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Category: Family

The great escape

Published 8 October 2005 by Jason Crane

This morning, my nearly-three-year-old son Bernie woke up at about 5 a.m., came into our bedroom, and spent nearly two hours crawling all over us on our bed. Finally, in desperation, Jen put on a Blue’s Clues video on the bedroom TV. No effect — Bernie continued to jump around, yell, sing, talk to himself, and kick the wall.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I got the baby gate, put it up in the doorway to our room, and put him on the other side of it. As I turned to go back to bed, I shut the bedroom door … and discovered that Bernie had taken the knob off the door. Jen and I were now locked in the bedroom.

We live in a house built in 1902. The doors are original to the house, and many have missing or broken knobs, so very few of them actually shut. The door to the computer room, for instance, can only be opened with a butter knife. Thinking that maybe the bedroom door could be opened that way, Jen and I began calling through the door to Bernie, asking him to get a butter knife. He said “No!” and went into his own room. We heard his door shut.

We began to tear apart our bedroom — which usually looks like someone has already torn it apart. We were searching for some sort of implement to use to open the door. We tried a pen, a small screwdriver, a marker, a wooden clothespin, a plastic clothes hanger, part of a sewing machine … nothing worked. Then I remembered that there was a kitchen knife in the top drawer of one of our dressers. This dresser used to be in the computer room in our old apartment, which also had a door that could only be opened with a knife. I used to keep the knife in the dresser in case I ever got locked in the room. I tore open the dresser drawer, grabbed the knife, and discovered that it didn’t fit into the locking mechanism of the bedroom door.

Now we were starting to get desperate. Our bedroom is on the second floor, and it overlooks the porch roof. I considered climbing out the window, walking across the porch roof, and swinging down onto the porch. I went to the closet, got my fedora, leather jacket and whip, and cued John Williams to start the orchestra.

OK, I actually looked out the window, saw that it was raining, considered my lack of shoes, and decided against the Indiana Jones moment.

We thought about whom we could call. My sister lives close by, but she and my mom were on the way to Massachusetts. My dad was home — nearly 45 minutes away. We have friends close by, but even if they came, what could they do?

It was right about then that I remembered that the closet door in the bedroom had the same kind of knob as the bedroom door. I also remembered that it was loose. I reached over, yanked it out of the door, and used half of it to turn the lock in the bedroom door. We were free!

After a few hours of sober reflection, I feel I’ve learned an important parenting lesson from the ordeal. It is this:

Always keep a fire axe in your bedroom.

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An important anniversary

Published 4 August 2005 by Jason Crane

It was 108 years ago today — 3 August 1897 — that my great-grandmother, Louise Josephine Lay, arrived at Ellis Island with her sister, Christina, aboard the S.S. Kensington. Louise was 11, Christina was 13. They lived in Trier, Germany, and traveled to Antwerp, Belgium to board the ship.

Louise and Christina went to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to stay with their aunt Johanna (Lay) Honecker and her husband Francis. Johanna, my great-great-great-aunt, paid for the girls to travel to the U.S. Two years later, on 28 June 1899, the rest of the family came over from Germany, also aboard the Kensington: parents Peter and Catharina; brothers Jacob, Bernard and Carl; and sister Johanna. (The youngest sister, Anna, was born after the family arrived in the U.S.)

On 28 September 1908, Louise married my great-grandfather, Orren Elmer Flanders. On 30 November 1912, they welcomed my grandfather, Bernard Orren Flanders, into the family. The rest, as they say, is history.

(Louise Lay was born May 1866. She died on 31 May 1956 and was buried in St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.)

And here’s a little more history about the S.S. Kensington — the ship that carried the Lays across the Atlantic:

Kensington and Southwark were sister ships which began their careers with the American Line, and then served Red Star and the Dominion lines before heading to the shipbreakers. Despite these changes, both ships retained their original names.

Southwark was built by William Denny & Bros. of Dumbarton, while Kensington was built by J&G Thompson of Glasgow. Both ships were launched in 1893. They each made their maiden voyage on the American Line’s Liverpool-Philadelphia service, Southwark on 27 December 1893 and Kensington on 27 June 1894. In August 1895, both of them were transferred to Red Star and placed on that line’s Antwerp-New York service. (At the time, both Red Star and American were operated by the International Navigation Co.)

In 1902, International Navigation changed its name to International Mercantile Marine and acquired a number of other lines, including the Dominion Line. After making their final Red Star voyages in March 1903, Southwark and Kensington were placed on Dominion’s Liverpool-Canada service and remained there for the rest of their careers. Kensington made her final voyage in November 1908 and was broken up in 1910. Southwark made her final trip in May 1911 and was scrapped later that same year.

(Source: greatships.net)

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The Flanders family

Published 23 July 2005 by Jason Crane

A few years ago, I started to try to trace my family history back as far as I could go. I had several surnames to try — Doyle, Coughlin, Borders, Flanders, Lay and others. Flanders is the last name of my grandfather, Bernie, after whom my son is named. It’s also my mother’s maiden name. I was eager to try to trace it, except for one small problem. My grandfather knows nothing about his family. And I mean nothing. He knows the names of his parents, and there it ends.

