill the other. There was of course a hold on the room. If my brother came home with his tail between his legs, then the room was still his. Luckily for both of us, things worked out for him in Miami. Not the love thing, but life did and that’s just fine too!

I got even luckier when he left his room as he did, because he left it with his stereo, television, and computer. I had a computer all to myself! I remember when the internet hit our house. My brother was kind of a genius with computers from the beginning. He built his own first computers. Now he finds it easier to just buy them and upgrade them, but at the time it was extraordinary. We were all relieved when he built his computer because he was always on our family computer. Of course, I didn’t know what to do on a computer at the time anyway. There wasn’t much out there. I actually think when he left for Miami was right around the time I first started making websites on my own. Just flying by the seat of my pants, learning as I went.

So that’s the story of my childhood bedroom(s)!

Week 12: Movies. Did (or do you still) see many movies? Describe your favorites. Where did you see these films? Is the theater still there, or is there something else in its place?

Movies are probably the thing I’ve loved the longest. We’ve always been a movie family. We celebrate birthdays and holidays by having movie nights. My first job was actually working with my Mom in a locally owned video rental store. That store eventually sold their business to Movie Gallery, who subsequently got rid of all the stores. That’s alright, the video rental business isn’t going to be around much longer. Everything is going digital and I guess our original owner was smart enough to get out while the getting was good!

Yes I even made a scrapbook when I was leaving, I wanted to remember my special friends! Sadly, a lot of my regular customers are no longer living so it’s really nice to have a piece of them still with me!

There is a downside to working in a video store though. Eventually, you kind of burn out on watching the movies. Don’t get me wrong, I still love to sit back and watch a good movie. Only now, I tend to watch them less often and from the comfort of my living room. Usually through pay per view or I’ll buy the DVD. After so many years of feeling the need to know all the movies and trivia, I’ve kind of gone on movie hiatus. Don’t get me wrong, I was good at it! I had customers coming in for recommendations and I was able to know what movies they were looking for by the very fragmented details they gave. Once I left the job though, I kind of backed away from that. It is a little sad, but gosh I really appreciate movies more now.

As for actual movie theaters, we do have a small 6 screen theater “in town”. I remember seeing a lot of movies in that theater. However, it’s gotten very run down and it’s not in a great part of town. Over the years, I don’t think much maintenance has been done either. For some reason, this over-populated town hasn’t gotten a new theater though the citizens are screaming for one! Literally. No one quite knows whats happening there, but it’s sad. I might see movies in a theater more often, if I had a more comfortable theater to go to. Right now we trek all the way to the Arundel Mills Mall movie theater which is close to two hours away. We really only go that far for the big ones, like Harry Potter. 🙂

My favorite movies haven’t changed. I used to watch them at work all the time. Newsies, The Little Mermaid, Empire Records, American Outlaws, Gone with the Wind, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Sound of Music. I could really go one. That’s another side effect to having seen all those films. You really grow attached to them. Right now what I really love are mini series. I don’t understand why they aren’t more popular. When I first got into Genealogy, Mom bought a used copy of Roots so I could see that. Since then I’ve replaced it with the anniversary DVD. I also love North & South, Band of Brothers and Taken.

I guess I should have warned you I can tend to run on about movies!

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History by Amy Coffin is a series of weekly blogging prompts (one for each week of 2011) that invite genealogists and others to record memories and insights about their own lives for future descendants. You do not have to be a blogger to participate. If you do not have a genealogy blog, write down your memories on your computer, or simply record them on paper and keep them with your files.

Week 7: Toys. What was your favorite childhood toy? Is it still being made in some form today?

It goes against everything in me to only choose one thing. I have no idea why I’m like that, but I am. So I’ll just make a brief mention of the other toys I loved. My Little Pony. There I said it. I had more My Little Ponies than I did Barbies. I had Barbies too though, and my Momma made their clothes. How awesome was she? I also loved, loved, loved C.U.T.I.E. figurines. If you do a google image search you can find them but I have a link that does better. There was another toy I loved, they were little clear, plastic princesses I think but no one remembers their names. It reminds me of when I was trying to remember the name of a cartoon I watched as a kid. All I could remember was the little girl in the yellow dress flies out the window with a koala bear. My momma was stuck on David the Gnome. She sure loved David the Gnome. HA. It was called Noozles by the way.

Back onto the subject, I’m here to talk about my number one love. They were called Little People and they were made by Fisher Price. I loved these things. I loved them to death. I even talked about them way back in Childhood Car memories week. This one is made out of wood, and it was bought off eBay probably around 10 years ago. I don’t know what happened to my Little People. Most likely they were given to a family friend who had little girls, much like my Barbie collection. The set I had were plastic. If you want to read about the complete history of these (I’m the only one right? haha), there’s a great write up of their evolution here: link. On that page, the ones I’m familiar with are at the bottom of the History page. I had a million of them though and I had all kinds of accessories. It was my most played with toy and it’s the one I associate with my childhood.

