Recently my cousin sent me a few photos taken a long time ago during a visit her family made to
my family’s farm.
This
was one of them. That’s me in braids
trying to hide in the flowers by our house.
This
reminded me of other photos which came into my hands after the death of my
parents. Funny how the world seemed to
change from black and white to colors about the same time Dorothy landed in
OZ. I know these photos were taken well
after 1939. (I’m not THAT old!) But they have the same eerie quality of a time so totally removed from the fast-paced flashy world of today.
Baby
Me dressed in my sunbonnet and yet still squinting in the bright light. I’m stashed in the high chair which survived
all four children before giving up the ghost.
Farm
cats had to be tough. Not only did they
have to endure a rugged outdoor life, but there were those sticky kids who
didn’t know the difference between hugging and choking.
My
mom was a farm wife. She didn’t have
time to take a lot of pictures, but there seemed to be one every year of us in
our Easter outfits. This is me in a
dress. I remember it well. Mom sewed it and added a store-bought belt to
make it extra cool. It’s one photo of me
in a dress where I didn’t have a big bandage on one or both of my knees. That’s my older brother looking very Indiana
Jones in his fedora.
Here
I’m wearing a hat and jacket that used to belong to my big brother. I’m sitting on a Flexible Flyer sled like
you’d expect to see in “A Christmas
Story.” It was an evil sled. I have one of those memories which runs like a
movie trailer in my mind. It involves propping that sled at an angle against a
stack of wood. My plan was to turn the sled into a short slippery slide. It was an
okay plan except there was nail that had worked itself loose enough to rip
through the seat of my jeans and me.
Hurt so bad I could hardly breathe.
I still have a scar.
Not
a very good ending. Well, here is a
sweet photo of Mom and me.
