I took a peek...

I took a peek ... at the stock market graph for today, and it looks remarkably like a noisy square wave displayed on an oscilloscope.  There were apparently four events that affected the markets in a roughly equal manner, and the timing was such that it resembles a square wave with a 50% duty cycle.  I don't remember ever seeing something like this before!

If what I just said makes no sense to you, don't worry about it.  It's sort of an electronics geek insider joke.  I'm not making any comment about the market here, just noting a strange coincidence.  I'm certain it means nothing of significance.  :)

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Yesterday morning, early, Debbie and I took a drive to Hardware Ranch and the 5M Ranch on the way to Ant Flats.  There were two highlights for us. 

First, near the dammed lake on the way to Hardware Ranch we saw two moose: a mama and her baby.  Baby was about the size of a VW Bug, and mama most of a locomotive.  Those things are big.  They were south of the road about 200' when we first pulled up to watch, but within a minute or so they ambled off into the willows lining the river.  It was quite impressive how fast those two monsters totally disappeared into the cover.  For a little while we could see the willows twitching, then ... nothing.  You'd never know they were there. 

Later, very close to Hardware Ranch itself, we saw a tiny little chipmunk very busy eating the seeds from mature grasses near his rock.  He'd climb up a stalk, bite off the seeds, then retreat to peel them all off and stuff them in his (tiny little) cheeks.  You might wonder why we'd be excited to see a chipmunk.  Here's why: squirrels and chipmunks are almost completely absent from the areas near us, as are rabbits.  We very occasionally see a rabbit up in the mountains, and even more rarely a squirrel.  This was the first chipmunk we'd seen since moving here two and a half years ago.  We can't figure out why this is true.  It looks to our eyes like rodent heaven here, both in the mountains and in the valleys.  It's a mystery to us.

Later in the day I made a new dish for us.  Besides tasting good, we're also trying to lower sodium and raise calcium.  I started with a steak, but used Mrs. Dash (zero sodium) seasoning instead of our usual salt-based seasoning.  Then I warmed up some corn tacos, mashed some avocado, chopped some Napa cabbage, and made a drizzle of sour cream, lemon, onion, oregano, and cilantro.  I sliced the steak into thin pieces.  All that made a nice taco kit, and we disappeared the whole thing.  Along with a can of low-sodium refried beans that were surprisingly good.  We weren't hungry for a while after that! :)

More memories...

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

This is Demmy, the young man paired with my dad as a Big Brother; I've mentioned him in a previous post.  The photo is undated, and on the back my mom wrote “Demmy”.  Judging from his age, this must be from the late '70s or early '80s.  The photo is taken looking roughly westward, with the driveway toward my grandparent's house stretching away under the trees.  Our larger shed, if it was still standing at this time, would have been just out of view on the left, on the other side of that broad driveway.  Our house was also to the left, about a quarter mile down a dirt road.  You can see some nursery display beds just on the other side of the driveway; there would have been more on both sides and behind the photographer.

This is an interesting photo for a couple of reasons.  There's a note on the back that reads:
The colour on the rock was a disappointment.  The hike was a gem.  Glacier Park, 1969
The hand printing is unfamiliar, and it's a bit jarring to see the British spelling – we had no British relatives that I know of.  The closest thing we had to British friends were a Scottish family, the Denholms – but I don't recall them being interested in camping and hiking.  Maybe one of my siblings can help me on this one?  The comment about the color likely refers to the original photograph, on which the color balance was thoroughly screwed up by the development lab.  I've made an attempt to correct it in the scanning process; it's not perfect but it's way better than the print I scanned it from.

Here's an undated studio portrait of my brother Mark.  Guessing from his apparent age, I'd say 1971 or 1972.  The print I scanned from has an intense purple cast, another color balance screw-up.  I remember that being quite a common problem when getting photos developed – sure is a lot nicer with digital cameras and PhotoShop! :)

Finally here's a studio portrait of my brother Scott, also undated.  I'm going to guess 1958 or 1959, from his apparent age.

More memories ...

