Australia Day memories

Greg has contributed a guest post about Australia Day:

With the sky over Sydney now clear of bushfire smoke, much of the heat has gone out of the public clatter about the warm weather we’ve been having – sorry, I mean about climate change – and the chatterati have turned their attention to the other staple of the Christmas holiday news vacuum, faux concern about the meaning, the true, deep, meaningful meaning of Australia Day.

Old New Australians—those whose ancestors got here before yours, so there!—line up to parade their grievances against newer New Australians, the class most of us inhabit. Still heavy with the season’s gluttony, grunting bogans rig up Chinese-made Aussie flags on their clapped-out Commodores, while in more leafy suburbs the Wokes of faux outrage, retrospective history-fixers, play Sensitive Snowflake over their pinot grigio.

It wasn’t always so. When I was a boy no one cared much about Australia Day. In January the Land of the Long Weekend was still half asleep after its holiday break, and apart from a few fussy citizens and sweaty politicians no one could be bothered to notice the reason for another day off work. Most people assumed it was something to do with Captain Cook’s landing in Sydney harbour.* Gallipoli may have come into it, or was that later in the year?

I asked Anne what she could remember about her Australia Days. She did her research:

 

Australia Day beach ball made in China

Beginning of Anne’s post

I thought I’d check my memories of Australia Day against Trove’s digitized newspapers.

The Canberra Times from 1926 to 1995 has been digitized and put online, so I looked at its Australia Day reports at five-year intervals from 1965 to 1985. Actually, to be honest, although I grew up in Canberra, I didn’t in fact attend any of the festivities the Times reported. Every summer we had our holidays at the beach, a hundred miles away. My Australia Day was my family’s Australia Day, hardly noticed, and rarely commented on.

[Below, where there is no image of a newspaper page or article I have hyperlinked in the text to the digitised image of the article at Trove.nla.gov.au]

In 1965 26 January fell on a Tuesday. The lead story concerned the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill. None of the stories on the front page were about Australia Day or Australia Day honours. (In fact the Australia Day Honours system was introduced only in 1975.)

Front page of The Canberra Times 26 January 1965

The editorial on page 2 discussed the possibility of Australia giving 500,000 tons of wheat to India as a gift.

The front page of 27 January 1965 also had no mention of Australia Day. On Saturday 30 January an article under the heading ‘Rain may mar holiday‘ noted there was a chance of scattered thunderstorms over coming the long holiday weekend. The front page of Monday 1 February, the public holiday marking Australia Day that year, also had no article mentioning Australia Day or honours. The editorial that day discussed universities.

In 1970 Australia Day fell on a Monday. The front page of the day did not mention Australia Day. Northern Ireland, Vietnam, Israel and Egypt were in the news. The editorial concerned police arrests of homosexual men in public toilets. The Canberra Times on 27 January reported that about 10,000 people had visited the city’s swimming pools on the previous day. In 1971 Canberra’s population was 144,000.

The Canberra Times 26 January 1970 front page

The Canberra Times 27 January 1970 front page

The first Aboriginal ‘tent embassy’  was set up on the lawns of Parliament House on Australia Day in 1972.

In 1975 Australia Day fell on a Sunday and the Canberra Times was not published on Sundays. On Monday 27 January one of the front page stories reported on festivities at Manuka Oval viewed by 3,500 to 4,000 people. There was a brief glance at Australia before White settlement but the more prominenent reenactments concerned other things: the Boer War, Dame Nellie Melba, and the bodyline cricket crisis of 1932-33. I can’t remember where I was for Australia Day 1975 but I am quite sure I wasn’t at Manuka Oval. The editorial of the day discussed the consumer price index.

The Canberra Times 27 January 1975 page 1

 

In Canberra the first Australia Day to be celebrated with fireworks was in 1977 on the holiday Monday of 31 January.

In 1980 Australia Day was on a Saturday. One of the front page stories concerned awards for Australia Day Honours. The weather was going to be fine for the holiday weekend. The editorial concerned dissidents in the Soviet Union. On Sunday 27 January 1980 the lead story was a protest by motorcyclists about motorcycle laws. Australia Day sport was promised inside the paper. The editorial was on dog ownership. The front page of Monday 28 January did not mention Australia Day. The editorial discussed the boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games. On 29 January the newspaper reported that Australia Day was celebrated by thousands. The entertainment included the dunking in Lake Burley Griffin of John Haslem, the local member of Parliament.

