My family in the snow, Scotia,New York

My family! Jack holding John, Olga holding David, myself (June) at right, Richard and Susan in front.
I think this is the winter of 1944, since David is the baby and he was born in August of that year. We are sitting in the snow in front of 310 First Street, two houses down from our house. Mr. and Mrs. Adolf Essmann rented the downstairs flat; their grown daughter, Natalie, often babysat for us. She loved children, and naturally. a family of this size appealed to her. Upstairs from the Essmanns, lived my very-blond friend, Johanna Rohrmeir, with her parents. This is the only picture I have of Johanna. It was taken on the porch of the house in between, when we were renting the downstairs flat there, before we bought the house on the other side. My brother, David, (the baby above) who does a lot of genealogical research, confirmed these names on the 1940 census, which has just been released. There is other interesting information in Census Reports of that era, like the birthplace of the householders and the breadwinner's annual earnings. For instance, my brother found that Johanna's father, who was a machinist for General Electric, made about half the salary that my father, who was an engineer there, did. Mr. Essmann was a bookkeeper for a local business
and made somewhere in between.
My mother and I are wearing headscarves, as we often did. It does keep your ears warmer. I think. Mine was black with a multicolored design on it; I kept it for many years. I began to wear glasses about this time, but I might not have them yet, or I've left them inside because they fog up in cold weather. The feet in front are mostly wearing the dread unisex galoshes, rubber boots that buckled up the front over a gusset to keep out the snow. Awkward, chafed your shins, and the felted lining stayed wet overnight,.

I hope you get to go out in the snow this winter, wherever you are??