Throwback Thursday - Bedrooms

I took a class with Becky Higgins recently and in it she asked which pictures you wished you had of your childhood, etc.

I really wish I had pictures of my childhood bedrooms (I had two, one before my grandfather died and one after he died). My Aunt Dot took a lot of pictures but, as with most people back then, she took pictures of people and events.  Film and processing was expensive, and it probably seemed a waste to take pictures of just rooms in your home.

I can still picture in my mind some of my second room, but I wish I had pictures.

So I went looking in my old photo albums for pictures of bedrooms.

These are pictures of Paul and my bedroom in our first apartment in 1970-72.  I find it so funny that I brought some of my stuffed animals from home.

I still have these bedroom lamps.  They were my mother-in-law's.  She gave them to us, she said, until we got new ones.  Almost 48 years later, we still have them in our bedroom, lol.

This is from our second apartment in 1972-73.

I'm thankful that I have these pictures because really, in the early years of our marriage, we didn't take many.  But I wish I had more close up pictures of the things in these rooms.

Then I started looking for Mark and Kristen's first bedrooms.

When I was about 5 months pregnant we moved from a one bedroom apartment at Belden Ct in Agawam to a two bedroom apartment.  Kristen had most of the second room.

This is the story of the little crib.

In 1973 we moved into our house in Feeding Hills.  We had three bedrooms.  This is Kristen's room.

The third bedroom was Paul's office, book room, stuff that didn't go in any other room, lol. We arranged the room to fit Mark in when he was born in 1974.  We took a couple of pictures, probably to show how little space Mark had in that room!

He eventually had the whole room and most of the stuff in that room found a place in our bedroom, lol!

I am trying to go through my old photo albums chronologically and hopefully I will find some pictures of their rooms.  I'll update this post if I do.

Luckily, I tried to take pictures of my grandchildren's rooms, but that will be another post.

Its never too late to take ordinary, every day pictures (such as bedrooms, lol).

In Becky Higgins' class, she shared a quote from Take a Picture Today, Feel Happy Tomorrow by Annie M. Gordon, PhD. "In the moment, we think why record our everyday experiences, we will remember them in the future and they aren't that memorable anyway.  Even just a month later though, our memories of the event begin to dim, the details fall away, and what once seemed ordinary feels a bit more extraordinary." How true!

Throwback Thursday - Brick Carport Project

The year was 1979, and this was part of the plans that Paul made to make a brick patio under our carport.  This part of the plan was to calculate the number of bricks he needed, which was 1800.

A year or so previously, he had made a brick floor out of used sidewalk bricks for the shed in the backyard, and liked how it turned out.

The idea for putting bricks under the carport probably stemmed from the fact that I didn't really like the look of the blacktop driveway that went under the carport.

He decided to put sidewalk bricks on top of the blacktop, and did a lot of research and planning before attempting this.

He bought the bricks from Gagliarducci Construction, a paving contractor, at 227 Mill St. in Springfield.  They were old sidewalk bricks from downtown Springfield, 8 cents a brick if you picked them up yourself, which he did because he wanted to hand pick them. This was a real bargain.  Used building bricks were only 5 cents a piece, but new or used sidewalk bricks were at least 25 cents a piece everywhere else.

Paul cut holes in the blacktop along three sides for the anchors that would hold the 4 x 6 fir beams that would be the border. Then he had Kristen and Mark scoop out (with their little hands) the amount of dirt equivalent to 45 lbs of concrete (half a bag).

The focus of these pictures was the kids working on the brick carport project, but I love so many other things about these old pictures. You can see our cat Callie on the back steps, the trash cans with "Radtke" that Paul put on almost everything, his grandfather's old wheelbarrow, and my little fenced in flower garden. In the back yard you can see the shed with just the wheel of what was Kristen's bike, and Mark's bike with the training wheels on.  Kristen was 7 at the time and Mark was 5.

I have always loved how our brick carport turned out.  It is still perfect even after almost 39 years.  We use it as a patio in the summer, but we can still park under it in the winter.

Job well done, Paul!

Throwback Thursday - Our backyard 44 years later!

I have been systematically going through our photo albums lately trying to digitize photos.  I'll never get through all of them, but I am trying to get to the pictures that tell a story.  I am on #3 of 33 photo albums, and that is only since Paul and I got married.  I also have a ton of earlier albums, from both sides of the family.

I have spent a lot of time digitizing older photos of our ancestors and trying to tell their stories, but I also want to do Paul's and my pictures too.

We bought our house in April, 1973.  Kristen was almost 8 months old.

