You know how every so often I run across a rare batch of Romanov family photos I've never seen and go berserk? It's just as good when it happens in my own family. Behold, from the back of Grandma's closet:
Grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great grandparents galore. There's even a triple-great in there -- can you find her? That dashing doughboy in the center? That's my great-grandpa Thompson, in probably the sixth (and certainly youngest) photo I've ever seen of him. Or how about that itsy-bitsy photo of my grandma right beside it, sporting a pose that immediately brought to mind the cover of Anne Frank: Beyond the Diary.* In the upper right corner, a photo of the family farm before it was in the family. An 8x10 hand-colored portrait of my great-aunt, Alice, in her twenties.
A whole pile of history, there.
Oh, and just the other day someone gave my grandpa a photo of his mother's 1914 high school basketball team. (Don't have a copy of my own yet, though.) Did you even know girls played basketball in 1914? In skirts, yet.
*speaking of Anne Frank, today is August 4th** the 65th anniversary of the Gestapo's raid on the Secret Annex and the arrest of the Franks and their four companions.
**speaking of August 4th, today is also the birthday of bookstore buddy Linda Brick, which I once overlooked in a rather extravagant manner and vowed never to forget again.
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Currently reading:
Angry Management
by Chris Crutcher
