Relatives - Mother's side

We always spent our holidays with my mother's side of the family- Aunt Olga and Uncle John, Michael and Johnny to start with. Michael and Johnny are about 10 years older than me, but we always played games together- wiffle ball, card games, board games- at any gathering. And we gathered a lot. We rotated at first through three houses- ours, my aunt and uncle's, and my aunt's parents, the Shernuks in New Windsor. The Shernuks lived on a one-way street at the top of a hill in New Windsor; a small brick house with a garage and a cherry tree (or two) filling up the small yard. They had their roots in Eastern Europe, as they always greeted us with "Yak sha mas?" (at least, that is how I heard it), with the response being "Dobray!", meaning "How are you?" and "Well".

The tales I heard my mother tell of my Uncle John, who was her half-brother (as I learned later in life) I still recall- how he would chase them to and from school, and how one time he hung from a railroad trestle that spanned the gorge that NY Route 32 runs through south of Vails Gate as she and her friends watched from below, hoping a train wouldn't come. But I also heard of how he protected her- that HE could chase her but nobody else better try to bully her.

There were other relatives as well on that side of the family- the Browns of Middlehope come to mind; and Aunt Martha, who was my great aunt (my mother's mother's sister). And then came the marriages of Johnny to Laurie, and their two kids- Todd and Beth; and Michael to Penny and their two daughters, Donna and Stephanie. Then holiday rotations started going four ways, including one Thanksgiving before "the kids" came- when Johnny was in the SeaBees and we old went to Rhode Island to spend a cramped holiday there. It was fun to go to the base but I was so upset- we had just bought a color TV and I was all ready to see the Macy's Thankgsiving Day Parade in color for the first time and there we were in rainy, gray RI.

I guess the biggest difference between my mother's side of the family and my father's was fun- we always had fun when it was the Robinsons and us together either at a clambake or picnic or holiday feast, in a pool or tobaggoning down a hill, playing killer wiffleball games or croquet-golf. I figure it must have been the presence of the kids who loved games and their parents who also loved playing them as well; with the possible exception of my father who was older and more relaxed.