Memories – It's All About Family

Family Worship

The topic for week 13 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is – Worship.

My maternal and paternal sides of my family have always been catholic. I have no church records of their marriages in the United States but I have baptism records for almost all of my parents’ siblings. My Posluszny family likely attended St. Mary’s Church in Yonkers New York as it was the oldest Catholic Church and about a half mile from their Jefferson Street home.

After their move to Wallingford, my Great Aunt Mary Posluszny Biega and her family attended St. Casimer’s Polish National Church. There was/is also a Polish Catholic Church, Saints Peter & Paul in Wallingford so I’m not sure of their decision to go to one over the other – possibly location. My Aunt Judy talked about my grandmother acting in the plays at St. Casimer’s with my Great Aunt Mary (her sister-in-law) directing, so I’m assuming she attended that church! At some point, my mother’s family switched to Holy Trinity Church. I speculate it had something to do with my cousin Judy, the first grandchild, attending Holy Trinity School in the mid-1940s. There would be 13 Posluszny related cousins attending the school over the course of 40 years.

The Biega family and my great grandmother Carolina Posluszny/Bonk continued at St. Casimer’s and are buried in its cemetery. While Holy Trinity has a beautiful spacious cemetery not far from the center of town, St. Casimer’s is off an industrial road on the south end of town near the highway and train tracks. In fact, you used to cross over the tracks at section WITHOUT ANY GATE OR SIGNAL. Yes, I put that in all caps because our neighbors (father, daughter, and son-in-law) were hit by a train while crossing the tracks in their car in 1992. That amazes me that the crossing was still allowed in the 1990s.

Interesting aside about Holy Trinity Church…I met an older woman years ago while on a work appointment. She was Italian and grew up in the Colony Street area of Wallingford. She said Holy Trinity Church was started by the Irish in Wallingford in 19847 and a brief rundown of the priests in the church’s history reads like a Dublin phone book – McGarisk, O’Reilly, Teevens, Quinn. The Italians were not made to feel very welcome in the church so they created their own women’s society within the church. Perhaps that’s why the town still has two Polish churches!

Once my paternal Jakiela side settled in Southington CT, they attended The Church of the Immaculate Conception where my Uncles Steve and Eddie made their first communion.

After my grandmother Antonia died, my grandfather and his five children moved to Wallingford and they began attending Saints Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Church. My dad, his brother Walter, and his sister Helen all made their first communion there. The boys were altar boys and Helen cleaned the altar for the priest.

*Helen – 2nd row 4th from left abt. 1930*

After their father died tragically in 1935 the priest worked with Steve, the oldest sibling, to be sure the family stayed together by offering to “be their guardian” in the event the state tried to separate them. Thankfully that didn’t happen!

My Uncle Steve’s family must have continued to attend Sts. Peter and Paul after their first two children were born. Charles, their oldest, wanted to attend Holy Trinity School. In order to get free or discounted tuition, they needed to be parishioners of Holy Trinity Church as so they did. That began a Jakiela tradition of all eight Wallingford cousins graduating from Holy Trinity School.

As a family, my parents, sisters and I went to Holy Trinity Church every Sunday for the 9:15am mass. We sat in the same general area and looked the back of the same heads every week. We also attended mass with our classes for holy days. I enjoyed walking down the hill to the church on those days! I was not crazy about going to mass every Sunday and wished that we took a summer break from church like we did with school. Even when we were on vacation, we went to Sunday mass at the local church!

After mass we would head to Boylan’s Market to pick up the Sunday newspapers – New Haven Register, New York Daily News, and a Boston paper – and drop off a paper to our grandmother and Aunt Tootsie.

We all made our first communion and I was annoyed we didn’t get to wear pretty dresses like Janice did! we made our confirmations and had our 8th grade graduations at church as well. Janice and Gail both were married at Holy Trinity.

