Why I find this cow and calf in the stack of family photos still baffles me. Yes, I’ve already said farming was in Grandpa and Grandma’s blood, even though they had relocated to life in an industrial city.
But I still have no idea where this was taken. It’s too hilly to be the Binkley farm. Ditto for Uncle Samuel and Aunt Grace’s place, I think. Maybe over in Indiana?
My, how dated this looks!
I remember that Grandpa and Grandma had colored Christmas tree lights featuring long thin tubes of bubbling liquid, but those went into storage or maybe away altogether when they switched from a real tree to this then glaringly novel alternative. Yes, the aluminum Christmas tree — the one that presented a mortal hazard if one of those strands of lights sprung a short.
This tree was instead illuminated by the revolving filter and floodlight in the foreground.
We thought it was so hip, and since this was our grandparents’, a bit disconcerting, too. I am surprised by how small the tree is. I remember it as much larger …
Snowfall in Dayton wasn’t exactly a rarity, but any depth at all was worth noting.
Here’s McOwen street looking toward the Great Miami River.
The back of the photo makes reference to another picture taken just a week earlier, but that one’s nowhere to be found.
I’m venturing that’s Mom and me in the center, though her look is a bit off. Aunt Donna and cousin Judy must be to the right – and likely in the framed picture atop the radio/phono cabinet.
The old woman is a mystery. I’m guessing she’s my Great-grandmother Susie Rasor Ehrstine a few months before her death.
A little bit of the Hollywood or fashion influence creeps into play.
Orphan George 