Census records are only released to the public after 72 years, which means that the 1950 records were made available earlier this year.

Now that the family search site has had some time to scan them and digitize them and convert the handwritten census takers’ scrawls into computerese, I stared looking for them.

And I found the records for my family in Womelsdorf. I was one year old, and my father was working 72 hours a week on his parents’ farm. My mother was putting in 40 hours a week as a forelady at a garment factory. 

I was probably being cared for by relatives during the day; there were many who may have been available, perhaps on a rotating basis.

And our next door neighbor’s 16 year old daughter, Nancy Oberly, was putting in six hours a week as a baby sitter. It was me that she was sitting. Probably on the weekends. But what I found surprising is that her parents had jobs listed as clerk and assembler; I thought they had a restaurant. I think my parents always mentioned that they had a restaurant and I have a vague memory of it. Very strange.