The Canberra Times 29 January 1980 page 1 featuring John Haslem being dunked in the lake

 

On Saturday 26 January 1985 the front page was dominated by a siege in a gunshop in the Canberra city centre, with only a small mention of Australia Day Honours on the front page. The editorial discussed the celebration of Australia Day. It mentioned Aboriginal ‘injustices’. The Canberra Times of Sunday 27 January reported on festivities at Weston Park and Black Mountain Peninsula. A ‘Miss Ocker’ competition was won by an eight year old girl. The festivities included Aboriginal dancers and entertainers. These 1985 festivities seem somewhat similar to the festivities still put on, thirty five years later. The editorial on 27 January discussed the Prime Minister’s cricket match.

The Canberra Times 27 January 1985 page 1

End of Anne’s post

Greg concludes:

Does any of this sound like public breast-beating over the guilt we are supposed to suffer for our collective good fortune?

* Smarty pants will recognise the small inaccuracies here.

In memory of lost homes

The cynical French epigram “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (The more change she is paid [when shopping], the more a lady will choose…)* describes it nicely: someone who has money left over from his purchase of a house will use it to choose additions and alterations and then, unsatisfied with the change he’s got out of it, will bowl the whole thing over and build a new home for himself on the cleared site.

* [perhaps I have not translated exactly 😉 ]

Many of the houses I recall from my childhood and later years have been destroyed by their new owners.

Of course the new owner is entitled to rebuild, and – who knows? – the new house may be more comfortable. It is not cheap to maintain an old house, and some new houses may be measurably better in every way. Even so, it is sad to see a place you knew and loved simply discarded like a worn-out shoe.

The house I grew up in and where we spent the first 30 years of our married life was bulldozed by its new owners.

Arnhem Place Red Hill May 2003

The beach house my parents built when I was a child was badly damaged by termites, which had penetrated the concrete foundations. This was discovered too late for the house to be saved and it had to be torn down.

My parents’ beach house when it was newly built in the 1960s

My paternal grandparents’ house in Adelaide was bulldozed by the people to whom it was sold.

81 Esplanade abt 1966 (dating based on other pictures nearby including Nicholas)

Me as a young child on the verandah of my paternal grandparents’ house

My maternal grandparents’ house was extensively renovated after their death.  Although parts of it remain unchanged, the re-modelled house has quite a different feel to it.

Me on my scooter outside my maternal grandparents’ house

The house of my mother-in-law, in Albury, was sold after her death. Then her pretty garden was cleared. Soon afterwards the house itself went.

Greg’s mother Marjorie Young nee Sullivan in front of her bush house in the back garden

1966: Greg sitting on the bonnet of a 1959 Plymouth. Jim Windsor, a family friend and the car’s owner is behind the wheel. Not sure who is in the passenger seat, probably Greg’s mother Marjorie. The car is parked in the street outside the Young family home.

Greg outside his home in Albury 1966

My children liked playing in the garden, my son took some of his first steps clinging to the front fence, and there was the most magnificent and prolific lemon tree in the back garden.

Greg’s maternal grandparents’ house in Castlemaine, which he remembers as a lovely old place with chooks and a vegetable garden, has gone. Next door there’s now a car-wash. Down the road is a large estate of new houses, all made out of ticky-tacky. They all look just the same.

There is an exception. The house of Greg’s early childhood in Ballarat still stands. Out the back Greg can remember a large stable. It’s still there.

1949 snowman in the back garden of the Ballarat house

For the most part the houses as physical structures have gone, but I will continue to remember them as warm homes I used to know and love.

O is for Oma cooking from Dr Oetker’s "Backen Macht Freude"

Today I finally found my copy of “Backen Macht Freude!” (Baking makes Joy!). It once belonged to my grandmother. It is a well-worn book and the binding is held together with sticky tape. I couldn’t read the spine, so it was hard to find on my bookshelves. From the cover, it appears to be one of the original edition, first published in 1930. I can’t find Schwarzwalder kirschtorte in the index but I have noticed Frankfurter Kranz and Sachertorte as well as Obsttorte (fruit tart). “Backen Macht Freude!” is printed in Blackletter (Gothic) script, no longer commonly used.

