More Old Pictures …

UPDATE SUNDAY SEPT. 14, 2014  4:50 PM EASTERN TIME.

NOTE: I have just had a conversation with Donna and I just assumed that the “sweetheart” photo at the top of the blog was Mr. John and Mrs. Crumly. Well it is NOT the Crumly’s. I was wrong. The photo is of Donna and HER high school sweetheart, Brad Harvey. Who is now her loving husband. So sorry.

Updated 11:50 central time, USA.

Writer: Donna Harvey.

Since I last wrote about old pictures I have been perusing my iPhone and discovered a wealth of old stuff.  I know we all have history to get to the place in time we call the present; it is just that some of us have more history than others.  It is also strange to me that no matter the amount, we have the ability to look into the pictures and see an old place and time and almost put ourselves back to that same time.  I have always believed the mind is the most fantastic “computer” that has ever been, or ever will be created because the Lord was the one who created it.  Some of the smallest things can transport us back in a flash and yet we are still in the exact spot without moving.  I hope thinking of old pictures has caused you to dig up some of those old pictures and reminisce just a little.  Perhaps all of us have lost someone or something (like a dog or cat, who was our best friend) over the years.  We are each so very blessed by so many little things which we can stop to count, if we pause long enough.

Remember the song that Bing Crosby, and oh the wonderful voice he was blessed with, anyway, he sang “Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep.”  Those lyrics were written by Irving Berlin and then there is the Hymn “Count Your Blessing” by Johnson Oatman, Jr.   The refrain goes something like “Count your blessings, name them one by one; county your blessing, see what God hath done! Count your blessings, name them one by one; And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.”  Seems like in this day and age (here I go again, sounds like my mother) that we just don’t have enough reminders to stop our rush about schedule and take time to count our blessings.   Oh boy, did I diverge here but well deserved.  The first picture that I share is my own and my darling sweet husband when we were just sweethearts and we were at the Windy Knoll when it was the Lang farm.  As you have heard previously, when Dad came back from the war (WWII) he farmed this place one year and he also ran a movie projector in town, I guess that was in Geraldine, so he was up late showing the movies and changing the film.  Then he would sleep late to catch up a little in the mornings and Exie (my grandmother) would just pace the floor and the porch, just outside the bedroom windows (which were raised) saying the crop would never be made because that boy would just lie up in bed sleeping.  Mother was very protective of the one-she-loved-best and also said that when he got up he would almost run his short legs off getting the fields plowed.  I have heard her say that they made more crop the year daddy farmed than any other year on this farm.  Anyway, that was the only year that dad farmed and he went to Marietta, GA, to Lockheed-Georgia Plant and got a job.  Was probably not too hard for him since he had been a mechanic in his tenure in the Army Air Corps (later became the Air Force).  The three of us moved to Georgia and that is where I have been and where the folks stayed until daddy took early retirement from Lockheed to come back to the farm (Mother always said he loved the land and I have to say it is a beautiful spread).

Then I have found another picture of granddaddy with a large sow.  Wow!  He must have been proud of that pig and look at those little piglets?  I am aware that at some point in the life of the animals they are called shoats and the dictionary says it is “a young pig, especially one that is newly weaned.  Wonder why one would call it by a different name?  It is no longer a sucking piglet?  Would shoat tell something about the age and how big the piglet might be?  Language is another strange thing that we just use and don’t know a lot about.  Oh well, more things to ponder.

Then I find another where I have a made  picture of Donna and Beth.  You have heard the story about Beth (and it is not Elizabeth but just Beth) being my 8^th birthday gift.  I love to introduce her as my oldest sister but you know that I am 8 years ahead of her but she is the brightest one in the family.  Beth is Mensa and I am proud of her for that.  She is the educated one in the bunch and still is getting educated.  I have heard it said of one of the cousins that he was a professional student and I tend to think that Beth really does like being a student.  She had just had way more on her plate in the last 6 months that school would allow but somehow she is making time to finish her Ph.D.  Boy, am I ever proud of her (I know mother would have been too, although she sometimes chose strange words to let that be known.).  In the past we would be able to talk on my way to work and she was headed to school to teach but this year she has changed schools and has to start earlier and I haven’t changed my times so we miss talking to each other.  We have solved the problems of the universe during those drives to work.  Anyway you just enjoy this sweet picture of young girls.  And let me just show you a more recent picture of Beth, when she is absolutely worn out.  She does tend to push a little bit and has to have some rest.  Isn’t it just like a sister to show something like this?  Can’t wait to hear from her now, and I am sure I will HEAR from her.  Heeheehee

 

After my daughter, Kay, died, it seemed to me that family pictures were something that I realized I had not had made.  Jennifer had been adopted and Britnee was the only child that Kay had left.  Bless her heart she loved all her children but could not take care of more than one and then had to have help.  So we went to Olan Mills and had the only family portrait that I think I have ever known of us having made.  I did not buy a big picture but I bought all the proofs, hoping I would have a big one made.  Well, I have kept up with the location all these years.  And you can tell by the clothes that this picture of John and Billie Crumly was made at the same time.  I have to laugh as I always thought daddy was quiet but he is anything but.  In this picture you can tell his mouth is screwed up and I just imagine that he was cracking some kind of joke.  Mother always tried to call him down but he would just go on with his carrying on anyway.  Glad he still does.  He loves children and when we go shopping with him he is always talking to the kids.  Sometimes mother’s look at him a little strange because they have to teach their children to “Not Talk to Strangers” but how does this little old man teasing with the children fit in.  Oh well, this is just a little reminiscing and pulling out old pictures and old memories which are all a part of country living.