A Tale Of A Porch Glider

The discovery that a whole 'nother branch of the family has found me and my blog and that they are (at least some of them) interested in family history, has given me the justification to go through the Big Ole Box of Family Photos to see what else I might throw up here. I have a few little stacks that I'll publish in the coming days (or weeks...whatever).

And today's installment is the history of our porch furniture. Oh, not really. But as I was looking through the pictures, I found several that all feature the same old porch glider...the one I remember from my youth.

From left to right: My grandfather's mother (? - I'm not 100 percent sure about that...but the fact that my grandfather is sitting there rather than my grandmother makes me think it's Pop's mother), then my grandfather, then my mother holding my brother, who was only a few months old there...probably not 6 months old yet. He was born in January.

From left to right...the same players with the addition of my Aunt Lois and her oldest child.

These are (obviously) taken on the same day. On the back of the top picture is written "Four Generations 1949" in my mom's handwriting. This was taken on the porch of Howard Lodge, the farmhouse that my grandparents had for some years. I know they lived there during the depression and during WWII. They had German prisoners of war work there during the war...they liked coming to my grandparents because my grandmother fed them well. And these were guys who hadn't been eating well for quite some time...the German army was in a pretty poor state by then. My grandfather got to be friends with one man...someone who was close to his age and had a daughter back in Germany. They actually stayed in touch for quite a while after the war.

I think this probably taken a year or so later. (ML, you want to help me out here?) This is my grandmother holding another cousin, the younger brother of the cousin in the first picture. There is a couple of years between them. But my older cousin was a big kid...so it may be that this picture was taken at about the same time. But look! There are new covers on the cushions! So it definitely wasn't the same day.

(People! Put information on the back of your photos!)


This is my youngest aunt, Elly, holding...well, that would be me. Looking a trifle uncertain perhaps and with a daring mini-Mohawk. This would have been summer of '55 on the porch of the house on Winans Way. My family lived there for years, renting it from my grandparents, and then, after my grandfather retired from the bank, we moved a couple of blocks away and Mom and Pop moved in here. And there's the same old glider, with the stripes of the cushions looking a little less fresh and white. Look at my aunt, though. Isn't she lovely? Still is.

And here's my uncle, Len. I think this was before they were married, actually. Don't I look like the little Pasha? "Cradle me! Amuse me! Now peel me a grape!" My uncle is a great guy. This is the guy that, to make me laugh, stuck one of those highchair toys with the suction cup at the bottom in the middle of his forehead. And went to work the next day with a giant blood blister in the middle of his forehead!
And finally...here I am alone. Guess I chased everyone else away.

I loved that glider.