“Backen Macht Freude” published 1930

Anne's Family History

I didn’t actually call my grandmother Charlotte Boltz née Manock (1912-1988) Oma, Grandma in German, when I was young. Although she was from Germany, to me she was just Grandma. However, my cousins called her Oma and my children know of her as Oma, distinguishing her from the many other Grandmas in the family.

My grandmother used to bake wonderful cakes, many of them from recipes in this book by the Dr Oetker company. I particularly remember her baking Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, Black Forest cherry cake.

My mother’s copy of Dr Oetker’s cookbook Backen macht Freude, (Cooking with joy). It probably dates from the early 1950s. It cost DM1.80. The Deutschmark was introduced in 1948.

The recipe for Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte page 104. (click on image to enlarge)

The recipe continued on page 105.

The recipe calls for a biscuit base, then a sponge. The cherries are sour cherries.

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Trove Tuesday: shipwrecked

No title (1987, October 7). The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 – 1995), p. 14. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article122105700

In 2013 I wrote about the launching of our little boat Titania in 1987.  She was a Sprite dinghy a  class first designed in 1934.

My mother, Greg and I launch our new dinghy.

Not long after the launching, Greg and my father, Rafe, took Titania for a sail on Lake Burley Griffin. The wind came up and they discovered what an unseaworthy little tub she was.

It was blowing a gale. Titania was reluctant to head into an 80 kph wind and, when she was forced to try, the tiller snapped. Rafe and Greg were blown downwind the length of the lake and shipwrecked on Aspen Island.

They were obliged to walk back to the car and trailer several kilometres away. In their absence a Canberra Times photographer took this dramatic picture.

When a neighbour casually mentioned the picture of a boat in the newspaper a few days later, Greg had a look at the image proofs. He remembered furling the sails carefully; in the photograph the sail is ‘whipping from side to side’.

The photographer had freed the jib and main to create a more lively and interesting picture.

O is for Oma cooking from Dr Oetker’s "Backen Macht Freude"

I didn’t actually call my grandmother Charlotte Boltz née Manock (1912-1988) Oma, Grandma in German, when I was young. Although she was from Germany, to me she was just Grandma. However, my cousins called her Oma and my children know of her as Oma, distinguishing her from the many other Grandmas in the family.

My grandmother used to bake wonderful cakes, many of them from recipes in this book by the Dr Oetker company. I particularly remember her baking Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, Black Forest cherry cake.

My mother’s copy of Dr Oetker’s cookbook Backen macht Freude, (Cooking with joy). It probably dates from the early 1950s. It cost DM1.80. The Deutschmark was introduced in 1948.

The recipe for Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte page 104.

The recipe continued on page 105.

The recipe calls for a biscuit base, then a sponge. The cherries are sour cherries.

There were sour cherry trees at the bottom of my grandparent’s garden. We would pick them each year around Christmas tree. Grandma bottled them. There were always cherries bottled and stored for cake making.

Some of my grandmother’s cakes for a birthday in May 1985, quite probably my grandmother’s birthday. The cake on the left hand side is Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte. The other cake is a chocolate and almond cake. My grandmother was very fond of lily of the valley on the right hand side of the photo.

Yesterday I baked a cake from Dr Oetker’s recipe. I was pleased with the result. The taste takes me back to my childhood. The cake is very light, not too chocolately and the sour cherries are beautifully tangy.

Baking the cake

Making the biscuit base. It seemed very dry despite the egg white but it did come together after being chilled.

 

the biscuit mixture is chilled and rested

pressed into the base of the springform tin

my baked biscuit base fitted perfectly onto my cake plate

Baking the sponge

the egg yolks are beaten with a little warm water til they are pale and creamy

egg whites are beaten separately

fold egg whites in – I do it a third at a time

add sifted dry ingredients

and fold in gently

the baked sponge

upside down cooling – I am pleased with the texture

The filling

Assembling the cake

The finished product

Essential ingredients

I felt fortunate to be able to buy in Ballarat both sour cherries and Kirschwasser from the Schwarzwald

Further reading

Translation of the recipe into English by Reddit users at the request of somebody else whose Grandma used to make this cake: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/13jtsz/my_grandma_who_past_away_used_to_make_a_black/

G is for great grandmother from Germany

My great grandmother, the mother of my maternal grandfather, was Hedwig Anna Bertha (known as Anna) Boltz née Bertz (1885 – 1961).