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

This photo is dated (by the lab) December 1979, and my mom wrote “Ray” on the back.  I met this young man very briefly, once, when I was home on leave from the U.S. Navy.  He was a friend of my dad's who helped out on the nursery a great deal for a number of years.  About eight years ago I spoke at some length by phone with Ray's dad, who is a police officer in New Jersey.  Ray was troubled by some of his interactions with my dad, and his dad was searching for understanding.  I have a great deal of sympathy for both Ray and his dad; I've long hoped our conversation was some help, even if in some small way.

Christmas 1957 at our house!  The lab dated this January 1958, but it could only have been taken on Christmas Day with that mess!  Top-to-bottom there's me, my brother Scott, and my sister Holly.  My memories of Christmas time at home are apparently all out of whack – I'm very surprised by all the toys visible here, not a single one of which I have any memory of!  We're all still in our pajamas, so this is probably early on Christmas morning – probably right after we opened all our gifts.  I don't know why I'm wearing a cap – perhaps that was a gift, too.

Here's me, feet stuck into my dad's boots, with my brother Scott in the background holding a sock which must be my dad's, too – it's way too big for him! :)  My mom wrote on the back: “He does fill those shoes.”  I'm sure she meant that in a cutesy way, but the first thought that came to my mind as I read that was “You’re wrong, mom.  I don’t even come close to filling those boots – not then, not today.”  The two of us are standing just below the rarely-used front porch of our house.  I can tell from the landscaping that it's at most a few years since the house was built, and the lab's date confirms that: August 1956, just before my fourth birthday.

Here are three more photos of me.  The first one has a note from my mom on the back:

Little Tommy at 4½ months.  He's 13½ months now, weighs 24 lbs.

I am, unfortunately, considerably heavier than that now. :)  The second photo is dated (by the lab) as June 1954, when I was a few months shy of two years old.  My mom wrote “Tommy” on the back.  It looks like I'm sliding down a grass-covered hillside with mature trees at the top – I can't think of any place like that on our farm, so we must have been visiting somewhere else.  The last photo my mom wrote “Tommy 4½ months”, which puts the photo date in January 1953.  I have no recollection of that giant stuffed bear.  At that point we were living in the rented apartment in my Uncle Donald's house, and I don't remember the furniture there so I can't tell if that was taken in our apartment.

More memories...

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

The photo at right has notes on the back in unfamiliar hand printing.  It's most definitely not my mom or dad; I know their printing very well.  It's written with a fountain pen, something that I've never seen my parents use.  The notes say: “June, 1953  Stan and Grove at quitting time on the Dilatush’s home.”  Presumably Stan and Grove are the masons who built the foundation.  We're looking at the north wall of the foundation, with the kitchen bay poking out.  One thing of interest to me: the west wall right under the guy sitting on the top is solid.  I remember that wall having a rough doorway; really, just a hole.  It led into the foundation for the “old bathroom” which appears to be missing in this photo.  I'm guessing that the bathroom was added on at some point during the construction, and wasn't part of the original house plans.  It looked like an add-on, too – a wart on the otherwise straight west side of the house.

This photo is undated and has no notes on it.  The boy leaning out of the window has to be my brother Scott, and the baby alongside is likely my sister Holly.  That dates this photo to roughly 1956, when Scott would have been between two and three years old.  I think that's the east-facing window of our dining room, and the photo taken in the morning with the sun to the southeast.  I can make out a picture hanging on the wall opposite, but the light colored rectangle behind Scott is a mystery to me.  The woman whose face is mostly hidden doesn't look like my mom, but I don't know who else it could be.

This photo is dated (by the lab) June 1955, and it looks like we're on a boat.  I posted one yesterday that was also June 1955 on a boat, but all three of us were in different outfits in that photo.  I'm guessing we had another day on the boat.  That's me on the left, holding a bucket (bait?), and my dad holding my brother Scott.  Dad must have been cold – he's wearing a long-sleeved shirt, probably cotton twill though possibly even flannel.

