Wordless Wednesday - Subway-Savvy City Kids Touch a Cow

One summer my parents (Daisy and Harold Burk) decided that we NYC kids should get a taste of farm living. This is where some mysteries of life would be revealed: Where does milk really come from? That is, before it gets delivered in big tanker trucks to the big bottling plant our school used to visit in the Northeast Bronx.

Our family spent at least a week, possibly two, at a farm in upstate New York, playing with barn kittens (so tiny), learning to milk a cow (carefully), seeing chickens and ducks (new discovery: they chase you!), and, as seen here, learning to swim in the farm's pool. The kids slept in a bunk house and the adults had rooms in the main house. It was a bit exotic and even foreign feeling to subway-savvy city kids like us, who had never touched a cow or fed a chicken.

52 Weeks - Cook Forest Sounds

My husband Wally, today's guest blogger, remembers the sounds of Cook Forest in PA from his teen years:

Friends and I drove from Cleveland (where we lived) to Cook Forest in Pennsylvania three times. In retrospect, it surprises me that we were allowed, as 17-18 year old high school students, to do this on our own, but we were.

Three or four of us would go to rent a cabin in the state park. It would usually be my friends John and Ernie, but my friend Don came once, another guy came once, and one time Ernie's girlfriend Hazel was there (she remembers coming with her parents, but she hung out with us most of the time).

The appeal was that we were totally on our own, no adults. We explored the forest, stayed up late, played cards. Interestingly, we didn't drink or smoke or do drugs. And the area was forest primeval, barely developed at that time, another big appeal. Today Cook Forest has been developed for recreation but then (in the early 1950s) it was primitive and untouched.

Sounds: Going down to the Clarion River, which was (and may still be) the last untouched river in Pennsylvania--never dammed--we'd listen to the river sounds. At night, it was as though there were voices in the water, the sound was actually voices and if you could just listen closely enough, you'd understand what they were saying.

The other forest sound came from Ernie's hi-fi, which we brought to blast classical music (symphonic, not opera) in our cabin in the middle of the woods. One of our friends slept very late one morning, so we pushed one of the hi-fi speakers under his bunk and put on a record of the Quoddy Head lighthouse horn. We turned the volume WAY up and woke him with a blast of sound that rattled the windows. He didn't sleep late again.

Several times we climbed the metal fire tower in the dark so we could see the sunrise and overlook the river and the valley filled with mist. The 80-ft tower was built on the highest point in the park. As we climbed the tower's metal steps, our feet made a kind of ringing sound that reverberated throughout the forest, it seemed.

I remember walking through those woods, we were noisy as hell--the loudest sounds in the forest!

One more sound I remember: One night, I was walking with John and Ernie toward the fire tower and as we approached, we heard a voice. Getting closer, we realized it was a girl's voice, "No, Billy, don't, no please don't!" I turned on my flashlight, shined it up to the top of the tower, and called, "Are you all right, ma'am?" (Of course I was probably the same age as the couple on the tower, but I used "ma'am" anyway.)

She immediately came clattering down the steps of the tower, followed by her boyfriend Billy. To show her I meant no harm, I flashed the light on my face, which was unshaven and dirty after a week in the woods. I probably looked much more dangerous than Billy! I asked if she needed a ride home. She said, "No, Billy will take me," and the two went off in search of their car. I felt very chivalrous, having defended a girl's modesty.

52 Weeks - Entering the Jet Age

If I had all the commemorative airplane models that my father (Harold Burk) received during his career as a travel agent, I'd be sitting on a gold mine.

Whenever a new plane (such as the Super Constellation) entered service, the airlines and/or manufacturers would hype the new technology by sending travel agents a model of that new model.

My father had this very plane (not the DIY model) on his desk for years and years. It was painted with the now-defunct Eastern Airlines colors, as this model is. He had others, too, but this one is most vivid in my mind.

My father was born just one year after the Wright Brothers successfully made their first flight and became, for a time, the most famous inventors in the world. I doubt Dad was in many planes before his service in WWII, but afterward, as a travel agent, he flew more than the average person--but not as often as he'd like.

