With Apologies to Amy Tan

Welcome to the Pot Pie Club! 

A few years ago, I made an off-hand comment to my aunt that I was going to write a book about our crazy family that would mimic Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club. My aunt got really excited and has taken to occasionally reminding (read: nagging) me that I need to write that book. Well guess what? I'm not anywhere near as good a writer or storyteller as Amy Tan, so don't get too excited. However, I do feel compelled to try to write down something about our family for my children, my (potential) grandchildren, my aunt, and for myself.

My plan is to pick out an old picture or two and relate whatever I can remember about the subject or maybe I'll just ramble about something random. I have no plot or end point in mind, just some vague idea about a few pictures, so I hope that you will indulge me a little. Who knows what will pop up once I start telling family stories!

I'm not sure who took the picture above. I suspect it was my mother. I think she liked taking pictures of us kids. I do know it was taken in the back yard of the house my maternal grandmother (who we called MeeMaw) owned on Franklin Street in Reading, PA. I'm not wearing glasses, so I'm going to say I'm three or four here, probably four, although my aunt think I was much younger - maybe 18 months or two years old. That broken fence in the background is two doors down from my grandmother's yard. Those houses are very long, but not very wide. I also remember that building behind me was on Wunder Street and was still there when I was a teenager. Maybe it's still there. I don't know.

MeeMaw's house was kind of magical to me. My mother, father, sisters and I lived there for a while when I was really little - maybe at the time this picture was taken, but if we lived here then, we moved shortly afterward. We moved because MeeMaw who owned the house moved back into it because her apartment building on Washington Street was being torn down. My family moved to the Oakbrook Housing Project much to the chagrin of my mother. I remember being around 6 years old and asking her how long we lived in there. She said, "Two years, two very long years!"

MeeMaw andher husband "Pop Pop" John

Anyway, I remember that my MeeMaw's house underwent a somewhat miraculous renovation after my she moved back in. The kitchen got remodeled, the stairwell went from a round shape to a more angular shape, and the living room got new wood-paneling and wall-to-wall carpet. The carpet in the living room must not have been put in right because when you walked in certain areas it bubbled up. It made you feel as though you needed sea legs to walk on it. It was a lot of fun as a kid. My sisters and I would walk around until we got to just the right spot and wobble around on it, laugh and sometimes even fall down, but I could tell my grandmother hated it. She used to try to put furniture over it so that it would stay, but the bubble would just pop up somewhere else. MeeMaw was the type of person who liked things to be just so. Even as a kid, I could see that. I guess there's a bit of MeeMaw in me in that way. I like things just so and I don't think I would like a bunch of kids exploiting a weakness in my house, but then again, if they were laughing, unlike MeeMaw, I just might be tempted to join them!

One last thing I remember about this picture. When MeeMaw moved into this house, she put a chain link fence right about where I'm standing in this picture. I'm not sure why I think that's important to say. it's probably just one more way of gaining control of an out-of-control situation or a way to keep others out. I guess I can understand that.

Anyway, I have a lot of work to do before this blog becomes something more real. I had a ton of pictures I want to share that need to be digitized.