 Here's another photo of our Magnolia grandifloras, and a better view of the flagpole, dated (by the lab) March 1959.  Certainly it was taken in the winter; the trees in the woods have dropped all their leaves.  In my mom's handwriting, a note on the back says “tree to the right of the flagpole is our big magnolia”.  The south end of our house is just visible on the right; this photo was taken facing south-southwest, apparently (from the shadows) quite early in the morning.

That's Jessie Johnston at right, in a photo dated by the lab as August 1972.  In my mom's handwriting on the back there's a longer-than-usual note:

Jessie Johnston – Papa Johnston's daughter, Sally Smith's sister.  One wonderful lady died too young – has a dental clinic named for her in Bath, Maine.

I don't remember either Jessie or Sally, but I certainly remember Papa Johnston – a “character” of epic proportions, and the main figure in dozens of hysterically funny stories.  It looks like that dental clinic is still around, and that Jessie's married name was Jessie Albert.

Finally, three photos of me.  All three are undated studio portraits.  On the first one in my mother's handwriting it says:

My beautiful oldest son – I love this photo.  He looked so much like the Ivory Baby.

I think my mom may have been just a little bit biased. :)  There's nothing on the other two.  So far I've seen about 10 studio portraits of me, and I don't remember ever sitting for even one!

More memories...

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

This fellow is Jimmy Cole, from another family we made friends with while camping.  Jimmy and his parents lived in Oakland, Maine – and I believe we met them while camping in Maine somewhere (maybe the Katahdin area?).  We visited their home a few times, and I remember going on Jimmy's paper route with him – quite a novelty for this farm kid! :)  This photo is undated, and it was taken in our home's living room.  I don't remember them visiting us, but obviously they did!  It's a mystery to me why Jimmy has a paper headdress on, and is holding a stuffed animal with another one.  I remember thinking that his parents were old – I'm not sure whether that's actually true.  I know my parents heard from Jimmy once in a while, and that he'd gotten in trouble with the law a few times.  Don't know anything else.

This photo is dated by the lab as February 1961, when I'd have been 8 years old.  That's me in the foreground, and I think that's my cousin Jonathan in the background.  I've no idea where the photo was taken – nothing in it looks familiar at all.  There are no notes on the photo.  Maybe my siblings will recognize it.

I didn't have any idea who these people were until I saw my mom's note on the back: “Picnic Jimmy Gurlick on right man who built our house kitchen and bathroom cabinets”.  The lab dated the photo as June 1955.  I believe that's me sitting next to the dark-haired girl (whom I don't recognize), and Scott in the high chair (which I remember).  It looks like we're in our yard, on the northwest corner of our house.  I don't remember that picnic table at all, but it looks like the sort of thing my dad might have built, farmer-style.  Jimmy did a beautiful job on our house and cabinets.

This photo is undated and unlabeled.  My brother Scott (at right) and I (in the inner tube) are swimming in a place I don't recognize at all.  It looks like a sand beach with scrub pines in the background, so I'm going to take a wild guess and say it's Oswego Lake in the New Jersey pine barrens.  I'll guess (from our ages) that the date is summer of 1955 or 1956.

And finally a small collection of Overs.  The first photo is dated (by the lab) as August 1952, the month before I was born.  In my mom's handwriting, the people are identified as Dannie and Joyce Over, cousins of mine, the children of my mom's sister Betty and her husband bill.  The second photo isn't dated, but in my mom's handwriting: “Mike Over Betty’s son”.  I don't have any specific memories of any of these Overs...

More memories...

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

This one has on the back “Christmas morning” in my mom's handwriting, but no date on it anywhere. We're in the living room, my brother Scott is on the left, I'm on the right, and my dad is in the background standing in the door to our bedroom hallway.  Judging by our age, I'd guess this is 1956.  I love the way Cynda is following us. :)  The picture window is out of picture to the right, where we're heading – and that's where our Christmas tree would have been up.  That stuffed armchair I remember very well.  One memory welling up: my dad sitting in that armchair, with me on his shoulders, brushing his hair while he moaned with pleasure.  I don't remember the rugs at all – but now I've seen them in several photos, so they couldn't be some temporary thing.