One of Dad's perks was getting freebie tickets to tourist flights over what was then Idlewild Airport in Queens, NY (now JFK Airport). When I was in elementary school, our whole family would go over to Idlewild, flash those freebie tickets, and we'd all get on a prop plane for a 25-minute spin over the airport and NY harbor, including the Statue of Liberty. Can you imagine tourists getting that kind of quickie tour today? Well, technology really has changed--we can just sit at our keyboards and use Google Earth :) But the memories wouldn't be the same.

52 Weeks - The Saga of the Sock Monkey

Toys--sock monkeys! In the late 1950s, my mother (Daisy Schwartz Burk) acquired two pair of red heel socks and the instructions to make sock monkeys for my sister and me. My memory is that the "kits" came home from summer day camp, but however they arrived, my mother was excited about making them...at least the first one.

Mom had no sewing machine and didn't want one. Her mother, my grandmother Hermina Farkas Schwartz, was an expert with a treadle sewing machine and could have whipped up these monkeys in half an hour each (no exaggeration). But the directions looked simple enough for hand sewing and we girls thought the monkeys looked adorable, so Mom enthusiastically set to work.

That first monkey was probably fun to sew, but when it came to the second monkey, Mom's enthusiasm started to drain away. And now that I'm making a sock monkey for my sister's birthday (shh! don't tell her), I understand just how she felt. (BELOW is a photo of my completed gift sock monkey--yes, the one in the middle!)

The head, torso, and legs are made from a single sock. Getting the body to look just right isn't the hard part, especially if you have a sewing machine and you've got plenty of red yarn to cinch in body parts at the right places. It's the arms and ears and tail, made from the second sock, that are more challenging because little pieces of sock can unravel very quickly if you're not careful. It's not rocket science but it's a bit tricky.

Mom stuffed my sock monkey with old nylons (sis's monkey will be stuffed with odd bits of quilt batting). The original sock monkeys lasted for a long time but alas, all those beloved old stuffed animals eventually got loved to death.

A decade ago I found myself a ready-made sock monkey and it's been enjoying the hospitality of my guest room ever since. I found a second one for my sis around the same time, but her kitties have been enjoying it and the stuffing is leaking out. Now she'll have a brand-new, home-made sock monkey to bring back so many good memories of the original toys of our childhood!

52 Weeks - WINS, WMCA, WABC & Orchard Beach in the 1960s

Nostalgia today: New York City was (and probably is) a cut-throat radio town, and in the 1960s, rock 'n roll loving teens had their pick of some great stations and DJs. With our pocket-sized transistor radios, we could "spin the dial" and listen to:

• WMCA 570 AM, the home of the Good Guys. If I had a penny for every time my sister and I dialed in to answer a rock trivia question for a shot at winning a bright yellow Good Guy sweatshirt or 45 rpm record, I'd be a gazillionaire right now. Believe it or not, we did win a few times and until it fell apart, we had one of the sweatshirts (alas, long gone in the pre-eBay era). Of course our parents weren't thrilled about our monopolizing the phone with our dialing antics for an hour or too, but it was pretty tame fun. DJs I remember vividly include Harry Harrison and Jack Spector.

• WABC 770 AM, producer of the Silver Dollar Survey (countdown of top 40 songs) and the radio home of some of the most legendary rock 'n' roll DJs ever: Cousin Brucie; Dan Ingram; Scott Muni; Ron Lundy; the list goes on and on, too long to include here. The wattage of this AM station was so high that it could be heard quite a distance from New York, and was always clear and static-free when we tuned in at Orchard Beach. More below on the beach scene. No matter what top 40 song you wanted to hear, chances are you'd hear it more often on WABC, especially during "teen time" on weekends.

• WINS 1010 AM, which featured, among other DJs, Murray the K (and his famous submarine race-watching music--that's "make out" music for the uninitiated). Murray the K appointed himself "the Fifth Beatle" and rode the Fab Four's coattails during the early-to-mid 1960s. WINS, like its competitors, vied to be first to air the new single from some hot group like Dion & the Belmonts (from the Bronx, natch) or the Tokens (The Lion Sleeps Tonight, remember?).

