OK...so maybe I am getting the hang of this. Now I love to tell stories so perhaps this will be the forum for that.  Amy, in a response to my first post, suggested that Grandma Hoffman (Lillian Picnkney Hoffman) did not seem like she would be so stern about drinking.  True, I never heard her raise her voice or utter or harsh word.  She lived with her daughter, my Aunt Edna (Hoffman Winne) who was married to George but they never had any children.  I believe she had to have a hysterectomy before she even got married.  Anyway, my sister and I got to spend a week or two in Tribes Hill (about 5 miles away) with my aunt, uncle and grandmother when we were children.  That was our summer vacation.  It was a vacation....from each other as we went there separately!

Grandma H would ask me each day what kind of jam/jelly I would like that day with peanut butter and then proceed to their super clean finished basement to pick out the choice I made! We made friends in Tribes Hill who were of course, different friends from Amsterdam! AND....Aunt Edna and Uncle George would take us once a year to Sherman's at Caroga Lake.  Sherman's had RIDES! A merry go round and I loved that!

We would also go to Annie Brown's in Fort Hunter for the best ice cream cones ever.

Some times I would sit on Grandma's high bed and help her sort cut pieces if material she would use to make quilts....by hand!
Aunt Edna used to warm the plate Uncle George ate his supper from.  She would put it in the oven to heat the plate so it would keep his food warm.

I loved it up there.  They had an upstairs and a huge maple tree in the front yard (yes, it is still there) and I thought this a heavenly place to visit.  It was so different from living upstairs in a two family house where we were not allowed to play in the yard.  (the owners used it for vegetable gardening)

There used to be a sign which hung over the front door to the enclosed front porch.  The sign said MIZPAH which means God be with us when we are together and apart.  My sister and I now have a charm for our bracelets that is the Mizpah charm.