"The twenty-fourth of May,

...is the Queen's birthday."
That is the song we would sing as we tore home from school on the Friday of the long week end. Heavenly taste of summer, the long weekend in May was treasured. My grandparents would come on the huge steam engine from Toronto. I grew up in Fort Erie and the train station was a busy place filled with noise, clouds of steam and the babble of passengers.

My wonderful grand father "Ernie" would depart the train first and then wait with the conductor, both extending their hands to my Grandmother, the ever immaculately quaffed and beaded lady, to assist her down the steps.

She would have pitched a fit if she knew I had posted the "cottage picture" of her, in a previous post. Hugs aside I would be anxious to get home because I knew what Ernie had in his valise. It was brown leather and had a shiney clasp and his intials,"E H C" in shiny gold metal letters. Inside would be fireworks, sparklers AND a "burning school house." Oh the bliss.

Here I am 55 + years later and spending my long weekend creating another book cover. This time for gothlet- grand daughter Tea's birthday.




....which is not fininshed yet. But hey the weekend isn't over yet. Finished pics will be over at Nantyglo Needles.

Tomorrow would have been my parents 64th Wedding Anniversary.



Point-au-Baril summer 1946 Oh Daddy, crazy socks...lol


My Dad loved to tell everyone they were married on the 25th and I was born on the 31st. just to hear my mother leap to her own defence and say, "A year later."
He was a devil of a tease. After being married almost 50 years he would still introduce her as, "This is Ann, the woman I live with."

Summer Memories

No, I wasn't born in the dark ages. These pictures were taken at Point-au-Baril on Georgian Bay, in Ontario the summer of 1959.

My Great grandparents built the cottage, "Winnie Lone," on a 9 acre island about 2 miles from Point-au-Baril Station. We either rowed a boat or took the little motor boat to the station to pick up the mail or groceries. The cottage did not have electricity or running water. Trips to the station meant bringing back a big slab of ice for the ice chest. Nana made the most delicious peach pies on her mother's wood stove.

There was a screened in porch on two sides of the cottage. My bed was at one end. On hot summer nights I could watch the moon travel across the night sky through the screening.

We had a battery operated radio and a wind up gramophone.

Nana taught me to play canasta by the light of the kerosene lamps. The chimneys would get all sooty if the wick was too long. My job was to clean with them with newspaper the next morning.

The newspaper was, of course, the Toronto Star. My grand father worked in the mail room for 35 years.

As this birthday approaches I suddenly realize that I will be the same age as my Grandmother was in this picture. I now have grand daughters the age that I was when this picture was taken.

It is a blissful vivid memory. It truly was the best of times.

When you have little hands you have to use your teeth to hold the extra cards.