We live on a circle with 26 houses.  Our neighborhood was built on farm land; a strawberry patch.  There were only a couple of large trees which must have been on the edge of the land.  Our house is on the inside of the circle, so the back yards didn't have any boundaries.  One of our friends said it was like living in a fish bowl!

This picture, taken about 6 months after we moved in, was taken in our back yard across to our neighbor's house behind us.

This is our back yard today.  Our neighbors, Jack and Judy, planted pine trees across their back yard, and we planted forsythia.  In 2015 Judy took down the pine trees, and we lost our tree a month later due to some type of disease. Between our tree down, and her trees down, the forsythia have really taken off and gotten very thick and tall.

This picture was taken looking down the middle of the inside of our circle from our back yard in October 1973. 

Eventually everyone started putting up fences and planting trees and hedges.  This is what it looks like now.  We can't even see the hill which used to be so pretty in the fall.  

Out of the 26 houses on this circle, there are 6 original families left.  It's been a wonderful place to live!

Lawnmowers

Last Friday our lawnmower died.  It really didn't owe us anything; this was our 27th summer with it. The poor thing was held together with duct tape and sheet metal.  It was a Troy-Bilt Tuff Cut that Paul ordered in the mail from the manufacturer, Garden Way Inc. for $731.45, in November of 1990. 

To back track, we bought our first lawnmower in 1973 after we bought our house.  It was a Craftsman Eager 1 from Sears, $100, the cheapest Eager 1 that Sears made.  It lasted 18 years.  

This picture was taken in October 1981.  At one time I used to mow the front and side lawn.  The backyard was too confusing and Paul did that.

  

So, when Paul told me the lawnmower died, I expected that he would just fix it.  But this time, the frame just fell apart. Then the hunt for a new lawnmower began.  It's easy now, just go on-line and do some research, which he did all weekend and on Monday we bought a new one.

It was a Cub Cadet, (not self propelled) and came from Taplin in West Springfield.  It cost $286.86.  Maybe this one will see us out!

A funny little story about Paul's rocks

Today, our landscaper/friend Joel came to do the Spring cleanup of the front of our house.  When we took out the huge bushes in the front of our house in 2012, Joel designed the front and has taken care of it in the Spring and Fall ever since.

He decided that I needed something on the driveway side that was "of interest" in the winter because everything else died down then.  He said that he noticed that we had a stone wall behind the deck and wondered if he could use one or two of them.

Paul told him the story of those stones. Years ago, when we would go on a ride, we would bring home a rock and Paul built a stone wall with them.  Each rock was numbered on the bottom and he kept track in a book where each rock came from. In fact, one time one of Mark's friends was at the house and they got talking about the rocks.  Knowing Paul, his friend (I can't remember who it was but I think it was Mark Severino) said, "He probably has them all numbered."  Mark said, "Actually he does."  They got quite a laugh out of that.

Joel also said that he saw some pavers (from our neighbor Judy when she re-landscaped her yard) under our deck when he was getting the rocks and he wondered if we would like him to make a border with them on the driveway side.  We said that we would love it.

Well, while Joel was taking one of those rocks out of the wall and hosing it down, we were backing down the driveway leaving to do an errand, and Joel yelled down the driveway, "Number 124."  Too funny.

Later that evening when we got home, we saw that he had not only done the rocks, but also the paver edge.  I sent him a text to thank him.

We both thought it was hysterical about rock 107 and 124, and the 3rd rock that wasn't numbered!

PS  The next day I took a picture of what he did.  Doesn't it look nice?  Joel's the best!

Throwback Thursday - Paul's attempt at wine making!

This is a picture of a closet in the hallway of our first apartment, Belden Ct, Apt L4, Agawam, MA.  The date on the back of the picture is September 1970.

Paul was working at Rocky's and he bought a wine making kit and used it twice.  One time he used Welch's Grape Juice, and the other time he used apple cider from Derby's Cider Mill.  He followed the directions and then put it in the closet.  After a while it started to make a noise.  From my memories, it sounded like a big burp.  It was something called a fermentation lock, which allowed the gases to escape.

When it was finally "done", we tasted it and thought that it had come out bad.  Neither of us were drinkers, technically we weren't even old enough to drink, lol.  We had no idea what it was supposed to taste like, but we didn't think it was supposed to taste like that!

Years later, after having tasted "real" wine, we decided that maybe that wine wasn't bad, but the way it was supposed to taste.

Every time I think back on that story it brings a smile to my face.  I'm sure we had people over during the fermentation process when the wine "burped".  I wonder what we told them?

Throwback Thursday - The tree in our backyard

In May we had our tree in the backyard taken down.  It was very sad for me.