Orchard Beach, in the Bronx, is a man-made beach only 30 minutes or so away from where my family lived at the time. (The beautiful and expansive Jones Beach on Long Island was a lot further away from our apartment and required the use of a car, which we didn't own. My aunt would drive us there once or twice every summer as a treat.)

On a hot summer day, my sister and I would hop two buses and walk down the hot sand of Orchard Beach until we got to THE section where teens hung out, Section 10. Nearly every transistor radio in the place was tuned to WABC by design: As you walked the length and breadth of Section 10, you'd never miss a note of your favorite Paul Revere & the Raiders song or the Rolling Stones ordering people off their cloud. The aroma of Coppertone was everywhere and summer seemed to fly by too quickly.

Matrilineal Monday - the Steiner sisters

My husband's maternal grandmother, Floyda Mabel Steiner McClure (1878-1948), was the baby of nine in her family. Here's a photo of Floyda with three of her sisters. From left, Carrie E. Steiner Traxler (1870-1963), Blanche (Etta) Steiner Rhuark (1864-1956), Floyda, and Minnie Estella Steiner Halbedel (1867-1947). Carrie and Blanche lived around the corner from each other in Upper Sandusky, OH. Floyda lived in Cleveland.

The above photo must have been taken about 1938 or so. How do I know? The photo below, with Minnie at right and her husband Edward N. Halbedel (1865-1946) at left, includes my husband Wally, age about 3 or 4, and his younger sister. 

Recently I was in touch (via Ancestry) with a Traxler descendant and we plan to share info. I can hardly wait! More cousins to connect with. She and my husband both remember Aunt Blanche's parrot, who would say "Brice McClure" and "Polly want a cracker" over and over (and over and over). Why would the parrot be talking about Floyda's husband Brice? No clue, but it's a vivid memory for both.

Sentimental Sunday: 3 Generations of Ladies

After I married and moved away from NYC, mom (Daisy Burk, 1919-1981) didn't often see all of her girls all at once. It was a treat to be together on vacations and holidays!

Once Daisy's first grandchild was born, we made get-togethers a priority. Three generations of ladies in the family!

Wordless Wednesday - Paula and Ibolyka Schwartz

This is a Wordless Wednesday because alas, I knew far too little about my great-aunt Paula Schwartz and her daughter, Ibolyka (Violet), shown in a photo they sent  to my maternal grandfather Theodore (Teddy) Schwartz (original name "Tivador," as in the inscription) in 1930.

Paula and her sister, Etel Schwartz, never came to the US even though their older brothers (Teddy and Samuel) arrived in the early 1900s and subsequently pooled their money to bring their baby sister Marushka (Mary) Schwartz to New York, as well.

Paula and Etel died in the Holocaust in World War II, along with other siblings. Their father, Herman Schwartz, died some time before the war.

2022 update: I've learned a lot about the family by searching Yad Vashem's testimony and connecting with Ibolyka's daughter, who is my 2d cousin on the Schwartz side.

52 Weeks - You Are What You Eat? Junk Soup and Blintzes!

What my mother (Daisy Schwartz Burk, below) cooked wouldn't have made Auguste Escoffier happy...but she had a few notable dishes.

One was junk soup, so-called because anything she found in the fridge was fair game. She started with chuck steak, cut it up into chunks, browned it with a bit of onion, and then into the giant stock pot it went, along with potatoes, celery, carrots, and whatever was available. My sister remembers cans of mixed vegetables were usually part of the recipe because Mom knew we'd eat those (mostly--NOT lima beans for me). Hours later, with the addition of alphabet pasta to give her three girls a smile, junk soup was ready (and in such quantities that it made welcome encore appearances later in the week).

Another of Mom's specialties was cheese blintzes. Her filling recipe called for a mixture of pot cheese and farmers' cheese, two cheeses that weren't watery, plus an egg, a little sugar, and a pinch of cinnamon. The crepe "leaves" were made from eggs, milk, flour, sugar/salt. After making the leaves one by one, and covering the stack with a dish towel to keep them from drying out, she'd assemble the blintzes with a tablespoon or so of cheese mixture in the center, roll up each blintz, and lightly saute it in butter. Certainly Mom learned to make these from her mother, Hermina Farkas Schwartz, whose apple strudel and home-made chicken soup (with home-made egg noodles, made and cut and dried at home) were legendary in the family.