When my mother died in April of 1987, her funeral mass was one of the last times I attended church before I moved to California that October. I didn’t stop because I was upset with God or anything but I was going because I didn’t want to disappoint my mother. Weird I guess, but we do what we do.

My father continued to attend of course and looking back I really admire his faith. Not the “I have faith in you” kind, but his religious faith. It’s not always easy. He started attending the late Saturday afternoon mass and afterwards, he would drop off the mass bulletin to my Aunt Tootsie, my mother’s oldest sister. He probably did that right up until his heart surgery.

He died in 2010 on Palm Sunday. The nursing home distributed palms that morning and they were in his room when he died. I still have them. As he told the medium in the first reading I had, “I died an angel’s death Phil”, meaning he didn’t feel anything, he didn’t suffer. Fitting for a person who worshipped until the end.

Years of Technology

The Topic for week 12 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is Technology!

Who better to talk about how technologies have changed than me! I was born in 1960, 64 years ago and over that time there have been a lot of changes in technology.

In 1963, John Glenn orbited Earth, and in 1969 Neil Armstrong walked on the moon! In the 1990s, the International Space Station was created and now in the 2000s, astronauts are living aboard the station for long periods.

Closer to home, 0ne of our first family cars that I remember was a Chrysler New Yorker, handed down from Aunt Tootsie. It had push buttons on the dashboard for P-N-D-R. Over the years, our cars have changed to transmission on the steering wheel, to on the center console, back to the steering column, and pushing in a button to park! High beams used to be a button on the floor and now they’re another lever on the steering column. And, let’s talk about automatic lights! That dial on the dashboard with an automatic option for lights is a lifesaver for people who forget to turn them on.

I learned to type when I was about 12, sitting on the floor using my Aunt Tootsie’s portable typewriter, typing whatever I could copy. When I was 24, the organization I worked for bought computers for the accounting department and an IBM Word Processor. It was big and clunky, and I had to name the document before I even knew what I was typing about and it was only for typing documents. Everything was saved onto 5-1/4 floppy disks. Since then we’ve progressed to desktop computers, laptop computers, Ipads, with or without their own keyboards, and cell phones that can do everything a computer can!

Growing up, we had one telephone in our house and it was in the kitchen. As we turned into teenagers, we got a very, very long cord for the phone so it could travel as privacy required. I don’t think it was until we moved back to this house that we had a second phone in the house! But along the way, we progressed to portable phones that you could walk around the house and talk on the phone! Now you won’t find many houses that have a “landline” because everyone has a cell phone!

I hope you enjoyed this trip down my technology memory lane!

Family Treasures

The topic for week 8 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is – Heirlooms.

The definition of a Heirloom is a valuable object that has belonged to a family for several generations. Since my great-grandmother was the farthest back generation to immigrate in the early 1900s, I’ll have to go with what I have, but I still think they are pretty important!

Pictures. I have a lot of pictures! Professionally taken including family groupings from the early 1910s, first communions from the early 1920s, weddings, and family photos collected in multiple albums by my mother growing up in the mid-1920s and early 1930s, and beyond. In addition to those, I have videos from the early 1930s through the 1970s which I wrote about in an earlier post here.

When I started research in 2000, my Aunt Tootsie (Antoinette) was the Family Historian. She was the oldest Posluszny sibling and lived in the family home on Clifton Street from the purchase in 1925 until she moved to a Judd Square apartment in 1989. I often sat with her to discuss the family and the people in the pictures. Dates and seeing how far your lineage stretches back are fun, but my interest has always been the stories and photos. Who they were as people and as a family. Who we most resemble. I try to imagine what life was like in Yonkers and Connecticut in that time frame. I guess that’s why I love where I live so much because this is where they lived their lives.

I’m grateful over the years to acquire more photos from my Jakiela cousins, through my ancestry contacts, and through unexpected DNA matches! I’ll continue to share more pictures and stories as I create some order to my accumulated files and notebooks.

My Family Influencer

The theme for week 5 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is “Influencer”.

