I am guessing this picture I am about to show you were taken some 81 or 82 years ago!

My brother was some ten years older than I and my sister some fifteen years older.

I will soon be 73 years old!

In this picture are my mother Mary and my dad “Bob” Fitz.

Today if my brother had lived he would have been 83 years old

and my sister Donna would have been 88 years old.

My father passed when he was 59 years old and I was 19 years old.

He passed from lung cancer.

His full name was Clarence Russel Fitzsimmons –

everyone for some reason called him “Bob”!

FITZ was his nickname.

He was a supervisor for the South Penn Oil Company and many a time I remember him taking me to work with him.

Later after he retired from there he was part owner of the local Western Auto.

made him take his junior and senior years over as he was too young to go find a job.

He played basketball and baseball and later would manage the local baseball town team.

He was an avid golfer and bowler – a mechanic and carpenter.

He loved fishing and would spend every summer two weeks –

deep into the far northern Canadian wilderness.

Mary my mother was Pa. Dutch from her mother’s side and Irish Catholic from her father’s side.

My dad was Irish Protestant and that made for quite the dynamics in the house.

There were many fun times in that house!

Dad’s ancestors came straight from County Tyrone in Ireland.

But mom ruled the house so to speak – she was not that big but she was a little spitfire.

She once thumped him on top of the head with a frying pan!

She lived to be almost 98 years old and everyone loved her.

She would sit on her front porch on the main street in little Eldred, Pa.

Cars would go by and honk their horns and windows rolled down, “HELLO MARY”!

She baked pies – cakes – homemade and rolls and bread.

My sister was 15 years older than I and my brother 10 years older than I.

So when I came along it was more or less a second family for them.

Then my younger brother was four years later.

They are all gone now but not forgotten.

Thank you for reading Papa’s World – a little about my family –

MY BLOG SITE: livinglifedoingitmyway.blog