 This is the “front” of our home on the Robbinsville farm, the one my parents built.  The photo is undated, but on the back in my mom's handwriting is “1st and only year this blasted thing ever bloomed”.  I don't remember that tree, so I don't know what it was.  Judging from the landscaping and the sidewalk, I'm guessing this photo was taken in 1956 or 1957.  We're looking at the northeast corner of our house, and the dining room was right in that corner.  The front door, visible to the left of the photo, opened directly into our living room.  The bay just visible on the right of the photo is the north end of our kitchen.  I'd completely forgotten that the front porch had a roof over it.  We rarely used that entrance, so I guess its details never soaked into my brain. :)  The dormer visible above the porch roof I do remember – but from the inside.  We had a large attic that my parents used for storage, and that dormer held the boxes of stuff that were most interesting to me: my dad's papers and photos from the war and before.  For some reason I was often the person detailed to go up into the attic to find something, and I had the chance, a few times, to look through those boxes.  The entrance to the attic was a “hatch” over the end of our bedroom hallway.  I remember hundreds of photos of scenery, most likely from North Africa and Italy, where he was stationed in the war.  There were a couple of locked boxes that I never got into, darn it.  I remember some foreign money, some sea shells, and bags of seeds.  All of that stuff is long gone, unfortunately; I'd sure like to have it today.

This is my dad and I, in June 1954 (lab date) when I was almost two years old.  On the back, in my mom's handwriting: “Tommy and Tom”.  That curved sidewalk has been in some other photos; I think it was at the southeast corner of my grandparent's home on the farm, but I'm not at all certain of that.  I'd give a lot to hold my dad's hands again...

Here's one of several photos I'd never seen before: our house on the Robbinsville farm while it was being built.  On the back, in my mom's handwriting: “building our house 1953”.  From the foliage in the woods behind, that's in the summertime.  We're looking at the northeast corner of the house, and the worker is in the northwest corner of what would be our dining room.  The big steel tank in the foreground must have been the oil tank (for our heater), which was buried on the north side of the house.  It's interesting to see the old-fashioned construction techniques on display here; anyone familiar with modern home construction will immediately pick out all sorts of differences.  One thing that jumps out at me, because I'd forgotten it: the tall opening (with a lower top) in the basement wall, the second opening from the left in the photo.  That was a doorway that opened into a small storage area underneath our front porch.  It was like a closet in the basement.  There was a second such basement “closet” on the northwest corner of the basement, under what we called the “old bathroom”.

Here's one I'd love to know the story behind.  It's dated (by the lab) June 1955, and on the back in my mom's handwriting it says “Cape Cod fishing boat”.  That's my dad on the left, holding my hand; I'm holding my brother Scott's hand.  Scott is holding a little girl's hand, but it can't be my sister Holly because she'd have been an infant at that point.  I have no idea who that little girl was.  Likewise, I don't recognize any of the people in the background, or the boat itself.  And I have no memory of ever being on a Cape Cod fishing boat.  On the other hand, my dad knew quite a few fishermen – a result of his love of home-cooked seafood.  He found gems of seafood eateries all up and down the east coast.  It wouldn't surprise me at all to discover that he had a fisherman friend on Cape Cod.

Finally here are a couple of kid photos: my sister Holly on the left, and my brother Scott on the right.  These are studio shots, and undated.  I'd guess 1961 or 1962 for Holly's, and a couple years earlier for Scott's.

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  We had a relatively quiet day today – it was kind of relaxing to have no medical appointments. :)  I've spent a few hours today scanning photos and commenting on them.  Lots of memories; some happy, some sad.  I used a few tissues today.

This afternoon after the grass dried off (heavy dew last night) I went out and mowed.  The yard around the house is basically destroyed by the construction work, so I'm not doing anything at all with that.

I cooked a nice lunch for Debbie and I.  I'd picked up a slab of sturgeon at the grocery a couple of days ago, and today I baked it in butter and onions, with dill, lemon, and pepper for seasoning.  It was delicious!  Seafood is going to figure more prominently in our diet going forward, as it's a good food for Debbie's needs – and we both love it.  I sense a growth in our seafood cooking repertoire in the months ahead. :)

The sunflowers on the north side of my shed are beautiful right now.  Some of them are 8 or 9 feet high!

