Off The Cuff

Walking Through The Past

Posted by: From Arkansas in Family stuff, Fun things on Sep 07 2008

Welcome back!

Once in a while, I just have to get out the old pictures and go through them. I call that walking through the past. It is a part of who I am and who my family is and I love doing that. It reminds me of those days when my Grandmother was taking care of me while my parents worked. I enjoyed being with her so much. She loved playing the organ and had one in her front room at the house. She could not read music but did play by ear all the time. She knew many of the old gospel tunes. It was wonderful. But she had this amazing treasure trove of old, old pictures of family I had never met, long since gone. But they were so fascinating to me. She had pictures from the twenties. It was awesome.

I have to admit that even though I was taught not to do this, I sort of played hooky from school every now and then. It was a deliberate act. My scheming self, at age 10 or so, did not want to go to school. My Grandmother took care of me from the early AM, way before school started and I went to her house after school too. My folks picked me up there. Well, that was after we moved out. For a while, we lived with her in her really great house. But I digress. Hooky. In order to do that, I waited for the right moment. It did not happen often. My Grandmother was a smart person who could likely see through all those things I did. But when the time was right, I would suggest getting out the old pictures from the hall closet and just looking through “a few” before I had to go to school

Listen, sometimes it was Captain Kangaroo too. I wasn’t fussy as to how I took off from school, just that I did it. But the pictures were a bonus for me. Anytime we dug out the old pictures, my Grandmother would talk about getting ready for school. I would say things like “just a minute” or “awww, just one more picture..PLEASE?” and she would okay that. But sometimes, I could get her wrapped up in them too. And that was when I didn’t get to school. One thing we did agree on was that it was embarrassing to get to school late and have to explain why. So, she always allowed me to skip school when that happened. I counted on it. *grin* COUNTED on it!!!!

Old pictures are so much fun. She had some that were from all sorts of dates. I remember that my Grandfather was in the Calvary stationed at Yellowstone in the twenties. Awesome. She had some really great pictures in picture frames that were just as old as the picture itself. And there were things like a menu from the restaurant at Yellowstone while they were there. See, when he was stationed there, they lived there. Memorabilia was gathered to keep the memories. We looked at pictures of people who were born in the middle 1800s. At the time, my mind really could not wrap around the fact that those folks were living in a time when the civil war had been going on. The CIVIL WAR!!! WOW! Think about it. Even then, it was almost a hundred years in the past when I was looking at those pictures. But those photos were of people who had lived at that time.

My regret is that most of those pictures are no longer available. I have no real idea what happened to them. I was still a teen when her children, one of them was my Dad, cleaned out her house and sold it since she was too debilitated to ever go back to it. That was one of the saddest days of my life. I loved the house and all the memories that were included in it. I could tell you about her oriental carpets, knickknack cabinets, the plant that was a sprig when I was about 5 that grew around the whole dining room. There were so many memories. The house and pictures may be gone from our family but the memories are still there. And I am grateful for that.

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