~upon the eating of a lard sandwich~

     Going through old photos and organizing them into meaningful groups has been an ongoing task for me since my mom passed away in September of 2007.  When I cleaned out the basement of her house back in Hutchinson, which later became my own house, I found so many boxes and envelopes filled with assorted photographs of our family life.  Now 7 years later, I am getting a bit closer to getting the old ones done but am fast replacing them with new photos of life now in the year 2014. In the years to come when my own children and grandchildren have to go through my belongings, I don't want them to have to wonder who in the world people in the photo are.  Thus, I'm doing my best to not only save them to a computer's hard drive but making "hard copies" in photo albums as well.   It shall indeed be an ongoing process.

     Yesterday as I was sorting through them, I found a bunch of photos of the "Scott side" of my genealogical tree.  It was an album filled with pictures of my dad as a little kid and later as a growing teenage boy.  I miss my father, gone now since 1982,  and it was with a bit of sadness that I allowed myself to look through them.  The sadness soon gave way to a smile on my face as I imagined my own dad as a little kid.  The man that I always knew as "bald" actually did have a lot of hair as a child growing up.  In picture after picture he always had a smile on his face, the same kind of smile that he wanted the little girl that I used to be to wear upon hers.

   

     There were 8 kids in his family, 4 boys and 4 girls.  Dad was the fourth child and was given his father's name, John.  He and his sister Marie were only a year or so apart and they were friends for life.  This may be my favorite photo of him as a little boy growing up on a farm in Harvey County, Kansas.

Oh how I wish I could have known the story behind this picture.  My dad is standing next to his older sister Betty.  The little guy is his brother, called Billy as a little boy.  The dolls in their hands are rather interesting.  Not sure if my Aunt Betty made them all play dolls with her that day or exactly what was the deal.  They all have smiles on their faces so maybe they were just having fun or something.  It was the Great Depression and children used their imagination to provide relief from the tough times they were enduring as a family and as a nation.

     Tucked inside the back of an old frame, behind a photo that was visible in the front, I found a photo that I had never seen before.  It was one of my grandparents on the Scott side of the house and it actually looked as if it had been cut apart from a bigger photo in order to place it into a much smaller frame.  The years since the 1930's when the picture was taken have taken their toll on it and just as soon as I scanned the photo into my computer, I put it right back where I found it and hope that it can last a while longer.

John and Bessie Belle Scott-probably ca mid-to late 1930's, taken in Newton, Kansas where they were living at the time.  My grandpa died with a full head of hair.  His sons were all bald in their adult years.  My dad would say, "Go figure."

       I'm so glad that I was paying attention to what my mom told me about going through the old boxes and envelopes in her house at home.  I told her, as I visited her in the nursing home one day, that I was going to start sorting through things at her house and was there anything special that I should be on the "look out" for.  I might never have located the photo, shown above, had I not taken the time to look inside of the frame.  She gave me some very sage advice and I did exactly what she said.

"Peggy, you be sure to go through every single box there is.  Sort through every envelope.  I can't remember where I have tucked everything away.  Don't hurry.  Take your time."

     I wish I could have found a million dollars for her in all of her many boxes of belongings but I did not.  I think I did find about $50 in odd change and even a couple of gift cards that she didn't realize she had.  But even greater than finding money or a Sears card that she could use to buy her much loved "Zip and Dash" dresses, I found myself and my own family history tucked in among the stacks of things that were there.  The boxes marked "Grandma Scott's pictures" contained so many photographs that I can only remember looking at a couple of times in my life  before.  Mom had saved them all and even as much as meant to me that day as I cleaned out the basement nearly 11 years ago now, those photos mean even more to me today.  Things that all of the money in the world could never buy have much more value in my life now.

     Daddy was a little boy who grew up in a family that struggled all the way through the Great Depression.   Times were lean, lean, lean for them all.  He never talked much of it but mom always told the story of how our father took lard sandwiches in his lunch box nearly every day to school.  He wasn't the only one, others were in the same dire straights.  I don't imagine that my father ever complained and was thankful that his mother was such a good baker and could always provide fresh bread for her children to eat.  The idea of lard being spread upon two pieces of bread to make a sandwich has never been very appealing to me but then I've never had to live in times such as he did.  He made it and so did everyone else in his family.  They stuck together.  They had to.  There was no other way.

     Every single person in my father's immediate family is now long gone and the pictures are all that I have left to remember any of them by.  So many of our family photos were lost in my parents' house fire on Christmas Eve of 1976 and I only have vague recollections of what those pictures were of.  When Grandma Scott passed away a few years later, my parents stored away her photos in boxes at their new house and thankfully they were safe for viewing in the years to come ahead.  A little girl named "Peggy Ann" found out who she was, the family that she will always be a part of, that winter's day back in 2003.  They are priceless images of a time long gone by us of people that meant the world to me.

A photo taken on Christmas Day of 1976, just one day after the fire came to destroy their home and every single belonging they had.  Luckily we still had the cafe to go to and that's where this photo was taken of my parents and my grandmothers.  They still managed to smile despite everything that they had just gone through together.  Probably because they valued human life way more than things that could always be replaced somehow.

Christmas Day of 1977~
He was such a kind man, a gentle person.  I never once remember him yelling at me or giving me a spanking for things I had done wrong.  Daddy had this way about him.  When he was sad or disappointed in us for whatever reason, seeing the sadness on his face was much more punishment than giving any of us kids a spanking.  God knew exactly what He was doing (no surprises here) when this man was chosen to be my dad.  One day when I was visiting my mom in the nursing home, she took my hands in hers and began to look at my fingers.  I asked her what was wrong.  She told me that my hands, especially my fingers, looked just like his did.  I never forgot what she told me that afternoon.  It was a comforting thing to me, the little girl that will always be his.

Strange how you  remember things, like the best gifts your parents ever gave you growing up.  My father gave me the finest present ever in May of 1973.  He put off leaving on the wheat harvest by one day in order that he could attend my high school graduation.  It was the gift of John Scott's "presence" that meant absolutely everything in the world to the 17-year old girl that I once was.