More memories...

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

First up is a young man named Demmy (I've forgotten his last name).  The lab dated it December 1977, which is when I got out of the U.S. Navy after having left home six years before.  My dad started volunteering for Big Brothers in the late '60s, and had been paired with several boys with no dad.  One of those, while I was still living at home, was a kid from the Trenton ghetto, a young black boy.  I've forgotten his name, but I'll never forget how terrified he was to be on a farm.  That poor kid only felt safe in the known quantity of the ghetto.  That pairing didn't last long.  Sometime after I left home to join the Navy, my dad was paired with Demmy – and that lasted quite a few years.  From conversations with my dad, I know that he (my dad) found this relationship quite fulfilling, but also frustrating at the same time.  I met Demmy a couple of times when I was home on leave.  I have no idea what's become of him. 

This cutie is my cousin Sandy Over, the daughter of my mom's sister Betty and her husband Bill.  The photo is undated, but I'm guessing it's from the early-to-mid 60s, as I knew her when she was older than in this photo.  I believe she's a year or two older than I am.  Her family and ours visited each other a few times a year; they lived not so far away in northern New Jersey.  Aunt Betty had a slew of kids – 10 or 12 or so.  Of that crowd, two stood out for me: Sandy and her sister Patty, most likely because they were reasonably close to my age.

Here's my brother Mark again, in an undated studio portrait (school photo, perhaps).  What a devilish expression!  I'm guessing he's 7 or 8 years old in this photo, which would place it in 1968 or 1969, not long before I left home.  That makes sense, because his appearance here (not including the fancy duds!) jibes with my memories of him when I left.

My cousin Buster is at left.  He's the son of my Aunt Lillian, my mom's sister.  I have no memories of either Buster or Aunt Lillian, and I'm not sure why.  We must not have seen them often, because I can't dredge up any recollection of them at all.

Finally, here's a photo of our home on the farm in Robbinsville.  This is looking at the west side of the house during a snowstorm.  The photo is undated, but from the paucity of landscaping and the dark color, it has to be before 1958, when my dad painted the house a lighter shade.  The picture window (left 1/3 or so of it is visible) was the centerpiece of our living room.  It overlooked a planting and the forested creek valley, and my mom's bird feeders.  Visible on the top of the smaller window is the hanger hardware for the “storm window”.  This was a second window, a single pane of glass, that together with the primary window provided a bit of insulation in the winter.  Storm windows were a positive thing, but nowhere near as good as today's double- and triple-pane windows.

More memories...

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

First up is one I never expected to find: a photo of my Uncle “Donnie”, my mom's brother, from when he was in the Marines during the Korean War.  The photo is undated, and my mom wrote on the back “bridge Donnie Marine”.  He's on the wing of the bridge of a U.S. Navy ship.  The telescope and signal lamp are standard Navy issue, both still exactly like the ones I saw in the Navy 20 years later.  At the top right you can see the (also standard) antenna mount; there would have been a whip antenna rising from it.  The odd looking cabinet in front of him is a signal flag cabinet containing the numerous flags used to communicate ship-to-ship – a system that is, amazingly, still in use today.  I only recall seeing my Uncle Donnie a few times, but he and my mom talked fairly frequently.  They were quite close when they were growing up.  Uncle Donnie was a bit of a black sheep in the family – he was (I'm told) a serial philanderer who repeatedly was caught cheating on his first wife.  My dad told me that when in all-male company, Uncle Donnie was fond of telling stories about his escapades in the (perfectly legal) whorehouses of South Korea.  Uncle Donnie made it even worse by marrying another woman (in Florida) while still married to his first wife (in New Jersey).  As a consequence he was a wanted man in New Jersey, and couldn't safely visit for years.  This photo was probably taken around the time I was born, but he doesn't look much different than my memories of him.

