My son seems to be pretty serious playing his sax in a high school Jazz Band performance. His group won a lot of competitions as he worked through his four years in band. I am thinking the year is 1997.
Kids love school picnics and these two are having their picture taken with their country school teacher. My mom is the teacher and the year must be 1939. I like seeing the old car and a concerned parent or grandparent looking on as the photographer was snapping the picture.
Even thought is says it is 1956, I am betting the photo was taken in the fall of 1955. I am standing there at the age of five with my brother, Dwight, named after one of our presidents. Dwight, 7 years old, has a good bike there but I didn't have one at the time. I really didn't learn to ride a bike for another couple of years later, when my dad brought home a couple of beat-up old bikes from a farm sale. We had a hill in the back of the machine shed and I learned to coast down it and eventually pedal. I like seeing the hand-me-down pants and shirt that I am wearing in this photo. My age difference to my brother was three years so his clothes really were too big for me most of my childhood. I did have the privilege of having my own underwear and socks.
This is a photo from an album that I have full of family shots. I now know that the house they were from had owners by the names of Webster. I don't have much more to find among the photos. The youngster doesn't look too happy having his photo taken. If it were a photo where he had to hold still, it may be why he is so stern.
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7 comments:
Some wonderful old photos of kids being kids doing kids' things. Is that an alto sax your son is playing? My daughter played alto sax in high school and now, many years later, is playing in a community band. I sang in school chorus and still sing in choruses. I also taught music for a while. Music is vocal imagination at its best! :)
Yea, the young lad looks like he's being very patient there!
The saxophone of course caught my eye, but I like the other photos even better. However in 1955 a seven-year old boy would NOT be named for a president named Dwight, but for a general named Dwight. Same man, but I think history will remember him more for his career as General Eisenhower. For the last photo, there was a technique used by photographers of the time called "the hidden mother" when a carefully positioned drape covered a mother holding the child. It's possible you have one there.
Wonderful photos and I love the story of how you learned to ride a bike. I spent my early childhood on a farm in upstate New York in the 1950s and my bike-learning experience was similar. In the beginning I couldn't figure out how to back pedal to engage the brakes, so I would just slow down and run the bike into the barn door. A painful enough experience that I soon learned how to brake properly. :-)
Great collection of children, and I am glad to hear (and would enjoy more) about the animals on the farm where you grew up. Poor little Webster kid may have been not only mad about having to sit still, he may had just been calmed from a crying jag, and then was about to break out again.
Lovely memories and photos, especially the hand-me-down ones. Little Master Webster probably disapproves of his hair-do!
Beautiful memories Larry. God bless your New Year.
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