The definition of Influencer is “a person or thing that influences another”. That person could be none other than my mother, Elizabeth Posluszny Jakiela.

She was born in 1922, the youngest of five children with an age gap of five years between her and her sister.

After high school she went to a business school and learned bookkeeping and worked at one of the several silver factories in the area. She got married while working there and continued to work until pregnant with my older sister. Eighteen months later, she had me and my twin sister.

When I started fourth grade, she went back to work, first for a temp agency and then a permanent job so she juggled family and work.

When my dad purchased the paint store he had worked at for years, she jumped right in to take care of the bookkeeping, heading to the store after her day was done at her paying job.

Even with this, she found time to volunteer at school events, participated in women’s church groups, school groups, and was an assistant troop leader for our Girl Scout troops.

When our church began running a carnival in the early 1970s, she jumped right in to volunteer wherever she was needed. Only a few years went by before she was selected to be the chairman of the event. She never backed down from a challenge and she loved being a part of it and continued to volunteer up until she passed away.

My sisters and I all got married and raised our children, found the time to volunteer in their schools and in our community.

Personally, I went to school to be an administrative assistant and have worked with my husband for 25 years in his remodeling business as his bookkeeper and office manager. I definitely inherited that from her!

My mother will be gone 37 years on April 4th and I know she would be proud of the influence she had on her three girls, and her grandchildren in turn.

My Favorite Photo

This subject is number 3 on the list of “52 Ancestors in 52 weeks for 2024” created by Amy Johnson Crow. Week wise, I’m a little late to the party, but who cares – as long as I show up!

So my favorite photo is this one:

This is a photo of my dad, John, and his oldest brother, Steve. It was taken approximately 1936 when my dad was 12 and Steve was 23. Look at the smiles, look at Steve’s arms over my dad’s shoulders holding him close, and look at my dad’s hands reaching back to hold his brother’s legs.

If my timing is correct, this was about a year after their father was killed in a hit and run accident not far from home. Eight years previous to that, in 1927, their mother died from pregnancy complications when my dad was not quite 3.

That hit and run left 5 children, ages 23, 21, 15, 14, and 12 orphans. Life was definitely not easy for them before their father died, but it got worse the night the policeman banged on their door to tell them their father was dead.

Steve, at 23, became their guardian. Family stories say the priest at the church they attended, St. Peter and Paul’s Catholic Church, offered to be their guardian (in name) in the event there was an attempt to break them up. John and his brother Walt were alter boys and Helen cleaned the alter during the week so he knew them well. I don’t think it ever came to that.

They continued to live in the little brown house on Prince Street in Wallingford and Steve had a job as a meat cutter nearby. In 1937, Steve married Florence whose family lived on the corner and he brought them into the marriage.

Steve was a father to all of them and I’m sure it was difficult as a newly married couple to have teenagers in the house so soon! Life wasn’t always easy but he and Florence made a home for them.

I see such true affection in their expressions and that’s what makes this my favorite photo.

Family Lore: Fact or Fiction

This is the first of my posts for 52 Ancestors and the topic is Family Lore. The moment I read it, my mind went back to the year 2000 when I started my journey to research my Jakiela, Liro, Posluszny, and Ingram family history.

The definition of Lore is: “a body of traditions and knowledge on a subject or held by a particular group, typically passed from person to person by word of mouth.” I don’t think that rings any truer than for my Jakiela side of my family.

Charles and Antonia, my grandparents married in June of 1912. They had two children, Steven in 1913 and Edward in 1915 by the time Charles headed off for World War I in 1917. When he returned, they had three more children, Helen in 1920, Walter in 1922, and John (my dad) in 1924.

The short version: in 1927, Antonia died from a miscarriage and after a move from Southington to Wallingford, CT, Charles died in 1935 in a hit and run accident as he walked along the side of a road at night. That second family tragedy made 22 year old Steven and four siblings orphans. What would they remember of family stories and traditions? What would they pass down to their children?