This photo sure brought back memories – a boat load of very nice ones.  These are the Shepard kids, from a family of dairy farmers with a beautiful spread near the Quabbin Reservoir in central Massachusetts.  We met the while we were both camping somewhere in the Western U.S. (my memory says Crater Lake, but I'm not sure that's right).  We all hit it off right away, and we saw each other quite a few times.  They visited our farm at least once, and we stayed with them a couple of times.  Wonderful people, they were.  I've often wondered what happened to them all.  Massachusetts has to be a challenging place to have a dairy farm...

Here's a nice color photo of my brother Scott from March 1960 (according to my mom's note on the back.  He was kinda cute back then, wasn't he?  It's been all downhill since then. :)  He would have been six years old then.  I don't know the context for the photo, but it looks like the photos that our school used to have taken.  It's definitely in a studio; my parents would never have been able to get the lighting right.

Finally, here are a couple more photos of my youngest brother Mark.  Neither of them is dated, nor are there any notes on the backs.  The one on the left is a studio shot, perhaps a school photo like Scott's above.  He looks older in that photo than my memories of him.  I left home (to join the U.S. Navy) when he was nine, so I suspect he's at least ten in that photo.  I don't know what the hell is going on in the photo on the right.  Purple pants, a dress, a hat from a bad science fiction movie, and colored feathers?  What is that?  And a saxophone?  If he played any musical instruments, I don't remember it.  I just did an image search on Google Images, and it looks like that is a mummer costume.  This is an element of human perversion that until now I have been blissfully unaware of.  Thanks a lot, Mark.

Update – Mark's response:

New years day
34 degrees
Marched 7 miles in the freezing rain
In pink feathers

More memories...

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

This one brings back a mix of happy, funny, and sad memories.  The young man in the photo is Joe Trembula, my best friend in my teens.  He was the son of Lithuanian immigrants, Josef and Freda Trembula.  His dad eventually bought an acre or so of our family farm, where he maintained a beautiful garden.  After I joined the U.S. Navy in 1971, Joe and I lost touch.  Through my mom, I learned of a series of tragedies in his life, culminating in his suicide about 15 or 20 years ago.  As a kid, Joe was cheerful, ambitious, and possessed of a spectacular drive.  He was also quite consumed by thoughts and ponders of right, wrong, honor, and dishonor.  Some of this I know came from his dad, who was quite an old-fashioned man.  One example that illustrates Joe's character is his decision to build a canoe, at age 15.  He got his dad's permission to use their basement for this purpose, and then went to work.  He did it “right” by his measure.  That canoe was framed in solid oak, planked with 1/2", 7 ply clear (no knots) birch marine plywood.  Those materials alone would cost a fortune today!  The canoe was flat-bottomed, but the sides curved.  To get the oak frame to curve, Joe built a steam cabinet (from scratch!) and bent the four oak longitudinal beams.  Where the beams joined, he hand-chiseled mortise-and-tenon joints.  In oak.  When he had the entire frame perfectly fitted (all joined without screws or glue), he drilled hundreds of pilot holes for screws, took it all apart, glued one joint at a time, clamped it, then screwed in brass screws.  He drilled all those holes by hand, with an old-fashioned brace-and-bit.  Then he screwed in the screws with a hand screwdriver, so as to minimize the chance of stripping a screw.  If he damaged a screw's head, out it came to be replaced with a new one.  When all the wood work was done, he fiber-glassed the outside of the canoe with three layers of very fine fiberglass cloth.  That damned canoe weighed over 200 pounds when he finally finished it.  It was practically indestructible – we teasingly called it his “Polynesian war canoe”.  He and I took several multi-day trips in that canoe, most memorably a trip down a river in the New Jersey pine barrens all the way to a harbor along the New Jersey coast.  I often think about Joe, wondering why his life turned out the way it did.  As a kid, I always thought he would become a famous, accomplished man – his energy and drive were overwhelming...