Anna was born at Trechwitz near Götz fifty-five kilometers east of Berlin and about seventeen kilometers west of Brandenburg an der Havel. Her father Karl Bertz (1854-1932) was a bricklayer. Her mother was Henrietta Bertz née Ritter (1862-1942).

Anna had one brother, Paul, born in 1888.

In 1909 she married a soldier, Fritz Herman Boltz (1879-1954), at Brandenburg an der Havel. They had one son, my grandfather, Hans (1910-1992), who was born at Brandenburg.

Anna Boltz née Bertz, Hans Boltz, Fritz Boltz in 1911. Fritz Boltz is in the dress uniform of an Unteroffizier (NCO) [lace at collar, single cuff stripe] of the 35th Prinz Heinrich von Preussen Fusilier Regiment.

When Fritz left the army in 1912, Fritz and Anna lived in an apartment in Florastrasse, Berlin Steglitz, attached to a public school, where he worked as a caretaker. This was his address when he was called up in 1914. He returned to the same address after the war and Fritz and Anna were still living there in the 1940s [as recalled by their grand-daughter, my mother]. Fritz retired about 1949, aged 70. He died 6 April 1954 at Berlin Zehlendorf.

Easter 1941: My mother sitting on the knee of her great grandmother Henrietta Bertz née Ritter. and with her mother and her Boltz grandparents.

My mother with her grandmother outside the Sommerfeld bakery shop in Berlin in November 1943.

In 1949 Hans, the only child of Fritz and Anna, emigrated to Australia. His wife and daughter followed him a year later.

In 1960 my great grandmother emigrated. Anna Boltz came on the Australia probably embarking at Genoa and arriving on 29 February 1960. The MS Australia belonged to the Lloyd Triestino line..

National Archives of Australia: Incoming passenger list to Fremantle “Australia” arrived 29 February 1960 (K269, 29 FEB 1960 AUSTRALIA Page 3 of 33). Anna is passenger 49 on the list.

The shipping list records Anna as German, travelling tourist class . Her port of landing was Sydney, and her address in Australia was 19 Ridley Street, Turner, Canberra, A.C.T. This was the address of my grandparents.

Anna was 75 when she made this journey to the other side of the world. After she had sold and packed all her possessions in Berlin, she made her way from Berlin to Genoa at a time when Berlin was isolated in East Germany (although the Berlin Wall had not yet been built). This was quite an undertaking for an elderly woman travelling by herself. She had little English or Italian.

I looked at the other passengers on the “Australia” and found that Frieda Gunther, passenger 269 on page 9, also disembarked at Sydney. Her address in Australia was 3 Myall Street, O’Connor, Canberra, ACT. I recognised both the surname and address. Hans Gunther, like my grandfather, was a cartographer from Germany, and in fact I think from Berlin. My grandparents were good friends with the Gunthers. We often visited them at their house and they came to the Boltz’s.

Frieda died in 1982 aged 87 years. (Family Notices. (1982, November 16). The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 – 1995), p. 15. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article130829619) This means she was born about 1895 and ten years younger than Anna. It seems likely that Hans Boltz and Hans Gunther made plans for their mothers to travel together from Berlin to Australia.

My mother remembers that Anna brought a tea chest of possessions. They included:

• a tea set with a rose design and also a white china dinner set;  I can remember my grandparents using these in later years
• an ashtray with the shoulder strap of the 35th Prinz Heinrich von Preussen Fusilier Regiment, the regiment of my great grandfather
• a device in the shape of an owl which was meant to remove the smell of cigar smoke from a room. My great grandfather had liked to smoke cigars. My grandparents however did not smoke so I think it did not get much use in Canberra.

The ashtray with the shoulder strap of the 35th Prinz Heinrich von Preussen Fusilier Regiment

Anna died on 29 April 1961, a year after arriving in Canberra to be with her son. She is buried at Woden Cemetery, Canberra.