Imagine my surprise, then, when just a few weeks of digging turned up a goldmine of family history. Turns out the Flanders clan has been exhaustively researched, and I was able to link my branch to the main trunk of the family tree. My ninth-great-grandfather, Steven Flanders, came to Massachusetts in the 1640s, and the line has been traced all the way from then to now.

The only problem was that no one seemed to be talking to anyone else about all these distant cousins we all have. So I decided to jumpstart the conversation with a Web site, newsletter and e-mail list. You can find out about all those things at flandersfamily.org. Enjoy!

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The Cranes on the Cape

Published 12 July 2005 by Jason Crane

When I was a kid, I spent some fun vacations on the Atlantic coast of Massachusetts (my home state), including in Plymouth and on Cape Cod. This summer, for the first time in years, I went back there. And this time, I brought my own family along.

We stayed in Brewster, in a house my parents rented. It was close to Sheep’s Pond, where we went on the first sunny day. Massachusetts is filled with small lakes — called “ponds” by the locals — and some actual ponds, also called “ponds” by the locals. (The most famous of which is probably Walden Pond, favored site of Henry David Thoreau.)

Early in the vacation, Jen and I left Bernie with my folks and made our annual pilgrimage to my hometown of Lenox, Mass., to see James Taylor play his July 4 show at Tanglewood. Wonderful, as always. His band this year included Rochester’s own Steve Gadd on drums; Larry Goldings on piano and organ; Lou Marini of the Blues Brothers on sax; and the great Arnold McCuller on backing vocals. I also got to see my first fireworks over Stockbridge Bowl, an old Berkshires tradition.

One thing that really surprised me about the Cape was the food. It wasn’t very good. Particularly the seafood. From what I’ve read, the Cape has been so overfished that most of the seafood you get there is flash-frozen far away and shipped to the Cape, making it about as much a seafood paradise as, say, Pittsburgh. Plus, it’s incredibly overpriced. I went to the Kream -N- Kone for a fried clam platter with onion rings and fries. The price: $19.99. You’re welcome.

If you’re going, there’s at least one other thing to avoid — the ZooQuarium in Yarmouth. The name alone should have been a warning. And when we pulled up and discovered that it was housed in a huge concrete bunker, we should have turned tail and fled. But for some reason we plunked down $30 to get in to what was essentially a petting zoo with a sea lion. It was like paying $30 to go to Petco for the afternoon. And Bernie’s not a big fan of loud noises, so the main attraction — a sea lion show in a big concrete auditorium — sent him running back outside in about 10 seconds. Traveling tip: Avoid the ZooQuarium.

On the plus side, the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History was wonderful. The museum itself was closed when we went, but we walked the trails, which were beautiful. If the trails are any indication of the quality of the museum, it would be worth a visit. The John Wing trail (named after an early white settler of the area), wound across a marsh and a cranberry bog before crossing a small island and ending at a secluded beach. Absolutely gorgeous.

We also had fun in Plymouth, one of my old summer haunts. (And the town where I famously spent a week at the age of about 7 eating Ding Dongs and candy at my grandparents’ house, and returned from vacation as round as a basketball, much to my parents’ chagrin. They made me jog every night for a week or so, but natural growth eventually took care of the weight.) Bernie and Jen and I went to Plimoth Plantation, a living museum which houses a 17th-century settler village and a Native American village. My one comment about the Plantation is that I’d like more third-person interpretation in the settler village. It’s interesting to talk with actors playing the part of 17th-century pioneers, but when you ask them how they did a job without a drill and they respond “I know not of this tool,” it doesn’t really answer your question. Overall, though, a really interesting trip, even in the rain with a two-year-old.

We also went to the Mayflower II, a replica of the original that was built in the late 50s as a postwar sign of friendship between the UK and US. The boat sailed from the UK to the US when it was built, and it has sailed several times since. I remember going there as a kid and learning this deathless humor: April showers bring May flowers, but what do May flowers bring? Pilgrims. (I’ll be here all week. Try the Indian corn.)

When I used to go to Plimoth Plantation as a kid, I always fantasized about my family having arrived on the Mayflower, which of course they didn’t. In the intervening years, though, I discovered that my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather (that’s nine “greats”) Stephen Flanders came to Massachusetts in 1638. The Flanders line goes through my maternal grandfather Bernard (after whom my son is named) and my mom to me. At Plimoth Plantation, when I looked through many of the books on early settlers of Massachusetts, my family was in there. So that was pretty hip.

If you go to the Cape, make sure you go see some games in the Cape Cod Baseball League. One out of every six former college players in Major League Baseball played in the Cape League, which is the premier college summer league in the country. Jen and I read The Last, Best League by Jim Collins, which tells the story of the 2002 Chatham A’s. We went to a couple A’s games, and they were everything we’d imagined. Future stars, before all the hooplah. Don’t miss it. (To get a little taste, you can listen to Cape League games online.)

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