Here's another photo with some mysteries in it.  It's obviously some kid's birthday party.  The room is the dining room of our house in Robbinsville.  The woman standing in the rear was my Aunt Marion, the wife of Donald, my father's older brother.  She nearly always looked sad or somber with her arms folded, just as in this photo.  If she's there, then my cousin Jonathan (their adopted son) is almost certainly there too – but I can't pick him out.  The lab dated the photo as February 1957, when my sister Holly would have been about two; I think she's the left-most kid.  I think that's me behind the cake; I'd have been four and a half years old.  On the back my mom wrote “I forget whos birthday”.  The date is wrong for it to have been mine, Scott's, or Holly's – so it's a mystery to me, including why it would have been in our home.  One possibility: my parents didn't have the film developed for a long time after it was taken.  Another possibility: my brother Scott was born on Christmas Day, so sometimes my parents would celebrate his birthday on another day, so that he wasn't “cheated” out of a celebration that was all about him.

This is my dad, painting the west side of our house.  The lab dates the photo as November 1958, though it's clearly not taken in the winter.  It's probably from the summer of 1958, which is the most likely time for him to tackling a big project like painting the house.  My mom wrote “Tom painting. Egads!!!” – and it is an unlikely activity for him. :)  The outbuilding visible left of him is his old chicken shack.  He built that before heading off to the war, when he dreamed of becoming a chicken farmer.  Really!  On a couple of the trips I took with him, I had several long discussions about it.  Before his wartime experiences, he relished the idea of making a living by raising chickens – mainly because it was relatively profitable but wasn't very hard work.  He taught himself how to do it, built the chicken shack, and for a couple of years raised chickens for eggs and meat.  Then he went off to war, and when he came back discovered that neither of his brothers were interested in taking over his father's holly tree business, so it was his for the asking – and he forever gave up his chicken farming ambitions.  In this photo, he's wearing his “uniform” – the clothing he normally wore to work at home.  This was a light cotton short-sleeved shirt and sturdy cotton twill pants.  Normally he'd be holding a shovel, or pruning gear, not a paint brush.  :)  That haircut was his norm, too.  Behind my dad, you can see the tall beech tree that shaded our driveway, and held our swing.

Doesn't this look like something out of a history book?  It's hard even for me to believe that this was within my lifetime!  The photo is dated by the lab as February 1957, and my mom wrote “Tom and Scott” on the back.  That's my brother Scott on the left, three years old, and me on the right, four and a half years old.  I remember those outfits – jackets and insulated pants.  Seeing that truck brought back all sorts of memories.  It's a 1956 International Harvester S100 1/2 ton pickup, my grandfather's pride and joy.  After he had his awful car accident, this basically became my dad's pickup, replaced in the late 1950s by a Volkswagen pickup.  This photo was taken while the truck was fairly new – the scratches and dents that I remember are missing.   The sign that starts with “Earle Dilatush” was replaced later with one that just said “Dilatush” and included the cardinal-and-holly logo the nursery later used.

Finally, here are two more photos of me.  The first one is dated by the lab as March 1955; I'd have been two and a half years old.  That's the kitchen of the home my parents built, looking south toward the living room.  The old Kenmore electric stove is on the left, and the serving window between the kitchen and the living room is open (you can just make out the living room's ceiling tiles through it).  The beautiful knotty pine kitchen cabinetry (loved the hardware!) is on display.  It looks like a couple of roasting pans on side, up on the counter top.  I have a top knot!  The second photo the lab dates as February 1957, when I was four and a half years old.  This must have been developed much later than when it was taken, as I can't imagine we'd have been out in a rowboat in February, even in New Jersey!  I don't recognize the boat at all.  At a guess, this was taken while crabbing (something I remember well) in a northern New Jersey bay, in a rented boat.  The boats and dock all look like the right type.  Note the old-fashioned kapok life preservers at right, and the carved wooden cleat on the deck.  Neither of them would be seen these days!  Near the life preserver, it looks like the top of a Fanta bottle peeking out – and that means that most likely my mom was in the boat, as she loved that stuff.  Next to me is the top of an anchor.  Behind me (left in the photo) is the handle of an oar.  In front of me (right in the photo) is a long wooden handle – most likely for a crabbing net.  I can't tell what I'm gripping – a bag of some sort.  Possibly it's bait, or maybe our lunch. :)  If I'm guessing correctly, then we'd have had a fine meal that evening!