Further reading

• Lloyd Triestino’s – MS Australia, Oceania & Neptunia – 1951- 1963: http://www.ssmaritime.com/MS-Australia-and-Sisters.htm

Related post

• V is for Vizefeldwebel  

C is for career in Canberra

My grandfather Hans Boltz (1910 – 1992) was a cartographer who worked in the Bureau of Mineral Resources.  He retired from the Bureau in 1975 at the age of 65. I have the farewell card given to him by his colleagues.

 

 

 

Photo of staff from Bureau of Mineral Resources which was with Hans Boltz’s retirement card. Hans is at the head of the table. On the back is a stamp indicating an official photo of the Bureau with negative number 5500.

The cartoon on the card is a good likeness of Hans and I like the little details in the drawing such as the clock which stands at 4:51. The Public Service working day officially ended at 4:51. My grandfather liked fishing, as his colleagues knew well.

In his retirement, Hans spent time fishing, as well as travelling, gardening, and being with his family.

A geological map of Canberra. My grandfather drew similar maps. This map comes from the National Museum of Australia.

 

My grandfather at work

 

The office of the Bureau of Mineral Resources at the junction of Parkes Way and Anzac Parade in 1966. I can remember visiting my grandfather at work there. Photograph from the National Archives of Australia barcode 11647462.

On 4:51 and the end of a Public Servant’s day.

I have found surprisingly little on the 36 hour 45 minute working week of public servants. One of the earliest mentions of it was an article in the Canberra Times 30 July 1938 about bus timetables:

Public servants in the Department of the Interior signing off at 4.51 p.m. will not have to wait six minutes for a bus in future. From yesterday an extra bus will run daily to Ainslie leaving the department at 4.55.

Officers in charge of transport said yesterday that the bus was necessary to cope with peak traffic. Five buses now run in the 20 minutes following the end of the public service working day.

Flextime was introduced into the Australian Public Service in the 1970s. For some Public Service agencies the working day is still 7 hours 21 minutes long ending officially at 4:51. However, current industrial negotiations in some areas of the Public Service, for example the Australian Taxation Office and the Department of Defence according to an article in the Canberra Times of 18 June 2014, are seeking to end this.

Related blog posts

• Fishing
• Sepia Saturday: My grandfather’s back garden

Fishing

The theme for this week’s Sepia Saturday blogging prompt is fish. Saturday is the birthday of my maternal grandfather Hans Boltz, who was born 4 July 1910.

At the moment I can’t find a photograph of Hans fishing.

This is a picture of my grandfather in 1991 wearing a hat much smarter than his fishing hat.

I am not sure when Hans took up fishing.  In 1949 he emigrated to Australia from Germany and came to Canberra to work for the Bureau of Mineral Resources as a cartographer on geological maps. He bought his first car in 1959. I remember him telling me he would go bushwalking with friends in the 1950s.  I assume others gave him lifts. I don’t remember him mentioning fishing excursions. I think he must have started fishing for trout around Canberra only after he bought a car of his own.

When I was a child in the 60s and 70s I remember going with him on trout-fishing excursions to Lake Eucumbene and Lake Jindabyne in the Snowy Mountains and to the Goodradigbee River in the Brindabella Valley west of Canberra.

Map showing Lakes Eucumbene and Jindabyne south of Canberra and Brindabella west of Canberra. Jindabyne is about 175 kms south of Canberra and Brindabella is about 60 km from Canberra.

We camped in tents on our fishing trips. I can remember a trip to Buckenderra on Lake Eucumbene.  My brother lost his toy fire engine there.  My grandparents imported a large tent from Germany about 1967 and I can remember the trip to Buckenderra used this tent and my mother, brother, aunt and grandparents were all on the excursion. We all slept in the one large tent that included an inner bedroom compartment. Before this trip I had apparently complained several times that nobody ever took me to Buckenderra.

The giant trout at Adaminaby near Lake Eucumbene photographed in February 2006.