The children of my Uncle Steve have give me the most information. As the oldest, Steve would have been “the keeper of family possessions”. My Uncle Eddie and my Auntie Helen both gave me information in sit-down interviews I did with them and I would ask my Auntie Helen all sorts of questions to get her talking when I would take her to the grocery store or a doctor’s visit.

Here is some of that family lore:

My grandmother Antonia and her sister Aniela in Massachusetts were twins. They were NOT twins, in fact, Aniela was born in 1871 and Antonia was born in 1890.

Charles had been a writer for a Polish newspaper in Chicago before moving to Southington. No, Charles’s destination from Poland was Southington but there’s no record he settled there before heading to Palmer, Massachusetts to work in the textile mill where he met Antonia. Now, he might not have been a newspaper writer but according to Auntie Helen, on a regular basis he would write to the government asking for his pension from WWI to be increased.

Charles was injured in WWI when a forgotten ammunition exploded under their train as they were heading home from France and he had a scar on his head from front to back. I don’t know the truth of this, but it was relayed to me by Auntie Helen. He was flung into the river and would have drowned but he was saved by fellow soldiers.

Steven left school after his grammar school graduation, after his siblings had been scattered among relatives, and gathered them together to live as a family again. Very “Party of Five”-ish but no. The story might be mistaken for what happened when their mother died in 1927. Steve and Eddie stayed with their father. Helen and Walt went to Uncle Joe Mikula who was the widower of Antonia’s sister in Palmer Mass. John was not yet 3, and he went to the home of his godmother, Amelia Marcieniec in Southington. Once Charles, Steve, and Eddie got settled in Wallingford, Charles went and brought the younger siblings back home.

Steve, at 22, kept the family together. The priest at St. Peter’s and Paul Church in Wallingford said he would sponsor them if anyone tried to break the family up. The first is very true. Eddie was 20, Helen 15, Walt 13, and John turning 11. The family remained together. John and Walt did spend time in Palmer Massachusetts with their Uncle John in the summer, and their cousins Walt and Stanley Mikula were known to have spent time in Wallingford. Eddie got married in 1936 and left the family to live in Meriden. Steve and Florence Liedke who lived on the corner of their street, got married in 1937 and Helen, Walt, and John moved in with them.

Steve “fibbed” his way into a job as a meat cutter at a market. The 1930 census when he was 16 says that he was not attending school and was working as a salesman at a meat market, so there might be truth to the story he left school after 8th grade. Very possible, as his father had trouble keeping his jobs. It’s likely that’s how he got the job and he went on to become the premier meat cutter at Caplan’s Market in Wallingford until he retired. The man knew his cuts of meat!

Cousin Steve’s Liberty Deli in Southington was in the same location that the family lived at in 1918. Oh yeah, that’s true! Not really family lore, more of a Fun Family Fact. 31 Liberty Street.

We are of Polish royalty. Well, I can’t deny that all we Jakiela girls are Queens, and Jakiela in Polish is Jagiello (Ya-GAY-wah), and The Jagiellon dynasty, family of monarchs of Poland-Lithuania, Bohemia, and Hungary became one of the most powerful in east central Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. It was ruled by King Wladislaw II Jagiello and Queen Jadwiga. So maybe there is some truth to that tale.

This is some of the family lore that has been accumulated over the 23 years since I first started researching my family. It’s been fun putting it all in one place and I hope you enjoy it!

It’s All About Family All Year Long

I’m starting, and hopefully I will complete, a “challenge” called 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks #52Ancestors.

I’ve been spending more time on my other site Thoughts From the Passenger Seat writing about thoughts that pop into my head, or answering the daily prompts. It’s easier! I don’t have to dig through the paperwork or get frustrated searching on Ancestry.

But I miss it….and I bet you do too!

Starting this week I’ll be writing one story a week based on the prompt provided. It won’t always be dates and facts and it could be about any one in my family – maybe even you!

