Sentimental Sunday: September 1993 in London

Sorting through family slides from bygone years, I came across a handful of slides with a two-page description titled "What I did on my fall vacation (1993)" written by my twin and me!

Having entirely forgotten about this write-up (but not the vacation), it was wonderful to stumble across enough verbiage to bring back minute details of this fun time.

Herewith, some excerpts from the twins' whirlwind vacation, made possible by my wonderful hubby, who stayed with my school-age niece while we sisters flew across the pond:

Monday, September 20: Slept late (a habit) and had lunch next door at the L'Ambiance, which had none. Quiche and salad were surprisingly good. Tube to Leicester Square to buy 1/2 price tickets to "Hair." Then on to British Museum where saw the Rosetta Stone. Dinner in Knightsbrige at Pasta Prego (yum) and tube to Old Vic Theatre, where we danced live on the London stage.*

Tuesday, September 21: Up at 9:30 am for an early start to Westminster and to change money. Saw the Imperial War Rooms....then back to Westminster Abbey for a fascinating tour...Full afternoon tea, then off to see "Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat."**

* Anybody who's ever seen "Hair" has had the opportunity to dance on Broadway or the West End or wherever, since the audience is invited on stage during the finale. Sis and I took advantage in London! (Earlier this year, I chronicled my brush with fame on Broadway in this post.) Too bad that sis and I, New Yorkers, were among the few audience members who understood and laughed at the show's dated song references to such non-events as: "LBJ took the IRT..."

** Joseph became a family favorite after this--we and our kin saw it a couple of times on Broadway and numerous times elsewhere; my theatrical niece played in at least one camp production; and just last December, some of us went to an off-off-off B'way production to keep the tradition alive into the next generation of our family. The young 'uns still sing "Go, go, go Joseph!"

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy: Unfave Foods (a la Jack Sprat)

Being a twin, it was usually easy to get rid of food I didn't like as a kid: I shared with my sis. Like the old Jack Sprat nursery rhyme, I ate stuff she wouldn't touch, and she ate stuff I wouldn't touch.

When Mom served hard-boiled eggs, I'd eat the white and sis would eat the yolk. Mixed veggies from a can? She ate the lima beans (ugh) and I ate everything else. Neither of us liked fat, by the way, we were both like Jack Sprat's wife--lean fans.

Of course, there were lots of foods we both liked during our childhood in the Bronx: fresh rye bread from Victor's Bakery, the Hungarian bakery on White Plains Road near 224th Street; buttery cookies from the Cookie Jar near Pelham Parkway; and the Kitchen Sink ice cream extravaganza from Jahn's, just off Fordham Road.
 

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.

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy: Childhood Hobbies--Hollywood Cerise and Bead Looms

Although there are no really good Web images of Venus Paradise color-by-number sets, they were a favorite hobby of my sisters and me. Remember Hollywood Cerise, one of the low-numbered pencils? Sure, the color looks garish to adult eyes, but to young ladies, it was perky and impossible to resist. We wore that pencil out again and again!

Then there was my college hobby, beading necklaces and belts on a loom slightly larger and sturdier than this one. My favorite was the necklace I made with red seed beads accented by a yellow beaded lightening bolt. I say "was" because alas, the necklace is long gone.

My bead period came during the height of the Age of Aquarius, when handmade adornments were in vogue. It amused my mother to see me picking up tiny beads one by one with my needle, hour after hour after hour. Maybe I'll revisit this hobby one day!

Wordless Wednesday: Sam Schwartz Arrived as Simon

Almost wordless! For years I tried to find my great-uncle Samuel Schwartz's name on a manifest, knowing he arrived in NYC before 1906, but no luck.

After receiving his naturalization papers last week, however, I now had a month and year: January, 1904, plus a departure point (supposedly Hamburg) and the name of a ship (the Pretoria).

Finally I found Sam--except he arrived here as Simon Schwartz, on a ship from Cuxhaven. It's definitely him, because in the far-right column, my grandpa Teodor (Theodore) Schwartz is listed as Simon's brother in New York City. A small step forward and a new mystery, never to be solved: How did Simon get from his hometown of Ungvar, Hungary, to the dock at Cuxhaven? That's quite a journey.

Those Places Thursday: NOT Ireland--Check the original!

Where oh where did my husband's branch of the McClure family come from before they turned up in America?

I've been trying to track down the parents and living descendants of his g-g-grandpa Benjamin McClure, who died in Emmet County, Michigan in 1896 and was buried with many other members of his family in Wabash, Indiana.

One of Benjamin's children was John N. McClure, who married Rebecca Jane Coble and were the parents of Fanny (Fannie) Fay McClure. Thanks to FamilySearch.org, I found Fanny's birth record in a ledger book. Her b-day is October 4, 1882.

More important, I thought I had an interesting clue to the McClures' origins: The transcription of this birth record shows that John and Rebecca were both from Ireland.

Of course I didn't take their word for it. I clicked through and looked at the original document. An excerpt is below. Do you think they're from Ireland? Take a close look.

No. He's from Fayette County, Indiana, and she's from what looks like Greenbrier, Indiana.

So Indiana is my place of the day (sorry, Ireland, but you may get your turn in a later post).

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy: Earliest Memories--No Shells in Eggy Bread

About the time this photo was taken of my hubby Wally, at age 2 or 3, his first memory was of sitting in a high-chair in the kitchen of his Cleveland home. Wally's parents, Edgar James Wood and Marian Jane McClure Wood, would have been in the kitchen or nearby.

Wally may have been feeding himself or being fed by the au pair, Dorothy, but he remembers announcing:

"I don't like shells in my eggy bread."

He remembers that he was eating a piece of bread with an egg on top, and he'd found shells in the egg. No wonder he complained. I don't like shells in my eggy bread either, do you?

Remembering 9/11: Memories of the Twin Towers

As a New Yorker, my long-time impression of the World Trade Center towers was that they were modern, sterile, steel-and-glass boxes that happened to be the tallest skyscrapers on Earth when built. I was living in the Bronx when the twin towers opened in Manhattan, within a healthy walking distance of the high-rise apartment building where my mother (Daisy Burk) lived.

We would visit the towers, look up, and shake our heads at the contrast between these architecturally unremarkable buildings and the ornate Manhattan skyscrapers we admired, like the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building (where I later worked in a branch of Sam Goody), and Radio City.

My former sister-in-law was married at Windows on the World atop 1 World Trade Center, a small family celebration with the best view of any wedding I've ever been to. This famous restaurant was a destination on its own within the twin towers complex, with great food, impeccable service, and an incomparable vista stretching out for miles and miles.

On September 11, 2001, hubby and I were in Rome when the World Trade Center was destroyed by terrorists. We saw the shocking news on TV and later went to the Internet cafe to be in touch with our New York family and friends, reassuring ourselves that they were safe and letting them know that Italy was holding candlelight vigils to show sympathy.

So many lives lost, so much gone in such a short time.

In the decade since, I've never had the heart to return to that downtown site, although I've seen photos and videos. Too many memories.

As undistinguished-looking as those twin towers seemed when they were constructed--known for their historic height rather than their beauty--I miss them in the NYC skyline, the gap as gaping as if the two front teeth were kicked out of the city's smile.