Grandmother Agatha Green, found at last

When my parents moved downstairs at 5 Gaines Street, Binghamton, NY, my paternal grandparents, McKinley and Agatha (nee Walker) Green moved upstairs. Her name, BTW, was pronounced a-GATH-a, not AG-a-tha. Yes, it is I who she is holding.

Grandma Green was almost certainly my first Sunday school teacher at Trinity A.M.E. Zion Church, only a couple short blocks from our home. She had a certain refinement and bearing. While my maternal grandmother would nag me, this grandma gave me the parameters she expected, and I pretty much did it.
It’s rather like some Bill Cosby routine

I is for I

Lacking any INSPIRATION for topic, I defaulted to writing about me this week. It is I, during my significant birthday week. But what to write about that I haven’t addressed before?

I spent the first 18 years of my life in the same house, at 5 Gaines Street in Binghamton, NY. Gaines was a very short street between Oak Street and Front Street, with only 16 possible addresses, and actually fewer buildings than that.

At the corner of Gaines and Front was O’Leary’s convenience store. I went there and bought packs of baseball cards, but I also had to buy my father’s Winston cigarettes, which irritated me greatly.

In the yard at 1 Gaines Street was a huge gnarled tree which terrified me.

30-Day Challenge: Day 20 – A 10+ Year Old Picture

The instruction was to provide an older picture; nothing stated suggests who or what should be the subject. Since my sister Leslie sent me these pictures, along with some of of my father, I thought I’d show these.

This is my grandfather, McKinley Green, who I wrote about a few times early in my blogging, here and here and here.

The particulars are lost to me so far, but apparently McKinley, or Pop as almost called him (the others called him Mac), was my father’s stepfather. He’s not in the picture in the 1930 Census; I’ve seen the records. Yet, my father’s birth certificate, dated 1944, when my father was 18, lists Pop as my father’s father. There was a clear clerical error however. In the section that lists the age of the parents at the time of my father’s birth, my grandmother’s info is correct, but Mac’s info listed his age in 1944, not my father’s birth year of 1926.