Here's Looking At You, Kids

    The oral history of a family, while valuable, tends to change as
it drifts through generations. Events are viewed differently by
different people; memories fade, and tales are often edited or
embellished to suit the teller. Without photographs, much family
history would be lost or inaccurate. Photos acquaint us with
kinfolk we never knew, and keep alive the memory of those who've
gone before us. They enable us to go home again and visit the past.
Pictures shore up and enrich memories; fill in details when the
mind fails. Pictures provide answers to genealogy questions. A
license plate on a car marked Just Married identifies the year a
couple wed and the state in which to find their marriage license.
    My mother had her Kodak box camera handy from the first
days of marriage, when she took a picture of her husband and
their firstborn on the farmhouse porch. Poppy was debonair in
a suit and a snap-brim cap; Joe wore baby attire, complete with
high-button shoes. Then Poppy turned the camera on Ma and
Joe (Poppy's shadow is visible in the photo). Ma is fashionably
dressed in a cloche, a coat with a fur collar, black hose and
shoes. Her hat tells me they were dressed for church; Catholic
women covered their heads back then.
    More children followed, and Ma's pictorial story unfolded
over three decades. In the driveway at the farm, a bevy of
children, along with aunts, uncles, and cousins, are piled atop
and around a car, reminiscent of a scene from The Grapes Of
Wrath.
    My two oldest brothers posed atop a snow-covered farm
building, verifying the mountains of snow during the blizzards
of 1936-37. Tunnels were dug to the barn to feed the animals,
and for thirty-eight consecutive days the temperature ranged
from zero to thirty-five below.
    There's a picture labeled: Christmas day, 1946, when we
traipsed outdoors coatless to prove that Iowa has warm winter
days. Another picture recalls for me not only my wool pants
suit made from my brother's Navy uniform, but the seamstress
who made it. Emma Tjossem was a tiny widow who smelled like
Sen-Sen. She lived across the street from the park, upstairs in
someone's house, with the outdoor flight of stairs around back.
She wore a pincushion bracelet, a tape measure necklace, and
a dress adorned with snippets of thread.
    I know that we were as poor as the proverbial church mouse,
but our apparel would not reveal that to strangers viewing our
pictures. I've looked at other people's pictures from that era
and my family doesn't look much different than they do. Our
clothing was home sewn, from church rummage sales, and
store-bought. Garments and shoes were handed down from one
to the next until there wasn't an hour's worth of wear left.
    We were captured in play clothes and dirty faces, and
scrubbed faces and angelic white for First Communion and
Confirmation. For the latter occasions the boys had fresh
haircuts; their curls, cowlicks, or crew cuts slicked down or up
with a comb dipped in water. We girls added veils, ribbons, or
bows to our pipe-curls. We each held a new rosary draped over
a new prayer book; white for girls, black for boys.
    We wore feed sack dresses and pinafores, mannish little boy
three piece suits, knickers, Army nurse and cowboy costumes,
overalls, coveralls, sweaters, snowsuits, mackinaws, pea jackets,
and coats pinned shut where buttons had been. The boys wore
blue denim jeans they called "whoopee pants." I don't know
why. With the jeans they wore "inner-outer" shirts. You guessed
it, they could be worn tucked in or hanging out.
    Our heads were capped with baby bonnets, Easter hats, ear
flappers, stocking caps, headscarves, and turbans. We were
shod in high-tops, oxfords, loafers, patent leather, sandals,
saddle shoes, and four buckle overshoes. In winter, our knobbykneed
little girl legs were covered with full-length brown cotton
stockings, wrinkled like an elephant's legs from the long johns
underneath. When it grew warm, we shed the underwear and
rolled the stockings into plump doughnuts around our ankles.
Then we switched to anklets or bobby socks, next came bare
legs and, finally, bare feet. Ah; summer had arrived.
    Pictures tell me about my three older sisters as teenagers.
Sometimes pudgy, other times slim, they were perky, giggly,
pouty, coy, and sexy. Their hair styles and clothing reveal
that they were fashion conscious. The two older girls rolled
their hair in pads called "rats," or used home permanents
to set it into tight curls. The youngest of the trio didn't need
accouterments. Her hair was naturally curly, coal black, thick,
and lustrous. When war brought a hosiery shortage, they wore
leg makeup and drew seam lines up the backs of their legs.
They dolled up in hats or snoods, spectator pumps, wedgies,
and sling-back shoes, pleated slacks, shorts and midriffs,
dirndl skirts, blouses tied under their bosoms, Rosie The
Riveter overalls, and dresses whose style has come and gone
again.
    My younger brothers, Larry and Danny, were photographed
seated in a homemade wagon, adorable in over-sized caps. A

couple of years later, Ma caught the same pair, plus four friends,
perched on a bench like crows on a telephone line, reading
comic books. The twin babies of the family are shown doing
this, that, and the other thing. Coming along in late 1945 after
the deaths of two children within seventeen months, twins
brought Ma's models to a baker's dozen.
    Norma had died at fifteen from kidney disease; eight -monthold
Donnie from pneumonia. The last picture taken of Norma
belied her illness; only my parents knew she was dying. I was
eight at the time, and nine-and-a-half when Donnie died. I
recall their deaths, but almost nothing about their lives. Family
snapshots verify their brief existence.
    Ma sometimes stopped her work and our play and appeared
with her camera. "Hold still a minute," she'd say, and we'd
freeze like a game of statues. On one such day, when winter
had conceded to spring, she posed us in the yard where the sun
had melted enormous mounds of snow. The resulting picture,
showing trees and houses mirrored in large puddles, was one
of her favorites.
    "Larry, you little devil, get away," she often said when she
had a select group of us arranged just so. "I want only the girls
in this picture." But like Alfred Hitchcock appearing in all his
own movies, Larry played the extra in our scenes. His mug can
be seen behind a bush or in the corner somewhere.
    One day I asked Ma to show me how to use her camera. She
handed it over and instructed, "Hold it at your waist, find the
picture in the window, and push this button. The sun should be
behind you. Turn this knob after every picture or you'll have a
double exposure."
    "Who should I take a picture of?" I asked.
    '~nyone but me," she replied. She preferred being on the
business end of the camera rather than the object of its curious
eye.
    When I began earning money of my own, in the 1950s, I
bought a camera with a flash attachment. This opened new
possibilities: we could be photographed inside as well as
outdoors. That was about the time Ma retired her old black
box, thinking, I imagine, that newer is better. Not always so.
I had several cameras after that, but the color has faded from
many prints taken only a few years ago. Ma's black and white
images remain sharp, and continue conveying stories to her
grandchildren and their children and beyond. Many are now
spread across the Internet and on Facebook.
    Ma could never have imagined the photographic legacy
she left us. But I thank her for it whenever I sift through the
treasure trove of images, all of them now digitalized and shared
with several generations.