Cousin Tammy from Texas texted me some pictures one night last week. She had come into a couple of boxes of her mother's things, and send me pictures of the pictures that had me and my folks in them.
Here's one of my favorites:
This picture was probably taken in the late 50s or very early 60s. That's my uncle, J.W., in the foreground. He chewed plug tobacco and would spit off the porch. He got me right in the top of my head, once. He said he didn't do it on purpose, but I never believed him. He called me "Squirrel Dog." My younger cousins were "Hound Dog," "Coon Dog," and "Spud."
Back in the shadows is Granddad, sitting astride a ladder-back chair, his usual pose. I never heard him call me anything but "Girl." Granddad smoked unfiltered Camel cigarettes, and lit them with big old kitchen matches, which he flicked off the side of the porch. There was a pile of them on the ground. In the summer, I'd use them as legs for pigs made out of cucumbers that had gotten too big.
Behind Granddad, you can see a pulley that drew the water bucket out of the cistern. The building behind Uncle Jay is a smokehouse. There's a wringer washing machine just barely visible on the left. If you could see behind the smokehouse, you'd see an honest-to-God outhouse, which I would not enter, mostly because I was scared of the wasps. I preferred to do my business behind the tractor shed, which was a good way off from the house.
That porch was way taller when I was a kid. ;) My sister said the same thing when she saw the picture. She also said she's surprised it never fell on some of us and killed us, the way it's stacked on those blocks and bricks.
My brother said Granddad got after him to spank him one day, and he ran, but when he got to the edge of the porch, he feared what would happen to him if Granddad caught him, and he feared what would happen to him if he jumped. I don't remember if he jumped. If he did, he probably got a whipping, anyway, sooner or later.
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