This is a photo taken in 1958 or 1959. It is Far Guy and some of his cousins. It was taken at Uncle Ronald and Aunt Beryls house on the mill pond at Osage. There are two older cousins not in this photo, they must have been away at school, or off doing teenage boy stuff. It is fun for me to look at these kids, I only have known them as teens/adults..Far Guy is the kid in the front row with the vertically striped shirt. The little girl on the far left, died in 1969, I met her only one time at the State Fair in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1968. She died from Malignant Hyperthermia during a routine surgery. There was also an elderly Aunt who died from the same thing. It seemed to be a familial thing..only affecting women.
Far Guys Dad took this photo, he loved the Polaroid cameras, he always had it along with him. He would wait the appropriate amount of time after taking a photo, checking his watch, then he would rip off the covering and put the goop on. The photographs were all in boxes that were in the front closet. Many of them were curled up, you have to uncurl them to look at the photo. He would get them out and look at them in the evenings, a few photos found their way into photo albums...most of them stayed in those boxes. I have always wondered what happened to them, and had hoped that one day we would find them. We never did, that closet was directly beneath a valley in the roof and one year the ice and snow caused a dam on the roof and there was a leak down into the closet. The photos could have been water damaged and thrown away. We have very few photographs of Far Guy after he was fourteen. No Easter photos and no Christmas photos..the 1964 to 1968 photos are few and far between.
Reasons we don't have photos.
1. Someone forgot the camera, or even worse, they forgot the film for the camera.
2. They took lots of great photos and they were lost at the developers.
3. They thought the camera was loaded with film, when it was in reality ..empty..this happened to me in 1994 at Jennifer's Graduation. A hard pill to swallow. I still feel guilty about it, I was able to get a few photos from my Mom, and one from a friend. So we can still remember that day..but it just isn't the same.
4. Photos are destroyed, or simply tossed away..because they are not perfect. To me an imperfect photo is better than no photo.
5. While leaving a Gas Station someplace in Wyoming, the camera that was sitting on the dash..flew out the window and landed in the street:)
Oh I like #5. That would tick you off to loose a camera that way!!!! Wouldn't want to do that now with the price of cameras!
ReplyDeleteWish I had more old family photos too.
Great picture - I think I could have picked out Far Guy - he looks much the same as today.
ReplyDeleteMy family seems only to have had a camera the year I was six!!!!! Not much before or after!
My family is always complaining that I take the pics and am not in any... unfortunately, my image seems to break cameras, so I try to stay out of the viewfinder...
ReplyDeleteNumber 4 strikes a chord with me. I keep way too many photos that are not good. But I can't bear to trash them because sometimes they are all I have of that moment. And most of them are DOGS! Hahaha....
ReplyDeleteThe Duchess
Don't you love how stereotypical all of us look in pictures from the 50's? EMMA ROSE - - - Here is me giving scrapbooking advice when I am very behind on my books - - - but you could make a collage or quilt page with pieces of those photos. I also keep pieces of large pieces of pictures I have cropped to use with punches.
ReplyDeleteOoops - for #5!! I remember always running out of film and missing that perfect shot!
ReplyDeleteLove the cousins though.. everyone looks happy and very well dressed!
My brother, the one who flipped eyelids with me, barely survived malignant hyperthermia in an emergency surgery when he rolled his truck down an embankment on a lone stretch of road up in the hills. He lay in his truck for quite sometime and the sheriff only knew something was up because my brother's dog was sitting on the shoulder of the road. He survived being lost down in a rolled over truck, he survived the Malignant Hyperthermia, he was one lucky fellow that day, even if the botched knee bothers him now. We tell all our girls to warn their doctors and our oldest was given a very special anesthesia because of it. So sad to know that young children have lost their lives and a mom and dad lost their child when they weren't expecting to. How hard that must have been.
ReplyDeleteGreat photo. Your list had me laughing.
ReplyDelete