Celebrations: Easter Sunday - 1951 (Again & Again)

Here's four-year old me with my Easter basket on my trusty tricycle in the backyard in Encanto; the blooming tree behind me is an avocado.

[Making its 3rd annual appearance, this photo is from my personal collection]

The Easter basket was a present from Jessie and Jimmy Neal.

I'm sharing this oldie but goodie for a third time.



© 2024 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Saturday Night Entertainment: Big Noses in Encanto

Dad Currey and his nephew and niece* were having some fun in our backyard in Encanto, probably in 1950. The tree in the background is a huge avocado.

[From my personal collection]

These images make me smile so I'm posting them even though the color is terrible.



*Nancy Lee Peterson (1937-1974) and Charles Frederick Peterson (1940-2008) were the children of Dad's youngest sister Marguerite and her first husband.



© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

A Sunny Day in the Backyard in Encanto - 1973

Christine and Rastafari* hanging out together on the path next to our vegetable garden.**

[From my personal collection]

*Our handsome ruddy Abyssinian cat who was very protective.
**All that visible in this photo is a bit of the asparagus bed.


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: Flagstone for New Room

During the Easter break in 1955 we made a quick trip to Prescott, Arizona, to pick up flagstone for around the new front door. We only spent one night away from home and didn't take the trailer--Mother and I slept in the truck and Dad had a sleeping bag on the ground.* According to Dad's notes we brought back 3800 pounds of stone.

This photo, taken two years later, shows the stone in place.

[All from my personal collection]

*The notes say we spent the night in Blythe--all I remember is that is was cold.


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Monday Is for Mothers: Bernice Evangeline (Grenfell) Currey - Encanto, 1930

This snapshot of Mother shows her standing in their Encanto backyard next to a little sailboat they had bought for their son in 1930, when Junior would have been about seven. 

[Photos from my personal collection]

All the time the Currey family spent on the water made the son an excellent swimmer and sailor. Dad said Junior's nickname around the docks was "Scully" because he could propel a row boat with one oar off the stern faster than most people could do with two.


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Celebrations: Fourth of July - Encanto, 1928

[From my personal collection]

Encanto, 1928...the little boy is Harold D. Currey, Junior. I still haven't figured out who the young man standing next to him is.



© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Summer Vacation - 1939/40?

Besides being a champion swimmer, crack chess player and a classical musician who played cello and French horn, Harold D. Currey Jr. was also an amateur photographer who developed and printed his own pictures in a darkroom built into his father's backyard shop.

These three photographs are some of his work which document a summer trip the family took just before World War II.*

And here's what they brought back to Encanto.

[All from my personal collection]

*The only clue I have for the year of this trip is the fact the the Dodge truck pictures is a later model than the one shown in pictures taken when they acquired the trailer in 1938.


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Family Friday: Harold Delbert Currey Junior & his Hat

 The captions to these two photos tell it all.

Junior was born in 1923 so he would have been eight in the next picture.

[All from my personal collection]

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Encanto - June 29, 1931

These snapshots of Junior* show his injuries caused by a "mash up" in 1931. The bandages hide the fact that his jaw was severely damaged which affected his bite. Poor kid indeed!

[From my personal collection]

Ironically, this is what enabled the identification of his remains in the late 1940s as the Army Air Force dentist kept a cast he had taken during Junior's pilot training because he considered it significant.

*Harold Delbert Currey, Junior (his friends called him Hal) was the only biological child of the parents who raised me.

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: Some Cultivator

The Curreys always had a vegetable garden at their home place in Encanto. This photo of Dad showing off his latest acquisition is undated, it was probably taken about 1923.

Here, in his handwriting, is Dad's comment:

I don't know what happened to this machine but by the early 1950s it had been replaced by a real tractor.

[All from my personal collection]

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Celebrations: Christmas, 1948

One of the very few "real" Christmas trees we ever had.* I was a year and a half and don't remember it at all.

[From my personal collection]

*All the Christmases I recall were spent in the trailer and we had a small artificial tree.

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Celebrations: Halloween - San Diego, 1950

Obviously I was all ready to go trick or treating...

