Tag Archives: Vintage photos

The Family

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I call them “The Family.”

They’re not my family but they’re someone’s. I find these photos abandoned in boxes and baskets in dark corners of junk shops and antique stores. They were once cherished by someone but were discarded by descendants who don’t know the people or have no attachment to dusty old photos.

I pick up these snapshots in my travels for a few bucks because they cause me to ask questions or they seem so familiar I hate to leave them behind.

I prefer snapshots to portrait photography but occasionally bring home a professional portrait if it’s eye catching.

They mostly reside together in a box and I occasionally get them out to shuffle through and daydream about.

Last month, I picked up a few pictures at Antiques Village in Dayton and promised my pal Eilene a glimpse. Eileen writes a blog that you should look into if you enjoy stories about people from the past. She also sometimes picks up snapshots and uses her amazing research skills to identify their subjects and return them to a family member.

I do not currently have a scanner so forgive me for just snapping some phone pictures.

Sometimes these photos have writing on the back with a lot of valuable information. Meet Marianne Jensen. This is her graduation picture from Mercy College in June 1957.

Here’s another that’s labeled. This is the nursery class of the Upper Arlington Church of Christ. It was taken for Mothers Day 1960. I like all their little coats.

Here’s a family Christmas card. In case you can’t read it, the names are Jim, Mike, Peg, Tom, Pat, Ernie and Julie Arquilla.

There’s a note written on the back by Julie to Marianne and Dick who lived in Florida at the time. This picture came from the same booth as the nurse Marianne photo and I wonder if they are the same person.

Some are just fun little snaps. I wonder what their story is. There are no markings at all.

Film and processing weren’t cheap back in the day so I often wonder what made someone snap a particular photo. This one isn’t marked either.

And then sometimes the reason is clear. This one is only marked “41.” He looks quite smart in his uniform. I wonder if he made it home from the war.

Some have clues. The back of this 5×7 is stamped Hyland’s Studio, 736 1/2 Fifth Street, Portsmouth, Ohio. She’s not one I would usually buy but she was too pretty to leave there.

It just makes me sad to see them abandoned so I bring them home and call them my own. Someday I might do something with them but at least they are safe for now .

Happy Thanksgiving!

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It’s Thanksgiving Day in America and I have spent some time today studying vintage postcards and images on the internet. This image popped up on someone’s Pinterest board about vintage Thanksgiving. You should go look at their many pins over there. They have some good stuff.

This lady reminds me of my grandma. You can bet her stuffing didn’t come from a box and you have to wonder how many children were rocked to sleep in those strong arms. “Grandma will find you a cookie,” I can hear her say.

Look how joyful she is!

When you are a cook and a caregiver, feeding your family is a blessing and joy so Thanksgiving must be a truly happy day for those folks.

As for me, my sugar cookies are homemade as is the butterscotch filling for my pie. But don’t tell anyone….. the pie crust is from the frozen food section! I’ll make the crust from scratch next time.

Wherever you are, I hope for at least a while in your life you had someone like this lady who brought this level of joy to feeding their family.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!

Who Would You Chat With?

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A recent journaling prompt has sent me down a rabbit hole. The prompt asked who you would like to sit on a park bench and chat with. In this exercise, it could be any person living or dead.

There are so many people that I would like to talk with, especially people I never met. The one I chose is someone I did meet but didn’t get to know.

My maternal grandfather died at the hands of a drunk driver when I was a month shy of my seventh birthday. A car load of young adult men from Wellston, Ohio were drinking and high when they chose to get in a car and set out on a path of destruction. Turns out, one of them also died and they killed a good man in the process.

I remember him only vaguely and some of my memories are likely hand-me-downs from others who did get to know him well. My own memories are snippets and are often atmospheric like the feel of the backseat of his station wagon on a cold winter night. I think we were going to hear him preach somewhere.

He was a minister but I don’t remember his voice. I do remember how he held his Bible and have vague memories of him at the supper table grinning at something funny.

He and my grandmother raised ten children and had more grandchildren than I can count. Once the kids were grown and gone and they had a little extra money, they enjoyed traveling. I’m told that he could sit for hours with his maps, studying roads and planning trips that he might never even take.

Even if he had survived that accident, he would be gone by now but I suspect he would have made the best of those years he had left.

Being a minister, he was an orator who studied and thought through what he would say before writing his sermons. It sounds like he was a smart man, a thinking man.

Being a country boy and product of the Depression, he was a Jack-of-all trades and was capable with all sorts of skills like laying block, cutting glass and mechanical work. He also liked fast cars – another thing we would have in common.

I suspect we would have a lot to talk about on that bench.

He died forty years ago today and left an irreparable hole in the fabric of his family. Unfortunately, when he died he took a piece of my grandmother with him. She outlived him by many years but was never the same after his death. It’s foolish to question what might have been so I won’t do that but I sure would like to have that conversation.

Tell me – who you would like to share that park bench with?

Jesse and Vicky Lynn At The Hospital

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Jesse and Vicky Lynn at the hospital picture

One of my many odd tendencies is to buy old black and white photos. I don’t know who the people are or what’s happening in the photo a lot of times. I suppose that’s part of the reason I like these pictures, the mystery of it all. Sometimes I like to make up stories about these images. Sometimes i just feel bad they were abandoned and forgotten in a box in an antique store.

I typically don’t buy professional portraits. Instead preferring the snapshots, the ones taken by everyday people with their Brownie at home or on vacation.

I like the ones that make me ask questions, the ones that inspire me to wonder what happened to the subjects.

The picture above is a good example. I paid fifty cents for it in an antique mall in Portsmouth, Ohio. The back simply says “Jesse and Vicky Lynn at the hospital.” That’s it. No date, no last names, no location.

I would love to know what happened to this handsome soldier and, I’m guessing, his daughter.

But we all have a ton of photos just like this – old family photos that grandma never got around to labeling. And this generation has tons of photos that won’t ever even be printed so they can be lost and found by someone like me someday.

When I die, the unfortunate person taxed with cleaning out my house will find a whole bunch of these pictures and wonder who they are and how they were related to me. Hopefully someone will tell them that it’s just another weirdo collection of mine and to relax.