I feel like my blog is seriously lacking in pictures but I
haven’t been getting out much to take pictures of anything lately. So I thought
I’d post some pictures that my maternal grandmother took back in the 1930s.
The story, if I recall correctly, is this: During the Great
Depression, my grandmother, who would have been in her 20s at the time, took a
job in Virginia as a telephone operator. That’s as much as I know. According to
the little photo album I took these from, these pictures are from Lynchburg, VA.
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| Pretty sure that's my grandma on the right. |
You’ll have to forgive me if I can only say that I “think”
this is her in some of the photos. Sadly, my grandma died a few months before I
was born, so I never got the chance to know her. Most of the pictures I have of
her are from when she’s older. I find it difficult to recognize her younger
self in photos.
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| I don't know who these ladies are, but the one on the right is beautiful! |
I inherited these pictures when my mother died. My mother
had this huge chest full of old photographs. I asked for it, along with all the
slides of the photographs my maternal grandfather took (he was an amateur
photographer and retired cop who died when I was a toddler). I had to leave the
chest full of photos with my brother although I hope to retrieve it someday
soon. This little photo album is the only one I brought back with me.
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| I think that's my grandma in the fancy car. |
Unfortunately, none of the pictures are marked at all,
except for the first one above marked “’32.” I don’t know who any of these
people are. I assume they were my grandma’s friends while she lived in
Virginia.
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| Grandma's friends at a waterfall. |
I like getting to see this little piece of her. I like knowing
that she had an adventure when she was young, that she had friends who looked
like they were a lot of fun. I wish that I knew more of the story. I should
have asked when my great aunt was still alive, or even my mom, because she
probably would have told me more if I’d asked.
4 comments:
I love photos too and looking for clues about the people they depict. It's why Shorpy is one of my favorite sites (http://www.shorpy.com/)
Do you wonder what story will be told about you when you are gone? It doesn't take long for most of a life to be whittled down to "job in Virginia as a telephone operator." This is a fact of life that I both love and hate.
I've never heard of that website! I'll check it out.
After reading your comment yesterday, I got to wondering if any stories will be told about me at all once I'm gone. I suppose it depends on when I die, whether I have any friends left. I won't have children or grandchildren, and I'm not close to my nieces and nephew.
I guess it's a good thing that I write my own stories. If, at the end of it all, I'm remembered as a halfway decent writer, I think that would make me happy.
What beautiful photos. A peek into the past, it gives me goosebumps. I love looking at old photos like these and thinking, "These people felt just as real as I do now." Eventually, we're all relegated to history, but it's kind of hard to believe.
I know, it's really interesting to see these moments in time captured on film. These folks were in their 20s with their whole lives ahead of them, with no idea of who they would marry, how many children and grandchildren they'd have, what kind of work they would do or not do, how their lives would end. It's sweet and scary and somehow breathtaking.
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