Conversations with Aunt Judy – Part 3

I hope you’ve enjoyed the stories of my Aunt Judy I’ve shared so far. The explanation of how they came to be is here and the second part about her family growing up is here. Catch up and then join in!

So this part of the conversation between Aunt Judy, her niece “Little Judy” and her nephew, Jack involves Aunt Judy growing up and her marriage and life with Uncle Mal – Malcolm Bellafronto.

What was the hardest thing you ever did? My Hair. No one has any idea of the life I had.

I lost my hair when I was a year old! 1917 during the war, everyone was getting typhoid, so when I lost my hair they figured I’d get it back, but I never did. My mother was taking me down to Yale-New Haven clinic for observation, by then I was 8 or 9 years old. I had eyebrows and eyelashes and I had to sit there with all the doctors standing around trying to figure out what was wrong. They couldn’t find any reason except alopecia, yet they said, it was not really, because I had eyebrows and eyelashes! When I hit puberty, I got pubic hair and hair under my arms but as I got older, everything left. They said I would get it when I hit puberty, which wasn’t true, but I’m glad they did because I always had the hope that when I was a teenager, I’d get that hair so at least I wasn’t in despair.

My mother made a white hat for me but they’d pull it off my head and call me Baldy and everything – and they were my peers. Then when I got older, cripes, I wore that kooky wig. I got hit in the forehead playing basketball and it got knocked off and there were all the boys in the stands. One time the wind caught it while I was walking up Center Street and I had to go chasing it!

When I see them getting these wigs for these kids, I tell you, I am so glad. I told my kids once they could understand, I swear if I ever hear you make fun of anyone with an infirmity, you will get beat until you are black and blue. I told them why. You have no idea how tough it is on a kid, especially a girl. When I see these things about stuff like that being funny, I think, You have no idea. That is not funny at all. But like I said, I had so many other blessings.

What are some of the fun times? The best thing that ever happened to me was Mal. I think if I had not found someone who loved me so deeply…once we were horsing around and it (the wig) fell off, and of course, I went into tears. he said “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you think I know?” Well, knowing and seeing are 2 different things. But to have him love me and think I was so wonderful was really the best thing to happen to me. Had I not married him, I probably would have wound up a crabby old maid! I never can complain about my life.

50th Wedding Anniversary 1939 / 1989 tap for full picture!

Aunt Judy and Uncle Mal were very close with her brother Lou and his wife Irene. They traveled together, had summer cottages next door to each other, and all retired to the same location in Florida.

How did Lou and Mal meet? They both played football. Lou was quarterback, and Mal was center. Connie (her oldest brother) also played.

How did you and Uncle Mal meet? When I was drunk! It wasn’t love at first sight. The next time I saw him he said “I owe you something”. When I asked what, he said, “You said you’d give me a kiss if I scored a touchdown, and I didn’t so I have to give it back”. We grew on each other and I never thought I’d marry an Italian! When I went to New York to go shopping with my cousins over Easter he came to the house 2 or 3 times a day to see if I was home yet! We started going steady after that.

How did he propose? I don’t remember anything big. Once you started going steady that was usually it and the first gift you received was a cedar chest. He was carrying around a ring for awhile and I finally asked him when the heck he was going to give it to me because I wanted to wear it before the wedding!

What do you think your family thought of Uncle Mal? He was concerned about what my family thought of him. I asked him why and he said, “well, you know, Polish and Italians don’t get along”. I told him well, we’re also German! Finally I called out, “Hey Ma – I got a problem”, Mom said “What’s your problem?”. I said, “Mal wants to know what you think of him”. She said, “what do you mean what do I think of him?” “Well, he’s Italian!” Mom said, “So?”. Mom loved Mal.

Helen Evon, Judy, Betty (her sister) August 9, 1939

My mom was like that. Very liberated for her time. If someone said you couldn’t go to another church, she’d say, “that’s a lot of nonsense. God is in every church, not just in our church!”

