More memories...

More memories ... from my mom's collection of photos...

This young lady is Sharon Ann Reis, according to the inscription on the back in neat printing that I don't recognize.  The entire inscription: “Sharon Ann Reis Oct 1988 (12 years old)”.  I'll make the assumption that she is the daughter of my dad's Army buddy, Donald Reis.  We called him “Uncle Donald” even though he was not  related to us, and we had two actual Uncle Donalds already!  Of the three Uncle Donalds, he was my favorite.  I'd long thought that he'd been stationed with my dad for his tour of duty in Europe during WWII, but a few years ago I found out (by talking with Uncle Donald) that that was not the case.  They'd known each other during Army schooling, served separately after school, then got together again after they mustered out.  Uncle Donald is the one who first told me that my dad likely left a trail of my half-brothers and half-sisters as a result of his carousing in Italy – assuming one could believe the stories my dad told Uncle Donald.  I have since heard from a cousin that he'd heard similar stories about my dad from his father (my dad's oldest brother).

 The lab dates this in February 1959.  That's my brother Scott, imprisoned in a wire cage.  That cage was likely intended to protect a bush inside from marauding deer, but it serves well to protect the world from my brother, too! :)  The bags to the left of him in the photo are oak leaf mold bags, the burlap bags we used before my dad was able to get plastic bags.  To the right of him in the photo, a bit hard to make out, is a pile of oak leaf mold.  This tells me that the photo was taken in our old shed, on the far northern side of its floor, where we always had Pete unload his truckloads of leaf mold.  The concrete floor looks right, too.

This is me and my lovely bride Debbie, and the date would have been August 16, 1981.  We don't look quite the same any more; 35 years have changed us just a tad. :)  My mom had this photo mixed in with a large pile of photos of shrubs in a field.  There's probably a message there, but it's too cryptic for me to figure out!

Below are four photos of me.  The first one is undated, says “Tom” on the back in my mom's handwriting, and looks like a school photo.  The second one is dated by the lab as September 1957, and in my mom's handwriting on the back says “Tommy”.  I'd have been just five.  I've no idea where that was.  That Dixie cup would have been one of the old-fashioned kind made of waxed paper; don't see them any more!  The third photo is undated, part of a series that looks like we had a picnic on the Maine coastline. The last photo is obviously a school portrait, and on the back says in my mom's handwriting: “1964 Tommy Handsome!”.  The latter is not an assessment I ever hear any more! :)