And then there's chopped liver, another of Mom's specialties. She hand-chopped the chicken livers to the right consistency, after they were sauted with onion and mixed with hard-boiled eggs, plus (I assume, in the early days) schmaltz. Add a little salt and pepper and you're on your way to cholesterol city, but a happy journey it is.

She wasn't a happy baker. In fact, she never baked until her daughters begged her to make us cookies (and let us help in the prep). Then she confessed that the oven didn't work right and getting the landlord to make repairs was a long process. Eventually she succeeded and surprised us when we came home from school one day with some kind of fruit bar she baked from a mix. We loved them! At least I did until I unfortunately glanced at the box and saw I was eating fig bars. Ugh! Never touched them again, but now we were on our way to brownies and other easy-to-bake goodies.

My father, Harold Burk, rarely cooked but in his 60s, he became interested in baking apple pies and every fall, he'd experiment with crust and filling to get the highest pie (sky-high pie, he would say) with the flakiest pastry. If his pie fell in after baking, he'd say something like "next year." I'd enjoy eating Dad's apple pie no matter what it looked like.

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History by Amy Coffin is a series of weekly blogging prompts in 2011 to encourage us to record memories and insights.

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy - Home is where the elevator is

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My parents Daisy Schwartz Burk and Harold Burk lived their entire lives in New York City apartments and I was brought up here, one of twin apartment buildings just a block from a huge park in the Bronx. Getting into an elevator every day (many times a day) was part of the experience. 


In the summer, when we were playing in front of the building and the Bungalow Bar ice cream truck came around, we'd yell up to my mother to ask for money. She'd tie two dimes in a handkerchief and float it out the living room window to the street below, where we picked up the bundle and bought choco-covered pops. (Mister Softee trucks came later.)


When my mother tried her hand at writing children's stories, she wrote about children going to visit their grandparents and vying to push the elevator button for the right floor . . . exactly how we visited our maternal grandparents (Teddy and Minnie Farkas Schwartz) every other Sunday for dinner. They lived in an apartment building near Tremont Avenue in the Bronx.


My paternal grandmother Henrietta Burk lived just a few apartments away on the same floor where we lived here on Carpenter Avenue in the Bronx. In fact, as I've noted elsewhere in this blog, most of my father's family lived in this apartment building: His older sister Millie Lang lived on the top floor with her husband and my cousin Elliot, his brother Sidney Burk lived with their mother Henrietta on our floor. (Grandfather Isaac Burk had died 7 years before my birth, so I never knew him, but my cousin Ira is named after him.) Only my father's younger sister lived elsewhere, in Queens.


When I was growing up, this part of the northeast Bronx was a "suburban" area, where one-family homes dotted the side streets and apartment buildings dominated many of the corners and avenues. Because the elevated subway line was just a few blocks away, it was an especially convenient location for commuters (like my father) going to work an hour away in Manhattan. 

Sorting Saturday - McClure Shade Shop Card Is Genealogist's Dream

It's sorting Saturday, and I'm looking through the odds and ends in the STEINER file (one of my resolutions is to do more tracing on this branch of my husband's family tree). In the file was this business card. Why would a card for B.L. McClure's Shade Shop be in the Steiner file?

The back of the card holds the key: Brice Larimer McClure (my husband's maternal grandfather) was married to Floyda Mabel Steiner. Here, someone has listed Floyda and her siblings, in birth order, by first name. A dream find for a family genealogist!

The front probably tells me when these notations were made, because someone has thoughtfully listed the current age of each of the siblings. "O.-79" refers to Orville, born 1856. "F.-57" is Floyda, born 1878. My reasoning is that the notes were written in 1935. Since Orville died in 1936, I'm almost positive about the date of the notes being 1935.

Another scrap of paper in the file lists Jacob S. Steiner and Elizabeth, his wife, age 62 years when the note was written. The back of the scrap shows "Joseph Rinehart, 81 years" but I'm not sure who he was, and Margaret Rinehart. Another scrap shows "Edward G. Steiner," born 28 May 1830, died Mar 13, 1880" and this was Floyda's father, definitely, meaning he's my husband's great-grandfather. More investigation is needed to determine the relationship of all the rest of these relatives to each other and to my husband.

