Friday, August 19, 2016

Family Keepsakes Fun, Part 4

I've been through most of the boxes at this point, so I think this may be the last post in the series, unless I decide to post some of my (and my husband's) baby photos. All poetry, quotes, and pictures this time. Hope you enjoy!

This was on the front page of my grandma's 1932 scrapbook. I couldn't figure out if it came with this inscribed on it, or if she wrote it herself:


I thought this was a very odd collection of quotations. It was especially perplexing to see Gandhi and Al Capone quoted in the same article:


Most of the poems my grandma pasted in her scrapbooks are cringe-inducingly bad (lots of 1930s over-sentimentality), but I really liked this one:


I included this because I enjoy these men's old timey names, especially Streeter Stuart and Oral Clemens:


My whole life, until I opened up this box, I had no idea that my great aunt had a baby that died at 7 months. This was the great aunt I grew up with, the only one I ever really knew (she died in 2003). Ugh, I just found her obit online and she also lost an infant son. That's heartbreaking. (Note: she did have 3 children that lived.)

I gather that the baby was either born premature, or that she was somehow otherwise born underweight, because, as you can see below the obit, she was placed on an incubator 4 days after she was born. Poor thing never thrived. 

I'm going to assume that "Ruuth" is a typo and her name was actually Ruth. In my great grandmother's obituary, the same newspaper listed my grandma as "Lester" (her name was Esther), which made me feel awful for her. Obviously, I've edited out last names/street names in the below article to protect my privacy.


According to the hand writing on the back of this pic, these vaguely creepy little girls are my grandma (on the right) and her elder sister (not the same one as above, who was her younger sister).


I love, love, love this adorable photo of three friends who clearly adore one another, Swoosh, Pop & Boots. I believe Boots is my grandma. I wonder how all of them got their nicknames?


I also love this candid family shot. Other than my grandma, in the middle on the couch, and my uncle next to her, I don't recognize anyone, but everyone seems to be having such a great time. Also, it's like a time capsule of 1950s interior design.


Now for some super old timey pics! I'm guessing these are late 1800s/early 1900s. I don't know who any of them are.

I like how fantastically fresh-off-the-boat this guy looks. Also, his amazing unibrow.


This dapper gent is my favorite:


I included this because I liked the how the small, photo booth-like pictures were tucked into the frame. I wonder if they were all related or if whoever stuck the smaller photos in there did so arbitrarily?


Not so old timey. This is another great aunt, my grandpa's sister. I never met her because she lived in another state. Isn't she pretty? Also, I really like her blazer. Tucked in with this photo, I found a program to her college graduation in 1946. So that means I'm not the first female in my family to get a BA!


My mom, around eight months old. We had that swan rocking chair thingie around our house when I was a kid:


My mom at her high school graduation. I included this photo because I'm absolutely astounded by her hair. How did she get it to poof up so high? I have the same hair as her. My hair does NOT do that! Not that I want it to, but still, I'm fascinated. I wish she was still around to ask.


And here's little me! Unfortunately, it's horribly faded, in that way that only late 1970s/early 1980s film faded, so that it looks like we spent a decade surrounded by red air (Well, it was the Cold War!). I have a vague recollection that my mom was annoyed that I chuckled so hard. I think she thought it was a waste of a professional photo session.

3 comments:

Patricia said...

I'm very excited about this post. Unfortunately, Matt has also jumped on the internet and now things are running very slowly, so I can't read the whole thing right this second. But I googled the first picture to see where that saying/poem/lyric what-have-you is and I found this link:

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2194&dat=19271227&id=hzc0AAAAIBAJ&sjid=cvUIAAAAIBAJ&pg=7083,4623250&hl=en

More later.

Patricia said...

So many fun things!

Is it good that Gandhi has had a cake of soap for three months? I feel like I'm missing some context. Also I now know not to associate Capone with those Ziegfeld Follies. And am happy to note post-war flappers are discharging their duties so well.

I enjoyed Grenville Kleiser's poem too. (Also: old-timey name). I looked him up and it seems he wrote a lot of things that were inspirational and also about oratory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenville_Kleiser

The clipping about your great aunt reminded me that just this morning I was thinking how the newspaper doesn't perform its function of keeping up with the birth/death/marriage thing. There are no reports of babies born, no lists of weddings. The obituaries are still around (probably because the upgraded ones make money)but are depressingly brief for the standard versions.

I love those vaguely creepy girls! Can you imagine trying to keep those white dresses white?

I concur about the 1950s interior decor photo. Also, I'm hoping there was a couch or something facing the TV. Right now the room seems set up so the TV is at a weird angle.

Yay for your grandpa's sister and her BA! Did the program say what her course of study was?

My mother had a similar hairstyle as your mother around that same time period. I think it becomes so large because 1) they only washed it about once per week and 2)Hairspray, (or whatever the predecessor to hair spray that made hair sticky). I'm seeing the MAunts today. I'll try to remember to ask them.

I love that photo of you and your chuckling. I feel like I have one of me with a similar dark top and similar blue background.

Also, I vote yes to posting baby pictures!

balyien said...

I love that Grenville Kleiser has a wiki! Funny how he was kind of a big deal back then - he taught at Yale! - and nowadays no one has ever heard of him. Just goes to show that your fame has to be meteoric to stand the test of time. Also, yes, he had an excellent old timey name.

No, I can't imagine trying to keep those dresses white. I can't keep my own white clothes white, and I don't do much of anything that would get them dirty. Keeping little girls' dresses white? Oy vey.

I didn't notice that about the TV in the 1950s picture! Now it's going to bother me every time I look at that picture. Lol.

I know the program said what my great aunt's BA was in, but I can't recall, and it's in the box at the bottom of the pile, so I'm too lazy to dig it back out. I think it was English, though. I believe she may have been a college professor later in life.

I could never go a week without washing my hair. Most I can do is two days tops. After that, it looks like a matted, greasy mess. I suppose if I teased it out every day with hairspray, it wouldn't look like that, but I've quite literally never had the patience to mess with my hair too much.