First, a couple shots of my grandmother and her brother. The first, they're sitting on my great-grandmother's lap on the family car, just outside Paris. The second was more of an environmental portrait, I suppose:
Next up, her future husband, my grandfather, with a mischievous grin on his face as he pulls his brothers and sisters in a wagon toward who knows what.
But he grew up eventually and, in order to support his family during the Depression, joined the army. He spent the first few years manning an outpost in Marfa, Texas, along the Mexican border. Some of the time was devoted to helping the Border Patrol with cross-border bandits, then later he was trained as a signalman, which is what he mostly did during the war when it came a few years later. My grandfather is the one standing off to the right.
While granddad was overseas (North Africa, Sicily, Italy), my dad stuck around home to help with the chores. Here he's taking care of business in his grandparents backyard.
After being wounded in Italy, granddad returned to be the senior non-com at a POW camp in Texas. This allowed my dad and grandmother to join him at the base.
When the war ended, he left the army and used his Signal Corps training to get a job with the phone company. He started out with the program to string cable in rural areas. He's one of the guys up on the pole.
But he also became a volunteer fireman in a succession of small North Texas towns. Here he's fresh from his job as the local SW Bell business office manager to attend to a fire as the asst chief in Grand Prairie.
My grandmother's brother moved to California after the war. My dad and his folks went to visit in the early 50s; here they are on the then-ferry to Richmond in an early color shot -- my grandmother's red coat really stood out, a shame most of the shots from this set were overlapped, probably a faulty film advance, or some fumbling on my grandfather's part:
Once back home in Paris, folks were cutting up around the family Studebaker.
Lastly, one of my favorites: what must amount to a photo booth set of my great-grandmother when she was a young girl -- interesting, as that would have been sometime around 1910 I would guess. Didn't know they had photo booths back then. By the time I knew her, she was fairly old and frail and had lost her teeth. But she always had a wonderful sense of humor and I really missed her when she passed away during my college years.
That's more than enough for now. Happy holidays to all who celebrate them,
Robert