My favorite thing to do was make families, and have them go about their day to day. I’d pick up the kids with the school bus and I’d drop them off all over the house on the “bus route”. It’s probably why I’ve switched to The Sims 2 as I got older. Same concept, just on a computer!

Sadly, Little People are no longer how I remember them. A quick trip to the Fisher Price website will show you how they’ve changed. Visiting the website made me want to go out to the shed and dig out the school bus and house (also from that eBay purchase) I know are in there somewhere. It could be fun to compare them right?

Little People today. Picture from Fisher Price website

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History is a weekly series thought up by Amy Coffin and hosted by GeneaBloggers. It encourages genealogy bloggers to share their own memories and history, so that we don’t forget that one day, our own stories will be important to future generations.

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History: Week 4

Describe the house in which you grew up. Was it big or small? What made it unique? Is it still there today?

Now this could get emotional! This week my task it to talk about my childhood home… or homes as I remember it. I’m very fortunate to have not moved very often in my life. I’m hoping that trend continues, but only after I move to a nice, quiet town where I want to spend the rest of my days. I know I’m a little young to be thinking about the rest of my days, but as the town around me grows, I can’t help but realize city life is not for me.

My family tells me we lived in a small trailer when I was born, but moved to the bigger one I do remember later. I’ll have to trust them on this because I was only a few months old at the time and my memory ain’t what it used to be if you get my drift.  We lived in this trailer from my early baby years until I was in Kindergarten. I remember the circumstances around the end of our time there so clearly.

I remember being in my class and it was very, very dark outside. I don’t know if my fear of storms roots from this day or if it’s always been there. It doesn’t matter, because that day when I got home, I think I already knew something bad happened. Our trailer was struck by lightning and burned to the ground.

Those ruins are the first house I remember. In fact, I remember my sister getting stung by a swarm of bees that loved to hang out on that swing set. I remember when my parents got me a bike for my birthday and my Dad ran around the outside of the trailer trying to hide it from me. It’s not in frame but we had a tree line on the other side of the house. It was  there that we built the tree house. It was there that we hung the zip line and tire swing. It was there my brother cracked his head open and I fell out of the tree house breaking my arm (first and only broken bone!) It was here my sister was riding her bike down the driveway and she flew over the handlebars and broke both arms.

Lots of childhood memories of this house.

If I believed in coincidences, I would call what happened next the biggest of my life. You see, as our house burned down, my parents were signing papers to purchase the property where we still live. We had to stay with friends until all the details were ironed out. It wasn’t long before we moved into the trailer where we lived for the rest of my childhood.

The differences were huge though. We had a bigger yard for one. We had a neighborhood with more kids around us (that I can remember anyway!). Most of all though, it was ours. Our previous trailer was just a rental. So this time everything in the place was ours. Literally because we had nothing left. We quickly filled the house with memories though.

I remember playing basketball, croquet, and football with my siblings and the other neighborhood kids. I remember being grounded and not being able to “leave the yard”. Gosh that was a horrible punishment! We had a virtual mecca of places to go! Other peoples houses, and the store down the street. Nowadays, that’d be out of the question of course. The road is way too busy for kids being about.

Unfortunately, I don’t have many pictures of our houses. At least in their glory. 🙁 Not that I think the trailer was ever in its glory stage. It was our home though. Mom loved it because she was always in her kids business and they couldn’t get away with anything! Not that I would try any of that nonsense, right? haha. Our trailer definitely had many battle scars. There was the soy sauce stains on the ceiling (I was not apart of that food fight… that I remember). A hole in my parents bedroom door that my brother put there after roughhousing with his friends. Unfortunately for Mom’s bedroom door it was right next to the back door.

You’ll probably notice the arrow in the picture above. It would be that tree that would fall onto our trailer and force our hand on the next move.

The thing is, I’ve said numerous times I don’t believe in coincidences. Things happen for a reason and we may not always know what that reason is, but it’s our job to realize when it happens and take action. You see, for my whole life, my mother’s stepfather was on her case about building a house on our property. He was just worried about the trailer, and that we would have another tragedy like the Mattapany house. It was one year to the day of his death that the tree fell onto our house. It happened when Moms children were all grown, still at home, but grown. It happened when she was taking a break for the first time in her life. She’d decided to try and retire from work, at least retail work. My Dad had a more flexible, more generous job.

This is the house as it stands today. We’ve finally realized Grandpa Wayne’s dream for us. It took a little pushing from him if you get my drift, but we did it. We’ve lost in our life, everyone has. We came out on the other end though, stronger then you can imagine. Now when we have these monster snowstorms, or powerful storms I just think about our little trailer. You could hear the wind blow in the old thing. I can’t hear a semi truck in this one! I know this is a house my parents will be enjoying for a long, long time. They now have a big kitchen, family room, and a guest room! Well, more when me and my sister finally go. It was always stressful to have visitors because there just wasn’t room. Last 4th of July, we had two of my Aunts and their husbands here and everyone had room.

Note: Yes, that is a large, blue M&M in front of our house. My Mom is eccentric, what can I say!

This post is a part of the 52 weeks of Personal History and Genealogy series hosted by GeneaBloggers and created by Amy Coffin.