Possumblog

Downside of Carpooling with Your Wife?

--being late.

::sigh:: It doesn't help that I had a two hour building committee meeting last night at church, nor that when I got home I found out that Boy had not completed--in fact, had not started--his family tree project for class, which caused me to have to stay up VERY late scanning old photos and creating an org chart style family tree. Grr.

Of course, that does give me the opportunity to share some photos with you, the highly interested public!

First up, my mom's dad. This picture is scanned from one of our family history books, and is actually an image cropped from a larger one that has my grandfather (whom we all called Papa Gilbert) with his three other brothers from circa 1914. My mom has the photo, but obviously on such short notice I couldn't make a better scan. Anyway, this is the guy who gave me my looks--all of his brothers have that long, lank, vacant-eyed farmer look, but Papa Gilbert, who was probably around 20 or so in the picture, is the only one who's stocky, and he has a certain set to his wide jawbone and a look in his eye that looks like he's got something on his mind. I share that square face and big jaw, and the thick shock of hair, and the heavy-lidded eyes, and the pug nose. I have remarkably little on my mind, though.

Here he is--

Next are my dad's mom and dad. This picture was taken when he was probably about two or three, which would have made it around 1930. He's the little one there in the middle with my Aunt Margaret and Uncle David, and my grandfather (whom we called Big Daddy--and please, it's not Big DADDY, it's pronounced BIG Daddy) and my grandmother (obviously, who would later become Big Mama). My granddad was quite a handsome and dapper chap in his younger days, which led to some torment later. Which is about as close to the dirty laundry as you're allowed. This picture is one I have in a small frame on the old sewing machine in the foyer.

Strangest thing was that I didn't realize my dad had an older brother, born in 1917, who died as an infant. He never mentioned it, and I never knew it until I was rereading some of the old family history information we have.

The final one didn't turn out very well--it's a picture of my mom and dad when they got married around 1952. The photo is double matted under glass, along with separate pictures of them from high school, and so the scan turned out to be pretty muddy-looking since I had to put the whole thing up on the scanner.

Anyway, this is Mama and Papa, which is what I called them. Oddly enough, my sister always called them Mother and Daddy. My dad was quite the handsome and dapper chap in his younger days, and quite a bit too much like his father. And that's all I'll say about that. My mom is quite a looker, that's for sure. I was struck last night as I was looking at the photo arrangement just how much Rebecca looks like her.

Here it is--

Anyway, I stayed up late doing these and several other pictures for him to take with him today, and Reba stayed up late working on her final paper for her class, and Oldest stayed up because she thinks going to bed early means she's a little kid, and so this morning both Mom and Oldest were dragging around like sodden sullen draggy things as I tried to get everyone to get up and let's get going. And so, of course, I was nearly 20 minutes late for work--not helped by the fact that we left so late that we got stuck behind EVERY SCHOOL BUS in Trussville, each one crawling along picking up kids. Grr.

But now I'm here, where I can get some rest.

Right?

Posted by Terry Oglesby at September 23, 2005 09:24 AM