In April 1942, the United States conducted what is now known as the "Old Man's" draft registration. This registration was for men who were born between 1877 and 1897 - those who were 45-60 years old. The intent of this registration was to record the amount and skills of domestic manpower available for home front war support. Two of my great-grandfathers and two of my husband's great-grandfathers registered in this draft (click on pictures below for larger images). Each card lists the registrant's name, home address, date and place of birth, name and address of employer, and a person of close contact (usually a wife, sibling, or parent). The second page of the card also lists physical characteristics of the applicant. Because this occurred in 1942, these cards are a great way of keeping track of where your ancestors lived and worked in between the 1940 Census and the 1950 U.S. Census (which hasn't even been released to the public yet). Try looking up one of your relatives at FamilySearch.org. Dominik Kowalski, one of my paternal great-grandfathers: Louis (Luigi) Licciardi, one of my maternal great-grandfathers: Lawrence Brunswick, one of my husband's maternal great-grandfathers: Anthony A. Schroeder, one of my husband's paternal great-grandfathers:
I never really got to know my paternal grandmother; she passed away when I was only four years old. This was one of her tins. It's nothing fancy - just a painted Decoware tin with a few small rust spots and dents in it. But, other than the photos and documents I have uncovered via my genealogy research, it's the only thing of hers that I have, so it's special to me. My aunt gave it to me a couple years ago filled with a batch of my grandma's original-recipe chocolate chip and walnut cookies. That's a photo of them below. The story goes, my dad and his three siblings would squabble over whose cookies had more chocolate chips in them, so my grandmother just started putting exactly five in every cookie.
For those of you who haven't yet figured it out, quite often my blog posts are inspired by current events, holidays (mainstream or obscure), and famous people's birthdays or deaths. Well, today is McKayla Maroney's 17th birthday. If you don't remember, McKayla Maroney competed for the U.S. women's gymnastics team in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. She is probably the BEST vaulter ever to have come out of the American gymnastics program, but she fell on her bottom during the vaulting finals and ended up receiving the silver medal. This photo of her on the medal stand went viral and prompted countless memes with the caption "McKayla Maroney is not impressed." I say, BIG DEAL! I was making faces like that ten years before McKayla was even born. Here is a pic of one of my favorite 'I'm not impressed' moments. This photo was taken in the summer of 1985; I was six and a half years old. I don't know where we were, but I was either hot, bored, disgusted by the food, or (most likely) a combination of all three. Do you have a photo of yourself or other family member with an 'I'm not impressed!' expression? Share it with me!
©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder Kind of a last minute post for today, but I just had to do something in honor of Repeal Day. This is a photo of my Dad's parents, Cas and Veronica Kowalski, probably some time in the early 1940s. (My grandfather is third from the right, with his hand around my grandmother's waist.) As you can see, they are having a grand old time and enjoying their share of 'spirits.' My grandparents were kids when Prohibition was in effect, but I'm sure they must have remembered their parents and other elders discussing it. It's a shame I never got to ask them about it; I would have liked to know how my great-grandparents got around it. (They were Polish Catholic working-class immigrants - you're telling me they went 14 years without a drink? HA!) So, let's give a toast to Repeal Day! ©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder
The website Geneabloggers celebrates the holiday season by posting daily blogging prompts to help genealogy bloggers record holiday memories. When I have time, I am going to try to participate. Today's prompt is "The Christmas Tree." My family always bought a real tree. Every. Year. We lived in the suburbs so usually we would go out some Saturday shortly after Thanksgiving and drive to a tree farm in the boonies. I can't remember where we would go and I actually think it varied from year to year. It was usually pretty cold and sometimes there was already snow on the ground. We weren't picky about tree type - sometimes it was a fir and at other times it was a spruce - but we always got a big one. Not Chevy-Chase-Christmas-Vacation BIG, but still pretty big AND round. My dad usually had to saw off some of the top AND bottom so that it would vertically fit in our house. So, we'd strap it to the roof of our station wagon (or later our big 'ole red conversion van) and bring it home. Then the real fun would begin. See, the tree stand we had was old - it was metal, rusty, and crooked even WITHOUT a tree in it! My dad would situate himself at the bottom under the tree and at least two of us would have to hold the tree by the trunk while he screwed in the trunk. It usually took several tries of screwing