We bought our house in the Spring of 1973.  That Summer Paul and his Aunt Judy dug up three small maple trees from her property in Granby, CT.  We planted two trees in the back yard and one in the front yard.  The one in the front is the only one still standing.  One of the trees came down in a bad thunderstorm years ago when the kids were teenagers.  We came home from church Sunday night and the tree was down.  Luckily it fell right between our pool and the carport with no damage.

Last fall we started noticing that the base of another tree was black.  Paul thought it might have been hit by lightning.  Our landscaper said it was from ants and put down something to kill the ants.

This winter we noticed that pieces of the bark were falling off.  In the Spring Paul called a tree service and they said that the tree might last another year but then it would be harder to take down.

This picture was taken in the summer of 1973 soon after the tree was planted.  Kristen was almost a year old.  My thought was that I would take a picture of her every year on her birthday next to this tree.  It lasted one year, ha ha!

These are pictures of the tree coming down.

Our Wall of Fame

These pictures are on one wall in our family room.  It all started when we had our first family picture taken for a pictorial directory for our church.  My in-laws, and also my grandmother and my aunt Dot had their pictures done too.  An idea formed in Paul's head to put these pictures on the wall and then add some of our relatives.  His plan was to go back to our children's great-great grandparents on both sides. Included are 13 of our children's 16 great-great grandparents.

Over the years I have forgotten who a lot of these people are.  Paul seems to remember them and I have been after him to write down all of the names and how they are related to us.

This winter we did just that.  

From top - left to right by row:

1. Charles T. Sanderson II, Irma Beatrice Sanderson’s brother. He ran a bulldozer in Plymouth, MA

2. Ray Lee Higgins and his mother Laura E. Mann, father and grandmother of Jean Martha Higgins

3. William Ross Harper, grandfather of Jean Martha Higgins

4. Nelson Bessete, father of Lucien (Lucy) Agnes Bessette

5. Grace Greenwood, mother of George Herbert Ramsdell, Sr.

6. Charles William Ramsdell, father of George Herbert Ramsdell, Sr.

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7. Helena Pillkuhn, mother of Edward August Radtke

8. Bernard Ferren Wait and his descendants (see color coded picture with names in Family Tree Maker) at 25 Pine St., Greenfield, MA

9. Berta Dill, mother of Frederick Ferdinand Radtke, and her mother Lousise Wilhelmina Weinberg, brother Wilhelm Dill, and sister

10. Lucien (Lucy) Bessette and her mother Linda (Clarinda) LaBarge

11. Johann Friedrich Dill and his wife Lousise Wilhelmina Weinberg, parents of Berta Dill

12. Edward August Radtke and his wife Berta Dill, parents of Frederick Ferdinand Radtke

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13. George Herbert Ramsdell, Sr. and his wife Irma Beatrice Sanderson, with children Priscilla Grafton, George Herbert, Jr., Marjorie Ellen, and Robert Trenchard

14. Bessette sisters, baby Lucien (Lucy), Aldora, Sadie, and Marion

15. Lucy Agnes Bessette and Dorothy Margaret Wait

16. Mark Edward Radtke and Kristen Anne Radtke

17. George Herbert Ramsdell, Sr. riding an Indian motorcycle in front of the Indian Motorcycle Company, Spfld MA

18. Donald Merz Wait and his wife Lucien (Lucy) Agnes Bessette with their children David Reed, Dorothy Margaret, and Esther Ruth at Esther and Bob Lundstrom’s home in Norwich, CT

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19. Charles Trenchard Sanderson, father of Irma Beatrice Sanderson

20. Donald Merz Wait in Western Union truck

21. Priscilla Grafton Ramsdell and Frederick Ferdinand Radtke

22. Paul Frederick Radtke and his wife Deborah Jean Waite with children Kristen Anne Radtke and Mark Edward Radtke

23. Edward August Radtke and Ferdinand (Nante) Radtke in WWI

24. Eleanor Harper with her children Jean Martha Higgins, Lee Higgins, and Ross Harper Higgins

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25. Eleanor A. Radtke and Nancy Jane Radtke at Priscilla and Fred’s House, 25 Yale Ave., Feeding Hills, MA

26. Bernard Ferren Wait in Florida

27. Dora Louisa Merz, wife of Bernard Ferren Wait

28. Irma Beatrice Sanderson, wife of George Herbert Ramsdell, Sr.

29. Donald Merz Wait and Lucien Agnes Bessette, Mohawk Trail State Forest, MA

30. Ellen Eddy Pierce, wife of Charles Trenchard Sanderson and mother of Irma Beatrice Sanderson

***Update - For Christmas 2017 Paul and I made a Chatbooks book for Kristen and Mark with info on all of the people on this Wall of Fame.  We tried to include everything that we knew about these people, not just their names and how they are related to them.  I was so happy with how it turned out.

