MY MOTHER'S TRAVELS (52 Ancestors 52 Weeks Challenge)

This story challenge is about Travel, and I'm going to write about my mother's childhood travels. She got to travel to Europe, across the US, to Mexico, and Cuba. All on regular working people's salary. How was this possible during the Great Depression? It's going to take a little explaining... 

My mom, "Peggy" [Maria Margaret Kilgariff McLaughlin], was born in 1928. She was an only child and her parents were older. Her mom, my Grandma (Margaret Charles McCann Kilgariff), worked from about age 14. Grandma had married at age 36 and kept working. She had my mom at age 42. I don't know for sure, but I assume she stopped working while pregnant. After my mom was born, Grandma stayed home till Mom was born...kind of.

I need to digress to explain about their living situation before I can explain the "kind of." They lived in a 4-story, multi-family house: Grandma's parents who were immigrants from Ireland (Joseph McCann and Catherine "Kate" Sherlock McCann) owned the house. I think they bought it brand new. They lived on one of the floors, I think the bottom one that you entered under the stairs. Grandma's sister, husband (Mary Catherine "Mamie" McCann Holzmann and George Holzmann), and five kids they lived on two floors. I think the second and third floors.

Here's a photo of the house at 91 Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn, NY. The house right in the middle is theirs. The top floor windows have awnings. I think that's the floor where my mom and her parents lived. 
 

(NYC.gov/records, NYC tax record images from 1940 for 91 Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn, NY)

So now, we can get back to Grandma working till Mom was born. About a year after Mom was born, Grandma, who remember, had worked since she was 14, went back to work! Not back to Manhattan working for Western Union, oh no. She bought a small 'candy store' across the street from where the family lived. The store would have sold newspapers, candy, snacks, cigarettes/cigars, ice cream, soda, and maybe some grocery staples--milk, butter, canned and boxed goods, bread. I don't know much about it, just that she had one and ran it. I don't know if she ran it alone, or had people she employed. She could work because *her* mother and sister were living right across the street, watching my mom. Once my mother was in first grade, Grandma sold the store and went back to work for Western Union in Manhattan. Grandma was a clerk for W.U. Her husband was a fare tender in the subway in Brooklyn.
Below is a photo of a candy store from about the 1940s.

(Photo from Pinterest)

Now think about this. My mom and her family were living in a family-owned house. My mom's parents were both working. They have only one child. It was the depression, but they were set up pretty well. This is how they were able to travel.

 And now, on to the pictures. The first set are from summer 1935 when my mom, her mom, and her parents went to visit Ireland for the 100th(ish) birthday of Patrick Sherlock, my mother's great-grandfather.  [mom-->grandma-->her mom--> her dad Patrick] These were in Northern Ireland.

Top Left: The photo page from my grandmother & mom's passport book. Top Right: Somewhere in Northern Ireland. Bottom right & bottom: In Belfast somewhere. The bottom photo is my mom, her mom, and her mom! Notice my grandmother, in the middle, above, is carrying a movie camera in her right hand. Here is a badly-deteriorated 'video' (it was film) that she took on that Trip to Ireland

Above: Mom and her grandmother in Paris. Below: Mom at a different fountain in Paris

All the photos below, from the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Mexico, were, I believe, all from the same bus trip. Notice how my grandparents are dressed. 

This trip would have been on a bus with NO air conditioning. Can you imagine taking a trip like that in the summer? 

Above & below: My mother at the Grand Canyon, and with her parents. 

Below: At the Lodge at Yellowstone.

Below: In Tijuana Mexico

Below: A 1940 trip to Natural Bridge, Virginia
 

Below: In Cuba, my mom and her dad. It looks like she is wearing the same dress as in Virginia, so perhaps this was a trip down the east coast? And after Florida they flew to Cuba?

I thought I had a couple of photos of a trip to Montreal, Canada, with her mom and a cousin, but I could not find them. At some future point if I find them, I will add here.

All in all, an amazing series of trips for a girl who grew up in the Great Depression. She was a lucky girl.