Ghosts of Christmas Past- 1957 to 1959

My younger brother David has arrived and we celebrated his first Christmas in 1956. There aren't many pictures I have found yet for the remainder of the 1950's so we will lump the end of the decade into a single post. Some of the pictures did not have dates so I was forced to do a bit of guesswork to settle on an appropriate year. It was generally based on how old we seemed to be in my opinion. As I have stated to others in the past, if you disagree write your own blog and state your opinion. I write this one so I get to determine what is true when evidence is unclear.

This is the picture I used to establish my baseline for evaluation of undated pictures. It is dated December 1958. David on the left is 2. I'm in the center and 4 years old. Jay is on the right and is 6 years old.

We appear, at least to me, to be about the same age in the picture above. As for the toys in the picture. I remember spending lots of time playing with the yellow crane in the middle. The truck on the far right to my recollection was a tow truck. Last I knew it was still around the home place somewhere.

This is the one that has given me the most trouble. Jay and I seem younger. Perhaps it fell in with the 1956 or 1957 area when David was an infant.

Back to the year with the yellow crane. We are in the house where we all grew up. It was a good Christmas and looking back at it they all were. It lacked the excess Christmas seems to demand now but it was a different era. We had a roof over our heads, food on the table, gifts and toys to play with. It seemed there could be little more that three boys could want. When I look at those three faces I see nothing but a childhood of happiness. I hope when Mom looks at this she realizes what a great job her and Dad did. We grew into teenagers in the 1960's, went to college and all graduated college in the 1970's. Got jobs and worked and supported ourselves and our families to the best of our abilities. I don't know that it takes a village to raise a child but it certainly didn't hurt to have our grandparents across the road watching out for us, keeping us under control and encouraging us to do our best.