Plum Stones

[poliphilo]

I've spent much of the past four days looking at pictures of the dead. Taken before they were dead, I hasten to add. Taken when they were lying in hammocks or walking down streets (there used to be a whole brotherhood of street photographers who earned a living lurking about on busy highways snapping faces in the crowd- unthinkable these days when your mobile phone doubles as a camera) or paddling in the ocean or just watching the birdie.
I was looking for messages. I received a few.

I learned:

That my great great grandfather was an elegant man,
That the fashions of the 1920s were extremely cool; bring back the cloche hat!
That my grandfather, grandmother and father formed an extremely close and loving family unit.
That my father was an unbearably cute little boy,
That I am related to some people by the name of Huggins.

And...?

It's a one way conversation. My grandfather spent months in Bogota- but I can't ask him why. His leather cowboy trousers are memorialized but not the very important work he must have been doing down there. What does it matter now that he traveled to Moscow selling tractors to Stalin or once showed Princess Margaret round an exhibit of earth-moving equipment?

All gone.

I can deal out his life like a hand of cards. I can flip through it in seconds.

Thirteen, fourteen- Maids a courting;
fifteen, sixteen- maids in the kitchen;
seventeen, eighteen- maids in waiting;
nineteen, twenty- My plate's empty.

Comments

[dakegra.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about this recently. I remember vividly seeing a photo of my dad when he was on National Service, in Egypt. Sat outside a tent as the sun set.

I asked my mam if she had the photo, but she said she didn't know which one I meant. I've only got one photo of my dad, one he took for his passport.

Actually, it must have been for the passport he needed to go on his holiday to Austria with mam, where he had a heart attack and died.

I'm not sure I'll ever look at that little square of photo in the same way ever again.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Some photos have lots to say and some have almost nothing.

My grandfather left a suitcase full of photographs. It has been sitting in my mother's loft for a couple of decades. My father had annotated some of the images and I spent Monday morning completing his work. It seemed important that the next generation (and the next} should have some idea who all these people were.

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on not only the cloche hat, but I think the toque (as in Queen Mary) should return as well. For some of us with extremely round faces, who also wear glasses, the toque can be splendid.

Funny thing, but I wish I had asked my parents (separately) about their sex lives while they were still alive. I KNOW my father had sex with at least one person before my mother, because a girl tried to say her baby was his, but since he had been away at university some 400 miles distant during the possible conception time and this was in the 1930s in rural Idaho, that was obviously not possible. The fact that he ruled it out by proving he was away at university tells me that he'd obviously known her, in the Biblical sense, however.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm...

My mother was talking about old boy friends when we were staying with her earlier this week, but I wouldn't have the nerve, chutzpah (or whatever) to ask her if these affairs went beyond taking tea at the local Lyons Corner House.

My dad took us to visit the pub near where he had been stationed during the war and the bar-maid (still in place after twenty years) joyously greeted him as "Johnny" (a name no-one in the family ever used.) I wonder what the back story was.

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

He's a guy, you're a guy, surely you can ask him that.

I was able to talk to my mom about almost anything. When young, she was extremely beautiful and considered "fast" back in the 1920s for wearing trousers and having her skirts too short. I also found after she died, 2 studio portrait photographs of two of her boyfriends before she met my dad. We did talk about sex and she knew about my lovers, wish I'd asked her if she had any.

I lived with my dad for 2 years after my mother's death, until his death, and we had lots of long, intense talks. I don't know why I never asked him more when he volunteered the story about the pregnancy bit previously mentioned. I guess I'm a fairly private person and respect others' privacy, so if they don't volunteer, I generally don't ask.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

My relationship with my parents was always rather arm's-length. We just didn't talk about personal stuff. My father, in particular, was a very closed-off and private person. He's dead now, but we were never on a two-guys-shooting-the-breeze-together footing.

It's been interesting, reading the emotionally effusive letters he sent to his mother in the 30s(and which my grandfather had archived) to find he wasn't always so reticent. I wonder if it was the war which caused him to clam up?

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

The war changed a lot of people for the worse. My mother said her older brother, my Uncle Walter, was such a tender-hearted guy before the war. They lived on a farm and he couldn't bear to be around when it was time to kill the chickens. After he came back from Italy and Monte Cassino, he killed the damned chickens himself. And NEVER mentioned the war again.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

My dad was in bomb disposal. I can think of nothing harder on the nerves. And, yeah, he never talked about the war either.

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

I love your stories. They are so beautiful, so thought provoking!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

[morrison-maiden.livejournal.com]

That the fashions of the 1920s were extremely cool; bring back the cloche hat!
Hear hear!! Actually, while watching a silent Garbo movie, I said to my dad that I find it funny how the women from the "gutter" seem to be better dressed than those in society :-X

I love old photos, but particularly the ones of my family. My paternal grandfather was very elegant; I have some photos of him on the computer, I'll have to post them. He looked a bit like a mix of William Holden and Cary Grant ^_^

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Some decades are lovely and others aren't. We were looking at my parents' wedding album (1948)and the clothes were boxy and most of the women had dead animals draped over their shoulders. Hideous!

Yes, you must post some pictures of your grandfather.

[morrison-maiden.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree. A lot of the sleeves from that period were really horrid; very puffy and frou frou...That's why I love the mid to late 20's, because the clothing was so simple and streamlined to the bodies. Even the gowns were very sleek against the figure. The early 30's were similar to that also.

I definitely will. I don't think I've posted from that side of my family yet. The wedding photos were of my mother's parents. I wish I had my father's parents' wedding album; they were married in 1932!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We don't have wedding photos for either set of grandparents. I wonder what happened to them?

I need to get a scanner. I'd like to be posting old photos etc.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Scanners are very inexpensive these days! I recently bought an HP color scanner and printer combination at Walmart for about $150. It works beautifully.

I so enjoy reading about your relatives!

My mother stole my father away from her college roommate, who was rather unpleasant about it.

It would never occur to me in a billion years to ask either of my parents questions about their intimate lives!

A trillion years!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ailz was looking at scanners on-line. I've been stalling, but maybe I should let her go ahead and buy one.