As an aside, Brice (known as "The Old Gentleman" in his later years, within the family) ran this shade shop out of his home, which I know because he and Floyda and their daughter, Marian Jane McClure, were living there at the time of the 1930 Census. The house, he told the Census taker, was worth $9,000 and he owned it. Also he had a radio! His occupation was "machinist" in a shop. The shade shop must have been a sideline. During the 1930s, I imagine everyone had a sideline to pick up extra cash.

2022 update: That listing of Steiner siblings, which I posted on my Ancestry tree, has been saved to other people's trees many dozens of times. It's the kind of original information that really helps support other documentation! 

Those Places Thursday: When the NYC Skyline Went Dark in 1965

Browsing through a book on New York Deco, I saw photos of the Chanin Building, located at 122 E. 42nd Street in New York City, opposite Grand Central Station.

Instantly it brought back vivid memories of the Great Northeastern Blackout of November 9-10, 1965--the one that left most of the Northeastern US and Canada in complete darkness overnight and into the next day. As a young teen, I was already home from school on that Tuesday, when the blackout hit during evening rush hour. Electricity was out and there was no way of knowing when it would return. We had battery-powered transistor radios and soon found out what had happened.

My mother was just finishing her work day on the 22nd floor of the Chanin Building when the power went out. Unless she walked down all the way to the street level and then hitched a ride from the middle of Manhattan to the northeast tip of the Bronx, she wasn't going to be able to get home that night. She didn't know then how lucky she was: If she had left 15 minutes earlier and gotten on a subway train for the hour-long ride home, she would have spent the night in a darkened subway tunnel awaiting the return of electricity.

For two teen twins and our younger sister, it was the start of a one-of-a-kind tame adventure. We were home, safe, in our apartment overlooking the Dyre Avenue subway line in the Bronx. In fact, because the outage happened when dusk was fast arriving, we could easily see that there were NO lights on the New York City skyline. This was a most unusual and memorable sight, to say the least.

Still, the phones worked, the gas stove and oven worked, so we could (and did) cook and play games by candle light and using flashlights. But Mom was stuck in the Chanin Building for the duration of the blackout. As it turned out, the lights came on about 13 hours later.

Mom had to wait her turn to call us, since the law office where she worked had only 1 or 2 phone lines. She called as soon as she could, before dinner, to check on us, and reassure us that she was OK. She called again later in the evening and told us that the people in the office had pooled their money to order from a sandwich shop down on street level, paying about $10 each for a sandwich that would have cost $2 or $3 on any other night. Of course the delivery guy had to walk up 22 floors to reach his customers, and then down again, so I understand why the shop raised its prices on blackout night, even though Mom fumed at the price gouging. That night she slept (poorly) on chairs pulled together to make a kind of bed.

At least Mom knew we were responsible teens and she didn't have to worry much about our safety, since we were already home. We kids were in a great mood, calling all our friends to yak endlessly about the blackout and ask whose parents were stuck where. My memory is that we even invited a friend to come over, and at some point she arrived (probably the next morning after the subways started running). I don't think there was school on Wednesday, Nov. 10th, and the day after that was Veteran's Day, which may have helped get things back to normal. 

Reports say that this was a peaceful blackout, with New Yorkers treating each other civilly and offering assistance where possible. My mother was tired but happy to be home when the lights came on and she could ride home on the subway. And I still remember the night of no lights in the New York City skyline. Very spooky.

Camp Days in Cleveland Heights, 1951 - Amanuensis Monday

Just yesterday I came across this photo reminder of my husband Wally Wood's days as a junior counselor at the YMCA camp outside of Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Wally's third from right in front row, next to the guy who looks like a Marine drill sgt (the actual counselor). Wally remembers his parents dropping him off for the week of camp with a "car full of crap" (clothes, equipment, etc).

This is under the heading of "amanuensis" because the campers and the senior counselor signed the back of this photo! Below are all the names, transcribed, as best as I can make out. Looks like the campers were practicing their cursive handwriting skills.

