Throwback Thursday: Two Sisters

Aunt Florence was my Aunt and though her sister Mary always seemed very nice, Aunt Florence seemed to be the fun one. My mother really liked her and enjoyed her company whenever they could get together. As we lived about 4 hours away from her, it wasn't that often unfortunately.

TBT - 1940s Family

This photo comes from an album of images from the 1940s. I think it was one of those albums that someone bought to paste a bunch of photos that were around. Some of the pictures are glued to the page and only a few have the dates. The wooden album was handmade by Salvatore Cassa in an Elizabeth NJ Junior High. I wonder who bought it and when?

 

The woman on the left is my Aunt Florence. In the center is my maternal grandmother -Nana and on the right is my mother Mary Patricia. Aunt Florence was married to Nana's eldest child, my Uncle Joe, who died in 1945 in India. He was an Air Force Navigator and the plane crashed literally a day after the Peace Treaty in the Pacific was signed.

From other photos in the album, I gather that the car in the background was my Uncle Joe's and that had to be a big deal for everyone!

I love my mother's peepy toe shoes! a fun side of her before she was married and of course before I was born. I am pretty sure that all the clothes the women are wearing would have been made at home. Store bought was not an affordable option and both my mother and grandmother were excellent seamstresses.

TBT: My Paternal Grandmother

My paternal Nana was a formidable woman. She was the child of Irish immigrants married to an Irish immigrant.  Over 6' tall, she ruled the house and also the bar she ran. As a child, I heard of it as Bubbie's Tavern. While she ran it when her husband was a coal miner, it was my other grandfather, also a coal miner but a Lithuanian immigrant,  who drank in it.  Not surprisingly back in the 1920s and 30s, this caused a lot of animosity between the two women who would become in laws when my parents married.  There was no love lost between my mother and her mother in law.

I imagine this photo was taken during or after WWII. It looks like a ship in the background but my father and his two brothers were all in the US Army and fortunately all survived. My Nana is the woman in the center, tall and with arms that could hoist beer barrels according to my late father. She was a lousy cook in my experience because when we would come up from MD to visit, I recall only soft boiled eggs with runny whites and a dismal rice pudding that you could drink rather than eat. She and an ever-present woman in the house, Annie Mac, who may have been a relative, sat in the kitchen always drinking endless cups of tea. This Nana also loved a 'rummage sale' and would usually have a supply of broken crayons for me. My mother considered this junk but it got me aways from the miserable food and happily drawing for the rest of our visit.

I only found this photo recently and have no living relatives who would know anything about it. But from this photo I can see that I'm glad I never crossed her. She was certainly a woman to be reckoned with.