1957 in Black and White,,,,,,

As I sort through the boxes of photos I chose to give you a few shots of the year 1957.  I am sure that there are many more than these but I found a few for today.

Above are my first cousins Gene Brown and Jeanette Brown in 1957.  I think they are about 3 years old.  Eugene is the son of my Uncle Kenny and Aunt Sylvia Brown.  Jeanette is the daughter of my Uncle Marvin and Aunt Lois Brown.

The photo is the only one that I know that shows the inside living room of my Grandmother Brooks house when she lived on the farm.  The door behind them goes to a porch.  I always liked the bookcase desk that sits to the left of them but that was left behind when my Grandmother moved to town.

My dad had been in the service and traveled overseas because of the war.  Even though it wasn't a good experience for him it did turn him into an explorer.  We took a road trip in 1956 to see the mountains in Colorado.  In 1957 we returned via a route through the Dakotas and and Wyoming.  Here I am with my mom in front of the sign that depicts the site of the battleground of  Wounded Knee. I was too young to even begin to understand all that happened here.  I do believe tragedy is an understatement to the times of how people treated each other in the settling of this country. The sign says it all happen in December of 1890.  As a frame of family reference, my mom's mother was born in 1897 just seven years after this.  It shows that my grandmother was living in a time before the country was completely settled  in the the west.

This photo is out of sequence if this was a travel guide as Mt. Rushmore is in South Dakota.  Changes in the tourist's viewing area but the guys in the rock remain the same.

My two brothers Ron and Rex were in the marching band during their high school years.  The photo at left is actually taken in 1956 of Rex with our farm dog Tippy.  I show this photo to introduce the next photo that was taken in the Des Moines area.

On an island along the Des Moines river was a place where they created a recreational place for the public.  There was a ballroom built there and also a small amusement park with rides in a park like area.  The place was called Riverview Park.  One rode your car over a rickety wooden bridge to get to the place.

As a promotional in the summer, schools were asked to come and play concerts.  Murray High School band was there in 1957.   I really can't identify either of my brothers on stage but I bet they can tell you who each of the baton twirlers were.  I know that a first cousin of mine Colleen Brown was one of them and that girls with the last name of Burnett, Willet, and Brammer are in that group as they were class mates of my brothers.  I don't know if Rex's girlfriend Janet Dugger was one of them or not.

As a small town farm boy, this was quite an outing to get to go to this park.  We also were able to take a speed boat ride up and down the river as one of the amusement rides. The site today has been returned to the natural landscape with trees and wild life.  The ballroom mysteriously burned down and that was the demise of the whole operation.

I don't know quite sure how this picture of my brother Dwight, 1949-2008, fits in here but it is in 1956 that it was taken.  I guess it shows the way we all looked at the time during the fifties. 

 

The last photo says it was taken in 1959 but I am sure it was just late getting it developed.  The is our 1957 Ford Fairlane car.  The part of the photo that amazes me is where it is sitting.  It is parked in the town of Murray, Iowa.  I know that it is in the side street, south of my Grandmother Burgus' home because of the houses that I see in the background.  Across the street on the corner is the Maffitt house.  They were grandparents to one of my classmates Katty Maffitt Gaumer.  The house next to them belonged to a family named Little.   Their one daughter was unable to walk and she went to high school in a wheel chair.  She had to be carried up two flights of stairs at the school each day probably more that once or twice during the school day.

The years have passed and it is remarkable how the memories come back as one views the old black and whites.  They aren't sepia in nature but the family black and whites really are a thing of the past.

Visit others on the Sepia Saturday site who are discovering memories of family and the history of their own lives by clicking here.