Don MacMillan
Jim Palermo
Shepard Linsday
Ted Gaeblen [maybe?]
Bob Berd
Arthur Krueger
Fred Wilson
Michael Glaser
Marc Konrissen
Doa Leo
Toms Stevens

PS the envelope tells a lot about Stan's Studio Inc., which took the photo. What it says is:

Stan's Studio Inc.

Weddings - Baby Pictures - Portraits

See Our Kiddyland, Cleveland's Largest and Finest

3025 West 25th Street

Cleveland 13, Ohio

Tel. MAIN 1-7066

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Bad Car Karma

This week's blog prompt is "cars." Actually, my first vehicle wasn't a car, it was a motorcycle (a Yamaha 50cc stepthrough, which I'm driving in the photo here). 

But that's a story for another day.

 My very first car was a used, powder blue 1969 Mercury Cougar "pony car," designed to compete with the fabulous Mustangs of the era. I didn't have a GT model, shown at top, but all other details were as you see them . The headlight covers rolled up when the lights were switched on, the center console was sporty and elegant, the seats were cushy and comfy, the engine purred. It was a real creampuff. So why don't I have a photo to put here, instead of a photo from "HowStuffWorks" site? 

Well, one night I was working late in my job as a retail store manager in suburban Boston, while a hurricane raged outside. After 9 pm, when I locked up to go home, I looked around the parking lot--my car was nowhere in sight! (It wasn't hard to figure this out, because there were NO cars in the lot at that point.)

I reported the theft, called hubby to get a ride home, and waited for the call that finally came two days later. The cops found my car! Only problem: They fished it out of a lake 200 miles away. (Now ask yourself: Who would steal a car in the middle of a hurricane and drive it into a lake?)

The insurance company totaled it and with the pittance I received, I bought a 1968 1/2 Mustang, another blue pony car. This one was the opposite of a creampuff: There was so much underbody rust that if you picked up the floor mats, you could see the road beneath your feet. Seriously. But the car had 4 wheels and drove well enough, and the price was right ($150 in cash). I drove that car for less than a year when my bad car karma struck again.

One morning, when I was already late for work, I went to unlock the driver-side door and noticed something funny. Instead of wheels, the car was balanced on cement blocks. Overnight, thieves had stolen all the wheels! New wheels would have cost more than the old car, so I sold the car ($50 net) and carpooled with hubby for a while.

My next used car was a 1970-something Dodge Dart, nicknamed the "Green Battleaxe." That car had one of the best engines of all time. It just kept going and going, with more than 140,000 miles on it, no problems at all. The outside was, well, beat up, but that was OK, since I was parking the car on city streets and didn't want to attract attention. The engine would have lasted for another 100,000 miles, easy. That's why bad car karma had to strike.

Getting ready to drive to the shopping center one day, I couldn't find the Green Battleaxe where I'd parked it. I walked round and round the neighborhood, but no car. Finally I came to the reluctant conclusion that once again, my car had been stolen. The cops mentioned how many thieves target Darts for the parts (especially that strong, sturdy engine). Many months later, the Dart was found at the other end of the city, abandoned and (you guessed it) with lots of parts missing. By then the insurance company had long ago settled the claim and all that was left was the paperwork (ugh).

Bad car karma has left me, finally. From 1995 to 2009, my husband and I replaced 13 windshields in our various cars, because of road debris kicking up to crack the glass again and again and again and again. But not lately. Can that good luck last?? 

(UPDATE in 2022: No replaced windshields yet! Little cracks but that's it.)

Treasure Chest Thursday - Baby Book

My husband's baby book has more than just fun facts from his early years--it also has names of relatives! It also has a lock of his hair from his first haircut decades ago :) No photos, but all entries were handwritten by my mother-in-law, and the book is in excellent condition. She even left notes about his formula and pablum.

The entries are easier to read in reality than they look in this scan, and there are lots and lots of names scattered through the pages. This year I'm going to start tracing his Steiner and Traxler lines, and both names are here. So my treasure chest item for today is this baby book. Are there baby books in your treasure chest?