40 Years Ago Today....

I can't believe that we have lived in our house for 40 years. 

It was the winter of 1973.  We were living in a two bedroom apartment.  Kristen was about 5 months old.  In the apartment below us lived a couple of Springfield Kings hockey players.  When they would win a game they would really party, loudly, late into the night.  After one sleepless night I remember Paul getting up in the morning and saying that he thought we should buy a house. 

40 years ago today, Friday, April 13, 1973, we signed papers on our house and moved in that weekend...and we have been here ever since. 

This was our house in August, 1973.



In 1981 we added a second floor to our house.

Our house last September, 2012.

I have loved living here.  Our neighborhood was a wonderful place to raise children.  There were 26 houses on a circle.  Most of us were young couples with children. 

Now it is a great neighborhood to have our kids and grandkids visit.  Many happy memories here.  Here's to many more!

New front planting

So...remember when I posted on August 19th that the front shrubs came out that day? Well, we asked Mark's landlord, who owns a landscaping business, if he would design the new front planting. He asked us what we were basically looking for and then designed it. He has been working on it since this past Wednesday. Yesterday, while we were at the zoo, he finished it. I took these pictures last night.







I just love it! He did an amazing job.

Throwback Thursday - 42 Oleander St.

Over the last year, since Dot moved to the Atrium, we have been very slowly breaking up her home. It has been a sad process for me. The whole family, including my Dad and my aunt Ettie, have been to the condo, choosing things that they wanted.

This past week we met with a realtor, and the process is in motion to sell her condo.

Yesterday, we moved the last of her furniture out. One of the things that I took was the highboy that was in my room at 42 Oleander St. There were so many things in Dot's condo that go back to that home, things that I remember.

I wish that I had been into blogging and scrapbooking earlier in my life. I wish I had more pictures. My aunt Dot took a lot of pictures but, like most people, they were pictures that she took of events and people. If there was a picture of a room, it was just incidental. I wish I had more pictures of the rooms at 42 Oleander St. and what was in those rooms.

I am trying to take more pictures of everyday, ordinary life. Who knows, maybe someday my kids and grandchildren will find this interesting. Or, maybe I'm just weird and they will all wonder what in the world I took these pictures for. I'm not taking any chances though!

I am ready to start cleaning....

When I got laid off from work I thought I would spend the winter cleaning and organizing my house. I can't believe it is mid February and I haven't done anything substantial; just bits and pieces. Today I started my systematic approach, starting in the bedroom. I'll keep you posted!

All that is left is the tree....

Believe it or not, today I put away the rest of our Christmas decorations. Everything except the Christmas tree, that is. The Christmas tree needs some repair work. Some of the branches have broken off from the central stem and need to be either hose clamped, or zip tied. The hose clamp list is a story for another day, but Paul has a list of all of the things he has hose clamped. It usually brings gales of laughter to whoever he reads it to!! I think zip ties are taking over repair jobs lately though.

Anyhow......everyting else is put away. I decided to leave my new Willow Tree nativity out this year. I just can't put it away yet.

Marley's room, before and after....

Marley asked me if I would help her clean her room. I told her the next Sunday that Mark, Janelle and Mason were not coming for dinner that I would. Today was the day! Toby and Kris made dinner, and Marley and I cleaned, and cleaned, and cleaned.

This is before,



and this is after.



Marley was a real trooper. She worked right along with me the whole time. Later, on the way to Bible Quiz at church I asked her if she was tired. She said, "No." I was exhausted!

Her room looked really good though.



I think she was happy!

Cleaning....

I decided when I got laid off in November that I would spend the winter cleaning my house!

This food closet has been bugging me for awhile. I spent the last few days cleaning it out and now it makes me happy!

First snowstorm of the season

I had to work today (my last Saturday) and took this picture on the way home. They had been predicting a heavy, wet snowstorm for a couple of days. They also said that there would be a very good chance of power outages. An hour after I got home (4:30 p.m.) the power went out.

***Update - Little did we know at the time that we would be without power at our house from Saturday afternoon until Tuesday night. Mark and Janelle didn't get power until Friday.

These pictures were taken on Sunday, October 30, of our tree in the front yard. We were pretty lucky. We had limbs come down on three of our trees but nothing that couldn't be salvaged.




In the whole time that we have lived in our house, I don't remember a power outage of this magnitude. I will never take electricity for granted again!