June 13, 2015- Mom-Part 2

Some of her Bradlees salary helped to pay for most of our Catholic school tuition. She probably talked Dad into getting us braces. I doubt that he wanted to spend his money on that. He had no problem giving it to his family though.

   In the fall she would rake the leaves into low piles to make a house for us – these would divide the rooms of it.

   She always made sure that she got us nice presents for Christmas and birthdays. There was a board game under the tree nearly every year. We still have some of these, including Hangman, Battleship and Connect Four.

   We’ve had good times at flea markets and Chinese Auctions (which are now called tricky trays or gift auctions to be politically correct, I suppose). Some of both types of these events were at Roselle Catholic.

   Kathy and her mom Helen came with us most of the time. I got my Fred frog stuffed animal in a grab bag at a Chinese Auction in Mother Seton high school. Mike said that our grade school had one but I hadn’t remembered this until he mentioned it. 

   Some of the outdoor flea markets that we liked going to were Columbus (near Aunt Ann’s house), Englishtown, Westfield, and Woodbridge. I think that we went to Collingswood a couple of times too. US 1 Indoor Flea Market was our family’s favorite.

   Mom and I used to enjoy watching classic films together. Our favorites include Gaslight, Rebecca, Rear Window, The Uninvited, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Great Escape, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and To Kill a Mockingbird.  Sometimes Mike would watch them with us.

1979

 

 

Christmas 1979

My mom liked buying us games every Christmas and this year it was Battleship. We got a few Make It Bake It kits too - suncatchers or stained glass window ornaments, I guess either description applies to these. Mark got some Battlestar Galactica figures. I wish that we had some pictures of my gifts. Probably a Barbie was one of them. I loved our old stereo with the record player and 8 track on it, our Encyclopedia and yearbook set and the big stereo/tv cabinet that are also in these photos. This is the first year that we got a live tree. I meant to put the top photos below because these are after Christmas morning. We went over to my Aunt Sylvia's house later that day or maybe the next day. I'm wearing my favourite sweater, Mom made this for me and also ones in different colours for my 2 friends. I hadn't noticed the Kirby vaccum cleaner under the tree until recently, so now I know what year we got that.

Favourite Games

My mom would always buy us a game or 2 for Christmas when we were kids. We would play with some of her games too like Monopoly, Clue, Scrabble and Parcheesi. We foolishly got rid of our Uncle Wiggly. I found the blue piece to it in my tote of momentos recently. She bought us a new one in the early 90s but it's just not the same. We loved Battleship, Hangman, Trouble, Double Trouble, Pokeno, Boggle, Uno, Yahtzee, Connect Four, Toss Across and Auto Bingo. Trivial Pursuit was okay but I wasn't that good at it. We still have many of our games. Mom had to buy us a new Clue though because we lent hers to our cousins and they never gave it back to us before moving to Florida. I can't help still being annoyed about this.