More memories...

More memories ... from my mom's photo collection...

These two photos are dated (by the lab) February 1957.  My dad (the only adult) has a jug of milk, making me think we're at a picnic of some sort, though the rest of us don't seem to have anything to eat or drink.  Left-to-right the kids are my sister Holly, me, and my brother Scott.  I don't know where we are, but the pines in the background look like those at one of the nicer parts of the New Jersey pine barrens (but could be at any of about a bazillion other places, too).  There's a fence in the background that I don't recognize.  I don't think that photo was really taken in February; the way we're dressed I'd guess more like the preceding fall, perhaps October '56.  That would make me five, Scott almost three, and Holly about a year and a half.

Here are two photos with the three kids close in age, both taken (I think) at Christmas time. The first photo is dated (by the lab) February 1957 (so Christmas 1956); the kids are Holly, Scott, and me.  You can see Synda lounging on the couch behind us.  There's an object just in front of me that I cannot identify.  The second photo is undated, but I think it's a year earlier, Christmas 1955.  The kids are Scott, Holly, and me.  I'm holding something stuffed, or perhaps inflated, but I can't tell what it is.  Both photos are taken in our living room, with furniture and other things we've seen in previously posted photos.

Here's Scott and I, in a rowboat.  The photo is dated February 1957, but we're dressed for warm weather – almost certainly this was taken the preceding summer.  That would make Scott about two and a half, and me almost four.  The oars are unshipped, and the anchor is in the boat's bottom, so we're probably tied up at a dock, getting ready to leave.  We're wearing kapok life preservers, the standard type back in those days (even though they were quite awful – killed about as many people as they saved, by becoming waterlogged!).  You can't tell from this photo, but they would have been bright orange with white cloth ties and black stenciled instructions.  I remember them well, and I'd recognize the smell they had immediately.

Finally, here's a photo that looks like another one in a series that we've seen before, with the three kids in it (this time, Scott, Holly, and me).  But this time there's an adult in the background, face partially obscured.  I'm pretty sure that's my aunt Bonnie, my mom's sister.  The photo is undated, but from our ages I'd guess it's from the fall of '55.  We're looking out a window of our house, probably one of the dining room's windows.