Our fishing excursions to the Goodradigbee River in the Brindabellas were day trips; we didn’t camp.  The river and the countryside are very beautiful. The trip over the Brindabella mountains was winding and rough.  As a child I often used to get car sick but never when driving with my grandfather even during the difficult trip to the Goodradigbee in the Brindabella Valley.  I would be allowed to sit in the front seat. In those days cars had a bench seat in the front. I would sit between my grandparents.

The Goodradigbee River in the Brindabella Valley photographed in January 2009

Trout are hard to catch and we often came home empty handed.

My father-in-law, Peter, by contrast, was a very successful fisherman. He used to  catch redfin by the sugar bag in the Hume Weir near Albury.  To be followed up in another blog post, though I did ask my husband Greg how big a sugar bag was – he estimated about half the size of a potato bag which held 50 kgs.

Related posts:

• Citizenship Day 17 September
• Sepia Saturday: My grandfather’s back garden

Citizenship Day 17 September

Every 17 September, Australia celebrates Citizenship Day. The commemoration was instituted in 2001, with this date because it is the anniversary of the renaming of the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 to the Australian Citizenship Act 1948.

In January 1955 my grandfather, Hans Boltz, on behalf of the Good Neighbour Council, attended the sixth Australian Citizenship Convention. The Good Neighbour Movement was established by the Australian government in 1949 to help migrants settle into the Australian way of life. Volunteers welcomed migrants into the local community, introduced them to schools, health centres, banks and shops, and gave advice on learning English.

CANBERRA DELEGATES TO CONVENTION. (1955, January 28). The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 – 1995), p. 2. Retrieved September 15, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article91202771. Hans Boltz is in the front row at the right.

The sixth Australian Citizenship Convention was held in Canberra at the Albert Hall. Harold Hold, then Minister for Immigration, addressed the convention. Holt forecast that Australia would have a population of twenty million by 1980. In fact the population of Australia in 1980 was only 14.5 million. It reached 20 million in 2005, fifty years after the conference. Among recommendations from the conference was a call for for legislative change to make applying for naturalisation simpler.

The Good Neighbour Council had welcomed Hans Boltz as a citizen following his naturalisation on 29 September 1954. This was just four months before the conference

As part of the application process in 1954, my grandparents needed to advertise their intention of applying for citizenship.

Classified Advertising. (1954, August 5). The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 – 1995), p. 3. Retrieved September 15, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2902928

Naturalisation For 22 Migrants To-day. (1954, September 29). The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 – 1995), p. 6. Retrieved September 15, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2921372

Migrants Welcomed At Naturalisation. (1954, September 30). The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 – 1995), p. 4. Retrieved September 15, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2904236

My grandmother was naturalised later in the same year.

NATURALISATION THIS AFTERNOON. (1954, December 14). The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 – 1995), p. 2. Retrieved September 15, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2906178

 

Sixteen Migrants Naturalised In A.C.T. Ceremony. (1954, December 15). The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 – 1995), p. 2. Retrieved September 15, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2904377

The last article mentions 78 people naturalised in Canberra in 1954. In Australia 4,440 naturalisation certificates were granted in 1954. Of these, 225 were to those who were previously of German nationality.

Australian Bureau of Statistics Year book Australia. ABS, Canberra, 1956. Page 620.

More than 4.5 million people have become citizens since Australian citizenship was introduced in 1949. (“Facts and Statistics.” Australian Citizenship. Australian Customs and Border Protection Service, 15 Sept. 2014. Web. 15 Sept. 2014. <http://www.citizenship.gov.au/learn/facts-and-stats/>.)

Related post: Australia Day: Climbing our family’s gum tree

Sepia Saturday: My grandfather’s back garden

This week’s Sepia Saturday blog prompt is a picture of back gardens.

As a child I spent many happy hours in my grandfather’s back garden in Canberra.

 

There was a sandpit that my grandfather had built for my aunt. This picture is of my brother and I playing in it.

 

My grandfather, Hans Boltz, working on his lawn mower.  My brother is looking on (I cropped him out of the picture). Kenny the canary is also enjoying the sunny day.

Me on the swing that was set up between two apple trees.  There was also a pear tree, plum trees, a cherry, nectarine, a peach and an almond tree, as well as sour cherry trees.

 

My mother pushing my aunt on that same swing about ten years earlier

 

Here I am helping to gather some of the garden’s produce