It has been a while since I posted any family or personal pictures. I was working on my office today and came across a couple I wanted to share. In addition to sharing we can go on a little adventure together. The first picture was undated. I know where it was taken, why it was taken but not when. It would have been nice to have that bit of information. It would have been somewhere in the mid 1960's since clearly puberty hasn't showed up in my appearance or height. It would be my best guess that it is between 1964 and 1966. It is the Knox County 4-H show and I have finished giving my show steer a bath. Well, if you're going to show you have to clean your animal up so he looks his best. It always surprises me when you look at these pictures that a kid who weighs maybe 100 pounds can lead around an animal that weighs over 1000 pounds.
There are a few things I wish I knew about this picture. The date it was taken and the name of my steer. We always got them in the fall, fed them every day and made sure they had water every day through the cold Illinois winters and showed them in the summer. Since you dealt with them every day they had to have a name. It was always clear they weren't pets and that someday (right after the show) they were off to be sold. It's not that you didn't get attached to them but you knew how the story was going to end. The harsh reality was that it would be some money in your pocket and food on someone's table.
The second picture has some important information on the back. It was taken in Camden, South Carolina in front of the home of Charles Owen in August 1969. Charles Owen is important in my life since my middle name is his last name. I used this picture to help date the one above. Since I know in this picture I am 15 years old. The vacation we took that year start with a trip to see my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins in Connecticut. It was the summer of Woodstock and somewhere along the trip in New York we got caught up in the traffic headed to that festival. After the visit with the relatives we headed south to see Mr. Owen and his family in South Carolina. I don't remember much of the trip other than a stop somewhere along the way for lunch. Race relations weren't a settled issue in the late 1960's unless you were traveling with my Dad. He didn't care what color you were or where you should and shouldn't stop to eat. We went to a small diner somewhere in the south and it was my introduction to southern cooking and black eyed peas. It was love at first bite. I still love southern food and those old diners on the back roads no one travels any longer. Enough of my babbling. Here is the family in 1969.
Front row Mom (Anna) and younger brother David. Back row Dad (John), older brother John Jay and me.
That looks like a 1965 Dodge Coronet in the background, but I won't swear to it. A pensive Mr. Sutor looking cover at something while your picture is taken. I find unposed pictures to be supremely more interesting, thus this one is a very good picture that says a lot, I think. I'm sure I would have been too sentimental for farm life.
ReplyDeleteAnd now the family posed picture. All looking like proper troopers, hair combed and shirts tucked in, except for the guy in the back on the right. I would have never guessed you had the height gene in the family. No offense but it looks like Mom is a very wee lass.