X – Xmas 1950

1950 Census, A-Z Challenge 2022, Christmas, Cleages,

This is my ninth year of blogging the A to Z Challenge. Everyday I will share something about my family’s life during 1950. This was a year that the USA federal census was taken and the first one that I appear in. At the end of each post I will share a book from my childhood collection.

Kristin and Pearl with Christmas dolls.

This was our last Christmas in Springfield. In the fall of 1951, we moved to Detroit. I remember the metal dollhouse I received. It was like the one in the ad below but didn’t have the garage and patio.

Pearl received this ferris wheel. A very colorful metal toy that wound up and went around. I remember that ferris wheel was around long after the dolls and the dollhouse bit the dust. Eventually it wouldn’t wind up any more, but we manually turned it.

Pearl also received this musical rocking chair. She still has it. You see my grandson Matthew standing next to the chair on the left. This chair has a bad habit of flipping over if it was rocked too hard. I remember it being taken back and exchanged. The replacement chair was no better. You had to rock gently. Pearl remembers our mother disconnecting the music box after awhile.

Kristin and Pearl on Christmas day 1950.
Christmas in the Country

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I’m also participating in the Genealogy Blog 1950s Blog Party hosted by Elizabeth Swanay O’Neal, “The Genealogy Blog Party: Back to the 1950s,” Heart of the Family™ https://www.thefamilyheart.com/genealogy-blog-party-1950s/

34 thoughts on “X – Xmas 1950”

  1. Such lovely pictures of you and Pearl, Kristin and you look so excited about Xmas. They were interesting toys…I’ve never seen any like them here. I bet your mother removed the music box to get some peace 😉

    1. I’m looking pretty serious in that photo by the tree, I guess I perked up later on. Or maybe it was earlier?

      Yes, that is why she disconnected it. The music box was attacked to the bottom of the chair with a metal rod that went from the music box to the rocker. Every time you rocked, it played the tune. I should ask Pearl what it was.

  2. I love that we both had that metal doll house…without garage. I’d forgotten all about it! What a fun thing to blast into my thoughts today. I’m not sure how old I was when I received it. Christmas 1950 I would have been 8, and had just moved to St. Louis from Houston that summer. It’s possible I received it that same Christmas. I loved that it looked like it was brick, but had just been painted, as well as the little fake rugs on the floors. And linoleum on the bathroom floor too! And all the plastic furniture! Oh I’m having a delightful memory here!

  3. I see a lot of resemblance between ur grandson Mathew and Kristin that is u i suppose …such a nice theme to revive ur memories. Great pics. I specially love those toy ad pamphlets..make u travel back in time. Personally I don’t like musical toys…but my kid loves them ..

    Dropping by from a to z “The Pensive”

    1. Yes Kristin is me. And my mother felt the same way about musical toys. Those toys seem to just repeat a badly played tune endlessly.

  4. oh my goodness – look at the prices of the toys! Your grandson is a handsome little boy! I also love that room where he is standing. Is it a sunroom? It looks like it would be a wonderful place to curl up with a good book!

    1. People were making a few thousand dollars a year at that time too. Yes, that is a sunroom. My sister and I usually sit there and talk when I visit her.

  5. I love to see the presents. I remember the dolls you made us for christmas. We loved playing with dollhouses in the little room upstairs. Your memories make me think of my own.

    1. And my father was making about $2,000 a year! Although housing was provided as part of the ministerial package. It is pretty amazing how things change. Plastic everything now. Then it was wooden and metal.

  7. Our family also had a musical rocker (ha). I was so entranced with these toys – like a child. something I realized about your posts is you really give us a sweet view from your childhood. It’s as if you as a child were taking us to your favorite places, the best memories, the awesome people in your life. It’s a well done book of memories, Kristin.

  8. It is a lovely tree. The trees my grandparents had when I was a child looked similar with the tinsel that they called lametta – I still have some of the lametta they owned – it is very metallic. They also had glass baubles and live candles on the tree with special candle holders.

    terrific that Pearl still has her rocking chair.

    1. We had the tinsel, we called them icicles, up until about 10 years ago when it disappeared from the stores. It probably disappeared before that but. used to buy extra boxes. At some point before disappearing, they began to make them out of plastic. Ick. I don’t remember any live candles, not even on my grandparent’s tree. They had round bulbs.

      I have a photograph of one of my daughters sitting in that chair, Matthew’s mother in fact, but I can’t put my hands on it.

  9. The baby carriage in the ad immediately caught my eye. I am 69 and I remember having a similar baby carriage. It may have been a gift from one of my uncles, who was in the toy business. I always suspected it was expensive and the one in the ad sure was. My son would have loved the ferris wheel.

    1. it was a great ferris wheel.
      I had one of those baby carriages too and I think my maternal grandparents or an uncle sent it to me.

  11. I’ve actually already commented on this post back during April but I’m visiting from A to Z roadtrip! Reading all of your genealogy information/family information has caused me to sign up for ancestry.com. Several years ago, I sent in my 23 and me but I wanted to know about actual individuals so I’m doing ancestry . . .and I’m going to do a second DNA test through ancestry to compare with 23 and Me.

    1. I’m sure I did have fun, although I only remember the gifts and not unwrapping them. Now I will have to visit your unwrapping. Clever.

  13. I love finding vintage metal toys — they got dinged up and scratched but were so durable! I’ve never seen that ferris wheel before; wind-up key toys were popular in the mid-twentieth century though — *that* I know; I find mid-century EVERYTHING quite fascinating! — and I remember playing with my mother’s similar old toys at my grandparents’ house.

    1. My mother had a tendency to get rid of our outgrown toys so my children never got to play with my old toys. She did save the books though.

    1. It was indeed a walk down memory lane.
      Just visited your blog and read a bunch of the posts. Very interesting take on the movie review.

  15. Waaoww Kristin , that was indeed wonderful, a trip for you down memory lane also took us along 😀 . These pictures are the kind we see in biographies and autobiographies of veterans and heroes 😇👍👍👍I really got fascinated with the wonderful toys you people received as Christmas gifts 🎁 ❤️ 😊, specially the Ferris Wheel . 👌👌

    1. The ferris Wheel was wonderful. My kids would have loved it when they played dollhouse dolls. I’m sure my mother got rid of it because I don’t even remember it after one of our moves.
      Hmmm, I doubt I’ll become a hero or veteran at this stage of my life, but I do have lots of photos. I wonder if those heroes had great photographers in their families.

  16. What a great look back into the past. Thanks for sharing this.

    Stopping by from the A to Z ROAD TRIP!
    “Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.” – Jim Rohn

    J Lenni Dorner (he/him 👨🏽 or 🧑🏽 they/them) ~ Co-host of the #AtoZchallenge, OperationAwesome6 Debut Author Interviewer, Reference& Speculative Fiction Author

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