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May 18, 2001

"I guess it's rilly true whut they say...'A pitchure's worth a thousand words,'" my husband commented, as we were digging through a big stack of family photos recently.

I found three photos taken in 1947 at my grandfather's farm—one of dairy cows, another of three hogs at a trough, and of all things, a flock of chickens posing in front of the outhouse.

Sadly, too many of the photos in our big box have no names or dates on the back. We don't know who some of the people—perhaps relatives—are and no one is left alive to identify them. What a pity.

Photos tell your family history and a lot about the signs of the times. It's amazing how in the 1950s, for example, so many pictures were taken of us kids sitting on the hood of a car. I even have one of me in my little recital evening gown, an aqua dress with layers and layers of net sprinkled with rhinestones, and I'm perched on Daddy's pickup like a fluffy hood ornament.

Everyone looked so young and carefree. Pictures of prize steers, cotton crops, picnics, family reunions, birthday parties, and anniversaries. Horses, trucks, motorhomes, motorcycles and boats and motors. Different ones in tap dance costumes, swim suits, cowboy hats, and military, Scout and Little League uniforms. Little grins with missing teeth, cat-eye glasses, and hairdos ranging from bobs, to bouffants, to shags.

Next, we found stacks of black and white shots, taken with a Brownie camera, of family and friends showing off stringers of fish in the days when my folks ran a fishing camp on Lake Whitney. Boy did that bring back memories. Lots of times, Daddy would stand my little brothers or me up beside a humongous catfish for some perspective. Most of the really big ones were caught during the flood of '57 that ended the drought Elmer Kelton wrote about in "The Time It Never Rained."

Mama had lots of studio pictures of me, especially, because I was her first, and quite a few of Curry, because he was born while we still lived in town. But she was embarrassed to put them out because poor little Lyle, the straggler, would always wonder where his pictures were.

Then we pulled out a stack of faded Polaroid Land Camera photos—remember the ones you developed instantly and preserved by spreading on that sticky, icky smelling goo? Those. It was hard to make out who some of us were, but I'd dare say it would take a wide angle lens to get us all in the same shot today.

What few snapshots Mel had of his family were mingled in with mine. I retrieved the only pre-school shot we have of Mel and his brother, Roy Lee, dressed in little overalls and standing on the seat of a tractor.

"What a shame the person taking this picture didn't move in and get a close-up of your sweet little faces. I can hardly make out what you look like."

Mel chuckled. "Daddy wuzn't takin' a pitchure of us. Why kids wuz common as dirt. He wuz takin' a pitchure of his shiny new "poppin' Johnny" to show to his friends. Brother an me jist happened to be on it."