What did the Bellafronto family think of you? They tolerated me and they had to because…No, I think my mother in law liked me but she was very domineering. She was born in the United States and went to Italy on a visit and met Mal’s dad, and they got married. Mal loved his dad dearly and was the only one in the family who did. For years and years we would go to their house for a meal and he’d come downstairs, eat and go back up! We were shocked that he came to our wedding. When his mother was dying, she took my hand and said you’re the best thing that every happened to my son. The family was different. You had to know them. They didn’t know how to mix. They were good to me though.

Mal, Judy, and Stephano (Augustine) Bellafronto May 1939

Uncle Mal was in World War II? Yes, he enlisted in the Navy in July of 1943 and went right away. We lived with my Mom, Dad, and Betty while he was gone. He was on a sub-chaser and spent 2-1/2 years in the Caribbean. The ship came back to California and was in dry dock so young Mal and I went out there to stay with him. We planned on staying with Tante Lizzie and Uncle Ben when he went back out. But shortly after the ship pulled out of the port, the Navy said Mal had enough points to go home! So we all came back to Connecticut.

Milly Bellafronto, Judy with Young Mal 1944

Mal, Judy, and young Mal returned to Wallingford to live after he got out of the Navy. They built a house on Lincoln Avenue in Wallingford around the corner from where my family would eventually live. In June of 1946 their son Robert Louis was born. They lived there until the mid-1970s when they retired to Florida with my Uncle Lou and Auntie Irene. My parents remained close to them after they moved and took a few trips down to Florida to visit with them.

What are you most proud of? My marriage. It was the best thing that every happened to me.

Aunt Judy was sassy. In hindsight, she was very similar to how my grandmother has been described! She told you how it was and didn’t hesitate to swear, and then laugh! She had a very infectious laugh and it was fun to listen to her stories.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these Conversations with Aunt Judy!

Conversations with Aunt Judy – The Prologue

Around 2009, my cousin Jack took the home movies that our Uncle Mal Bellafronto recorded and, I don’t know the magic involved, combined them onto DVDs with my Aunt Judy Bellafronto and my cousin, Judy Behme discussing what was recorded. These three DVDs range from the mid-1930s with Uncle Mal playing football for a local team through the late 1970s with my sisters and I cheerleading at a high school Thanksgiving Day game.

He gave the cousins each copies and they are something I treasure and find myself watching every couple of years. Each time I do, I find something else precious to view.

As I was once again organizing my “Family History” space which is one end of the room over our garage, I found an additional DVD that I’m sure I watched when we first received it. I popped it into the DVD slot on my 2008 Mac Desktop and started watching. Then quickly grabbed a notebook and a pen and started transcribing.

It is approximately 45 minutes of “The Judys”. Jack and Judy Behme (his sister and forever known as “Little Judy”) asked questions of their aunt’s life growing up, meeting Uncle Mal, and their marriage. I recognized some of the answers which I know I’ve shared here and there in the past but I didn’t appreciate the stories and details until now.

I’ll share the background and facts in this post and then over the next posts break it out in sections. So let’s start….

Julia Gertrude Posluszny was born on May 15, 1917 in Yonkers NY to Julianna (Ingram) and Konrad Posluszny. She was their fourth child and the second girl in the family. Her siblings were Antoinette (Tootsie 1909), Conrad (Connie 1910), Louis (Louie 1913).

The family moved from Yonkers around 1920 to East Hampton, MA, then to New Britain in 1921, and to Wallingford CT in 1925 where Konrad’s mother, stepfather, and half brother lived. They moved into a new home at 121 Clifton Street where family lived until 1988.

She went to school in Wallingford, graduated in 1935 and met and married Malcolm Bellafronto in 1939. They had 2 sons and resided in Wallingford in a house on Lincoln Avenue. In the late 70s/early 80s, Uncle Mal retired from teaching at a tech school and they moved to Florida where they lived happily for many years.

