52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History - Week 4 - Home - Brewster Avenue

Brewster Avenue, Braintree, Massachusetts

There is a special home I would like to share with you for this week's challenge from Amy Coffin at the We Tree Genealogy blog. The goal is to talk about the home in which you spent your childhood, but when you are attached to the military, you live in an awful lot of homes. One year for school, I gathered the names of all of the places my father had lived while he was growing up. Because his father was a career army officer, he lived in twenty-five homes before he was sixteen. (Oh, how I wish I had saved that school report!) 

We were a military family for only part of my growing years and so lived in far fewer than twenty-five homes, but there were still quite a few. My very first home in Butzbach, Germany, is described in a post here. When we arrived back in the United States in January of 1968, we lived temporarily with my father's parents on Brewster Avenue in Braintree, Massachusetts. Brewster Avenue was my father's last childhood home and the place where he attended high school and made some life long friendships. It is also the last home that my grandparents shared as my grandfather, Stanley, passed away just a year after we lived with them. We were very lucky to have that time with him. Yes, this is an important home to share. 

Barbara & Stanley on the steps of 132 Brewster Avenue

We lived in Braintree for only a couple of months, while my parents looked for a place to live in Springfield, Massachusetts. The house was small, but elegant; each room carefully decorated with pretty vignettes.

My favorite room was the cozy den in the back of the house next to the flagstone patio area. One of these years I am going to build a patio like it in our backyard. The den was filled with all of my favorite things; books, pictures, papers and antiques. Often while visiting my grandmother when I was a teenager, we would take our dinner on t.v. trays in this room and watch Mary Tyler Moore on the small black and white television. 

cozy den is the room to the left

Back when we lived in Braintree though, things were much more formal than t.v. trays. My kids probably don't even know from t.v. trays. They seem to think any flat surface in the house is a dinner table. Why would they even need a t.v. tray? I am sure you can sense the sarcasm. Anyway, according to my mother, each evening while living in Braintree, we were expected to dress for dinner, which was not a casual affair. I can just imagine my kids' faces if I asked them to go upstairs and change before dinner.

Mary, Grandma and Me

Even though we don't dress for dinner today at our house, there are little vignettes, as well as books, pictures, papers and antiques in almost every room. Many of the treasures from Brewster Ave have found new places here, as well as with my sister and with my parents, little reminders of a home we loved.


Thank you for reading!


Scrappy Gen

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History - New Year's Memories

How I wish I had just one small, grainy photo to show you of my most vivid family New Year's memory. Unfortunately I was never allowed to attend the coveted event held every year at my Grandma and Bubba's house, the party which I know for sure included steaks for all, lots of noise and laughter and other mysterious and nebulous items. My sister, Mary, says that our parents told us that our grandparents needed a break from us. Can you imagine needing a break from these two girls? Well...maybe the one on the left. Just kidding Mary!

Here is what I think and, Mom or Dad; you can correct me if I am wrong. These were big parties. Bubba was a police officer in Bristol, Connecticut for many years and he had a lot of friends. Plus, he had a very large family including six siblings and their spouses and children. As far as I know, everyone was invited to these New Year's parties and I think my parents might have tried to avoid the crowd and the entire hullabaloo. Am I getting close, Mom? Dad? It's okay if Grandma and Bubba didn't really need a break from us and you just told us that. I loved our own intimate New Year's tradition and cherish the memory of them.

While other kids' parents left them with babysitters and went out on the town to celebrate the New Year, my parents always spent a quiet night home with Mary and me. They made it festive, with special appetizers; shrimp cocktail and shrimp dip with Social crackers were always on the menu. Sometimes my Dad's Mom, Grandma B, came and joined us. Without using words, you told us we were important to you and that you would rather be there with us welcoming the New Year, than anywhere else. This was a powerful message.

Home with my husband, kids and dogs is still my favorite place to be on New Year's Eve. For years we celebrated with friends from college, rotating houses, but the kids are growing up now and it isn't possible to throw them all together once a year and expect them to play. Now, sometimes we get together with local friends, sometimes we attend First Night, but we always spend it with our kids. This year we were lucky enough to have all three home with us. Two of our crew fell asleep early, but I will always remember the belly laughs I shared with my oldest and youngest as we traded jokes and kept ourselves awake until Midnight. Nothing could have made the night better. Another memory to cherish.

Happy New Year! 

Scrappy Gen

PS I have neglected my blogging duty to thank Amy Coffin of the We Tree blog for creating the series 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History. (See comment below.) Thank you Amy! I am very excited to be taking part.