Friday, July 20, 2007
LOOKING BACK.....
Yesterday, I spent the morning on errands again and the afternoon looking at old photo albums. Aunt Beulah worked for a photo shop in Omaha when she was young and always took lots of pictures. If it hadn’t been for her I wouldn’t have any pictures of my baby days at all. They are scarce as it is because I spent a lot of time at my grandmother’s house in Blair, twenty five miles away from Omaha where we and uncle Ted and aunt Beulah lived.
Seeing the happy faces of my mother and father when they were young and had their lives before them made an impression on me. It seems generation after generation travels the same road. Only the circumstances are different and will bring meaning to our existence. They had hopes and fears but there they were, caught in time with my aunts and uncles and their lives all in front of them.
The Andersen men had a passion for cars. They were a wild bunch of boys who grew up with immigrant parents and old world ideas. Dad and his six brothers were obsessed with cars. Of course they saw the first Henry Ford and all the rest that followed. Boys growing up with horses to work the family farm instantly saw the advantage to “horse-power” from machines.
I loved to hear dad and my uncles sit around the table after a meal talking about racing with each other on dirt roads, racing trains like fools along the tracks, and plowing through corn fields when their cars went out of control. Dad always said the minute he was beat in a “race” with his brothers or others who prized their fast cars, he sold what he had and bought one he deemed faster.
Where did he get the money to do that? Hard work and saving money for his love of machines. Dad would be in love with Henry Ford all his life……always regretting when he bought another brand. To him, Ford was magic and brilliant. A poor man by some standards, dad’s life would always revolve around working on machines and driving them.
When he and my mother married in March 1925 he was 21 and mom was 20. I look at their pictures and see how beautifully young and in love they were. Never ones to publicly exhibit their feelings, they had the language of the eyes that spoke of it. I never saw my dad kiss my mother but they were married 50 years before dad died and their undeniable love tied them to each other. My mother never remarried and lived 17 years after dad was gone.
Mom and dad, aunts and uncles, grandparents……all gone now but they left a path where they trod. Pictures of laughing groups roasting franks over a roaring bonfire by the river..…..always their cars in the pictures with them, their road to freedom.
Those were heady days and it is wonderful to see the youth of my forbearers. It teaches parents have a life and a personality that their children rarely see…..unless you have an old photo album……….
Until the next time, I am,
Essentially Esther
Seeing the happy faces of my mother and father when they were young and had their lives before them made an impression on me. It seems generation after generation travels the same road. Only the circumstances are different and will bring meaning to our existence. They had hopes and fears but there they were, caught in time with my aunts and uncles and their lives all in front of them.
The Andersen men had a passion for cars. They were a wild bunch of boys who grew up with immigrant parents and old world ideas. Dad and his six brothers were obsessed with cars. Of course they saw the first Henry Ford and all the rest that followed. Boys growing up with horses to work the family farm instantly saw the advantage to “horse-power” from machines.
I loved to hear dad and my uncles sit around the table after a meal talking about racing with each other on dirt roads, racing trains like fools along the tracks, and plowing through corn fields when their cars went out of control. Dad always said the minute he was beat in a “race” with his brothers or others who prized their fast cars, he sold what he had and bought one he deemed faster.
Where did he get the money to do that? Hard work and saving money for his love of machines. Dad would be in love with Henry Ford all his life……always regretting when he bought another brand. To him, Ford was magic and brilliant. A poor man by some standards, dad’s life would always revolve around working on machines and driving them.
When he and my mother married in March 1925 he was 21 and mom was 20. I look at their pictures and see how beautifully young and in love they were. Never ones to publicly exhibit their feelings, they had the language of the eyes that spoke of it. I never saw my dad kiss my mother but they were married 50 years before dad died and their undeniable love tied them to each other. My mother never remarried and lived 17 years after dad was gone.
Mom and dad, aunts and uncles, grandparents……all gone now but they left a path where they trod. Pictures of laughing groups roasting franks over a roaring bonfire by the river..…..always their cars in the pictures with them, their road to freedom.
Those were heady days and it is wonderful to see the youth of my forbearers. It teaches parents have a life and a personality that their children rarely see…..unless you have an old photo album……….
Until the next time, I am,
Essentially Esther