and unscrewing the pins in and out before the tree was straight. And sometimes we STILL couldn't get it straight, at which point my dad would get some small pieces of scrap wood and prop them under the leaning side of the tree. Once the tree was "stable" in the stand, my parents would bring the decoration boxes out of the attic. First, the colorful strings of lights went on the tree (after my parents untangled them out of the box - usually not a small task!) Our favorites were always the bubble lights - the ones that started shooting up bubbles in the colored liquid after warming up. Then, the shiny garland went on the tree. Our garland was of different colors and varieties - some strands were so old that they were little more than strings with a few shiny tendrils left on them, and some of the strands were much more full. Then came the ornaments. Of course, this was always our favorite part as kids because this was where we could participate the most. Like the garland, we had a mish-mash of ornaments - some were antiques that my parents got from their parents, some were from craft shows, some were photos, some were personalized, some had been gifts, some we made at school, etc. It was always fun to pull them out of the boxes, unwrap them from the Kleenex tissues in which they were haphazardly stored, and remember the different times they represented. My dad would then get up on a chair and place the angel on top. Our angel was an antique and very fragile. She must have been made in the 30s or 40s - she had that Glinda-the-Good-Witch hairstyle. Usually, when we were done with ornaments and angel, my dad tried to coerce us to put some silvery tinsel on the tree as a finishing touch. That stuff got EVERYWHERE - what a mess it created! (You'll see on the photos above that there was NO tinsel on that tree - my mom must have won out that year!) Having a real tree in the house at Christmastime was pretty neat as a kid, and it made the house smell nice and piney. However, it was hell when it came to taking down the trimmings and getting the thing out to the curb for garbage pick-up. Even if you keep the stand full of water, after more than a month of being cut, the tree dries out, which leaves its needles extra sharp and prickley. Taking off the ornaments, garland, and lights literally hurt your hands and arms. Then, it usually took several of us to carry the thing to the door, at which point we usually would have to SHOVE it through. Oh, and during this whole process, dead pine needles fell ALL over the place - floor, furniture, toys, the dog's water bowl - whatever happened to be around. Our old Kirby vacuum cleaner was never able to pick them all up, which meant that we had to get down on our hands and knees and pick them up one by one. Tedious work, indeed.
After my husband and I bought our first home (we didn't even try to put a tree in our little apartment), we decided to go artificial. The fake ones look so authentic these days and they are SO much easier to set up and put away. Plus, they are much less expensive in the long term when compared with having to buy a cut tree every year. Our kids get just as much joy out of setting it up and decorating it as me and my siblings did with the real trees. ©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder Here I am with my brother and cousins at the "kiddie table" at our family's Thanksgiving dinner in 1984. I was 6 years old. Throughout the years, the kiddie table was THE place to eat - no one wanted to sit at the adult table and listen to them talk about taxes, politics, and the pathetic states of our sports teams. (Um, Cleveland - 'nuff said.) Instead, we wanted to be silly and talk about crappy 80s movies, ask ourselves, "What exactly IS in the beet mold?," and, most importantly, poke fun at our elder family members. As I got older, I was often plucked from the kiddie table and asked to sit with the adults when there was an opening - such were the perils of being the oldest. It wasn't much fun. I usually went back and at least ate dessert with my younger cousins.
©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder Wedding Day photo of my grandparents, Casimer Kowalski and Veronica Bodziony. The wedding took place on July 15, 1939 at Saint Hyacinth Church in Cleveland, Ohio. Their county marriage record is shown below (They misspelled my grandfather's first name.) Source Citation: Cuyahoga County Archive; Cleveland, Ohio; Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Marriage Records, 1810-1973; Volume: Vol 190; Page: 192; Year Range: 1895 Aug - 1941 Jun.
©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder Here I am on my first birthday. These photos have that nice 70s coloring to them. Of course, I don't remember any of it, but it must have been a happy time for my family. I was the first grandbaby on my dad's side of the family, my aunt was very pregnant with my cousin, and my mom was a couple of months pregnant with my brother. My mom's parents must have been pretty excited, too; they had an older grandson, but he lived in Tennessee and they didn't get to see him as often as they would have liked. I'm sure they enjoyed having a little one to visit and play with. ©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder
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