The Whole Damn Family

My original title for today's entry was going to be "Fucking Salt Mines", which is how poolagirl ended her last entry, and it seemed to be a pretty good summation for today, but then I was distracted by these pictures my sister lent me a few weeks ago so I could scan them and that I have to give back to her tomorrow. Several of them are little kid pictures of the Sibs, which is what I wanted, but this one is also in the batch:



When we would go to visit my parents over the years, and troop in with all the kids, especially if the Sibs and I arrived together, Jack would say "Uh! It's the whole damn family!"

This picture amuses me for several reasons. One, the colors are so fifties. I don't know whose camera this was or who took the pictures -- I'm guessing my Uncle Sol -- but this was a big family gathering and a lot of pictures were taken this day and they all have this kind of technicolor look, and every single one of them is off-center. It's a picture of the older generation, mostly, but many people I've talked about. This was taken in the summer of ... 1958, in the backyard of the home of my Cousin/Aunt Edie, the first one among us to move to the suburbs. (She lived on Long Island, outside of New York City, but to the east; we moved to Jersey on the west.)

So, okay, Edie is in the back on the left, holding her three year old. This makes me laugh; I remember that scowl on his otherwise adorable face. (This is the baby brother of my cousin Peter, who passed away two years ago.) Next to them is my Colorado cousin, the blonde babe, who was at this time, 13. Yes, folks, that is a 13 year old kid. Why does she look like an adult? Because her parents thought that was just the cat's pajamas, that their daughters should look like little Lolitas. Don't ask. This is the woman with the three master's degrees, so I guess she overcame it. Okay, next to her, standing in the back, is my Grandma Ida. Looks good, huh?

Seated in the front are Sam on the right, my adorable Uncle Joe in the middle, and Joe's wife Sarah on the left. Sarah would be hard to explain, but she was good at heart. She had some medical issues, as I recall. But what I love most in this picture is that you can see Uncle Joe's twinkly eyes and great smile even in the picture, and that Sam's slumping down in his chair like that tells me that he had probably been giggling uncontrollably until Sol yelled "Pa! I'm taking a picture!" and he stopped for a second and then was giggling again as soon as it was over.

I was five. I thought my cousin was a grown up because she was 13, and she sure looked like a grown up to me. I thought my Uncle Sol was weird, and he was, pretty much. The two of them had come east to visit us from California, where they lived. I didn't get to know how really weird Sol was until we visited them for a month two years later. (He wasn't actually a pervert, but he seemed to enjoy making jokes about it. I don't know how else to explain him. He was harmless, but he could certainly get annoying over time since he virtually never stopped talking.)

Anyway, I'm going to post and then (ugh) wash the dishes in the sink, and my lunch box and stuff. If I come up with anything else good, I'll see you later.


WATCHING L/O :: ENTRY #1874
READING: My Lobotomy by Howard Dully and Charles Fleming