[From my personal collection]

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: The Curreys' Cement Mixer

It's the same cement mixer in these two photos, taken over 30 years apart. Bernice and Junior are the workers in front of the Encanto house, dated September 1928. The lower photo was taken during construction of the house in the little desert community of Ocotillo in Imperial Valley in the early 1960s.

[From my personal collection]

Dad Currey always painted his tools red (to match his red truck).


© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Monday Is for Mothers: Bernice Grenfell Currey - Encanto, Late 1930's

Here's another picture of the cute little calf from yesterday's post.

[From my personal collection]

Note that the light-colored bungalow in the background is the house bought by Grace Thomas Grenfell Stanton around 1920 which had been left to Mother when her grandmother died in 1935.



© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Another Truck, Another Cow?

I've already shared some snapshots of the barn the Curreys built on their property in Encanto during the late 1930s together with pictures of their cow and wheat field but I didn't include this picture. So it seemed a good choice for today's post.*

[From my personal collection]

At first what was happening appeared to be obvious--the Curreys were moving a cow in their truck, of course. But the more I examined the image, the less that seemed likely because as you can see from this photo the Currey cow wasn't black and white.

[From my personal collection]

So what was going on? The animal in the truck was a bull brought in to "visit" the cow and this later picture provides the proof.

[From my personal collection]

*Following on from this post.



© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Celebrations: Bernice Evangeline Grenfell's Birthday (1902 - 1980)

Today, June 17th, is the 115th anniversary of the birth of Bernice Evangeline Grenfell Currey, the mother who raised me. This photo from the Currey family album was taken in 1928.

[From my personal collection]

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: Work on the New Basement Continues - Encanto, 1951

Several weeks ago I shared photos of the beginnings of the new basement. Here are some progress photos taken in late 1951 and early 1952.

[Basement of new room - November 51 - Ready to pour]

[Looking at basement of new room from east - Nov 51 - Ready to pour]

[1952 - Living Room]

In the last picture I appear to have bravely wandered out on the floor joists.

[Detail of above photo, all from my personal collection]

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Encanto, 1948 (and 1950)

Finally we have a bright red truck that didn't belong to Dad! The man behind the wheel of this 1937 Ford 1/2 Ton Platform Stake Bed Truck is Encanto neighbor (Alva) Clyde Everett (1903-1992). He and his wife Mabel grew tomatoes in the field across Wunderlun Avenue from the back of the Currey property. The structure behind his truck is the shed they built to pack their tomatoes for market. This photo was taken in 1948.

This is view of the back of the Currey property which shows the tomato field and packing shed taken in the same year. The Everetts lived in the white house at the top of the hill.

And here's a closer look at the packing shed (taken in 1950). Apparently I was helping out.

[All photos from my personal collection]

Their listing in the San Diego City Directory for 1948. (Yes the address for their hilltop home was on Broadway which is a continuation of the street of the same name in downtown San Diego.)

[Ancestry.com City Directories, San Diego 1948]

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: Start of New Basement - Encanto, 1951

Dad started work on the new living room addition by digging a full basement, hauling the dirt away with his 1948 Dodge truck.

[From my personal collection]

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: Houston, We Have Parking!

Perhaps it's because of all the construction in the neighborhood, but street parking around here has gotten very tight in the past few months especially in the evening. So much so that when I came home around 10:30 from a Los Tres Reyes party in January the nearest spot I could find was seven blocks away. Now my hood is very safe and I'm physically able to walk that distance (and it wasn't raining at the time) but the situation caused me to hesitate making any plans to be out after dark.

My property is terraced down a canyon with a dead-end alley at its lowest level and there's a cement pad down there where a long-gone garage originally stood and when I first moved here 21 years ago I parked down there all the time. But access to the space was bad and when I traded my old car for the MINI I quit using it because the new car scraped its underside pulling into it. And I never tried it with my new (used) car.

My contractor Dave and I have discussed the solution to this problem for years but last week he made it happen!

Of course this isn't the first time I've celebrated an improved driveway. Here I am in 1948 in front of a freshly poured section of the circle drive in Encanto.

[All photos from my personal collection]

Note the little red car on the left.



© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.