I love old family photos.
I love the clothing and the hairstyles. I love imagining the dreams, the plans, the likes and dislikes of the people. I love seeing the progression of how they change, and I imagine how life and experience changed their hopes and faith.
With Grandma’s Louise’s photos, I don’t have to rely soley on my imagination. She has conveniently recorded much information by hand in her scrapbook, and she doesn’t seem to mind looking through the scrapbook with me and adding comments.
On the first page of her scrapbook, she wrote:
“This book is about Roy (Tommy) Bird and Louise Cummings Bird. This picture was taken at the home of Louise’s parents, near Albert, Kansas on their wedding day, Sept. 15, 1940.”
Isn’t Grandma beautiful? I can almost feel her heart all aflutter as she stands beside her man, at the threshold of her new life as a wife.
And Granddad Tommy looks like he is trying to contain his pride in a small smile. But his joy and pride are not containable and plain for everybody to see.
I don’t know when this next photo was taken or what was the occasion. It looks like an engagement picture.
Look at all that curly hair! Now I know who my husband inherited his curly hair from. And back a few years ago, when Sid still had hair at the front, it “poofed” just like Granddad Tommy’s in this picture. It was one of the main reasons he forced me to practically scalp him all these years —- to control that poof.
I’m guessing this next photo is 20 years later, as Grandma has her scrapbook layed out chronologically, and other photos on the same page are dated 1960.
I love the way she is holding on to his arm and the way he is looking at her, like she is still his love, 20 years later.
According to Grandma, Tommy had a good sense of humor, was always smiling and cracking a joke. “I’m not going to say anything bad about him, because I don’t know anything bad about him,” she told me with a little laugh a few weeks ago.
I wish I had gotten to know her Tommy. He kind of sounds like my Sid.
Prairie Sings 