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My own life and my opinions are shared at When I was 69.

REMEMBER: In North America, the month of September 1752 was exceptionally short, skipping 11 days, when the Gregorian Calendar was adapted from the old Julian one, which didn't have leap year days.

Friday, November 1, 2019

Sailing to Cuba

For fun!
My grandmother and several of her 3 sisters (maybe all of them) used to sail from the US to Cuba to gamble and have fun. That was before Fidel started making things uncomfortable for US folks.  So it was probably in the 30s-40s. But first, how about some posed photos with cars...

I have some lovely shots of Mozelle (Grandmommy to me) with some cars.  They remind me of the Sepia Saturday prompt this week.

Whoever first took a digital photo of the original didn't get many pixels into it...but this was supposedly in the 50s.  Grandmommy was still dressing well, and had a nice car...or had a friend with a nice car.


Here she was in 1925, posted in my mother's photo album.  So that's another car in the background.

I think she has on some snazzy boots.

Great Aunt Margaret was the youngest of the 4 Miller sisters...here she was in '27, with another car in the background!

And here I am (around 3 or 4) in Dallas TX with Grandmommy, who had made my little coat, hat and leggings set.  She was a whiz dressmaker in San Antonio TX.

Another recent find on Ancestry was this passport with a photo of Great Aunt Dorothy and her husband Buck Buchanan.  They married late in life (when she was 47), and he had grown children who I never met.

Stop over and see what more Sepians have come up with from this prompt photo...


I heard about the Cuban gambling trips as a child, and somehow remembered it! And then recently I found a shipping manifest about 2 of them returning to the US from Havana...it was real!


Oh I'm so glad I published this document here, because I see their father, Charles H. Miller (68) went as well as Dorothy (32) and Margaret Miller (26).  The S. S. Florida docked in Miami, FL in 1936 from Havana.

So my grandmother, Mozelle, and her other sister, Rowena, weren't on that trip.

 All these wonderful relations are no longer posing by cars with their smiles, but I remember learning how to play cards from them (but not poker!)





17 comments:

  1. Pretty exciting to prove the oral history about gambling in Cuba.
    I think I had a coat set when I was that age, I am sure it was store bought though.

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  2. It seems she was a well-traveled person
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    1. And...you wouldn't believe it, but she wouldn't travel by train. So there she was flying to visit us in the 40s and 50s...we were really impressed. Her father having worked as a conductor on the railroad might have influenced her!

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  3. Your Grandmommy looks like she was a 'free spirit' even into her older years. I love her in that black dress with the white trim. Reminds me of things my Grandma Louise wore into her elder years such as fashions she saw in "Seventeen" magazine! She got away with it because she was short and cute. I never saw her in 'old lady' clothes! :) And she, too, was an excellent seamstress - making my sisters and me beautiful dresses for special holidays as well as really nice school clothes.

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    1. Yes, and it probably drove my mother crazy, being very conservative...and again yes about the lovely clothes she made. Glad to know your Grandma Louise was also a fashionista!

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    2. Fascinating how each generation usually counters the one before. I loved seeing your grandmother and her cars.

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    3. Glad to hear from you SusanK...yes, my mom always said that too...that the grands and children always seemed to have a special bond.

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  4. Your Grandmommy looks like she was a great dressmaker and a stylish dresser too. Funny how so many of the photos had cars in the background.

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    1. I think I've always blamed my dad's love of cars, but now I see my mother's family included them in their photos too! Maybe it was a way of keeping track of when they were taken (for them, I had no clue!)

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  5. Lovely posed family photographs with cars. Your grandmother sounded quite a character! I remember those little girl outfits of coat, bonnet and trousers with straps that went over my feet.

    Lovely family posed photographs with cars as the background. Your grandmother sounded quite a character it would have been good to know. I remember those little girl outfits, with bonnet, coat and trousers with a strap that went round the foot - not an outfit for going splashing in puddles!




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    1. Yes, I'd forgotten the strap under the foot that kept those leggings in place!

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  6. Excellent matches for our theme. You even got the jodhpurs trousers too. It must have been a fashion fad in the 1920s. I almost took that as my theme as I have a few photos of bands wearing uniforms with riding breeches, but I don't have any photos of women in trousers.

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    1. I wonder if there have been bands who rode horses while playing...I guess not, as handling a horse and an instrument would have been hard to do at the same time.

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  7. Wow! That is so cool! Thanks for sharing! Also, thank you for all the sweet comments you leave on my blog.

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Looking forward to hearing from you! If you leave your email then others with similar family trees can contact you. Just commenting falls into the blogger dark hole; I'll gladly publish what you say just don't expect responses.