Uncle Mal passed away in January of 2002 at the age of 88. As Aunt Judy became elderly, she moved to New York, but first spent some time in Morocco living with her granddaughter and her family! Once in New York, she resided in a nursing home and passed away on December 24, 2016 just 6 months shy of her 100th birthday.

To my sisters and I growing up, she was our stylish aunt. We enjoyed going to her house and she made us outfits for Easter for a number of years. She and Uncle Mal had a cottage at Pickeral Lake we would visit frequently on Sundays during the summer and use the cottage for a week some summers.

She had a wonderful laugh and we loved to listen to her stories (and gossip!). The last time we saw her was in 2013 at our former cottage in Lebanon Ct for a family reunion when her granddaughter Cathy, husband Fred and their 4 children came to the U.S. Aunt Judy’s son Bob and I put together the event and Aunt Judy was there along with her son Mal and his two sons Mal (III) and Eric. She was 96 at the time (Impossible!) and as quick witted as ever.

I look forward to putting the questions and answers into story and hope you enjoy this journey with me!

July 4th Memories

From early childhood in the 1960s until my early 20s, our 4th of July was spent at our relatives’ cottages at Pickerel Lake in Colchester, Connecticut. They were owned by my mother’s sister and her husband and my mother’s brother and his wife. They were all good friends and found this property and decided to put two homes on it with a common staircase from the road and a shared beach area.

It was about 45 minutes from our home in Wallingford and even though we went frequently throughout the summer, the 4th of July was a special party. It was a family reunion!

Besides the regular cast of characters there were people we saw on this day only. From Wallingford, my grandfather’s sister Aunt Mary Biega and his half-brother Walter Bonk and his wife Bea were there every year. I thought for the longest time that she was his mother! Walt and Bea had 3 daughters and they would be there with their families.

From the Fairfield area were the “Fairfield Posts”. Although they were all born Posluszny, a few of the brothers changed their last name to Post. The Polish “L” has the ~ through it so they just lopped off the rest of the letters! Joseph and Anna would be there along with their adult children and families.

There would always hard rolls from New York Bakery in Wallingford that we would stuff with my mother’s sausage and peppers with a piece of cheese on top. Clam chowder, hot dogs and hamburgers and delicious desserts. Every one brought something to share.

The adults would play cards at the picnic table, and there would be horseshoes or bocci going on in the middle of everything because there wasn’t much flat space!

Kids would be swimming out to the raft to hang out or to play “Toss People Off the Raft”. There were rowboats, and a canoe to take out and Uncle Mal was always willing to take people out in his sunfish. He’d have his moccasins on his feet and pipe in his mouth as we sailed around the lake. There were tubes to float around in – remember when they used to be actual car tire tubes? – and the fish loved to bite your butt as you floated around! Each cottage had a motorboat and if we were lucky, we’d get to go out in it and every luckier, got to waterski.

Kids in the life raft we brought, someone in a big tube, and people on the raft. Uncle Mal’s motorboat and the canoe in the foreground. Way in the back you can see the big rock that of course we called Plymouth Rock.

I don’t recall having fireworks there as it definitely wasn’t like it is now with fireworks from June 1st through the end of summer! The sun would set and we would pack our belongings and head on home. Sometimes we would catch town fireworks going off as we drove home.

The relatives moved to Florida in the 80s and held on to the cottages to stay at in the summer for a few years but eventually sold them. By then we were off to our own 4th of July parties.

My husband and I had a summer cottage at a nearby lake for 12 years and one time we took our kayaks over to Pickerel Lake to paddle the lake and see the houses again. It was a nice trip down memory lane. The lake felt so much smaller than I remember and the opposite side of the lake that was always home free, had homes at one end! It was nice to see them one last time.

White House – Aunt Judy and Uncle Mal’s. Blue House – Auntie Irene and Uncle Lou

Every 4th of July I think back to those family reunions and the fun we had swimming and spending time together. I’m grateful that although we may not be together on the 4th, we continue to celebrate holidays together with these same people as we’ve grown older and had families of our own.