Some People I Never Knew & How I Remember Them

Yeah, with a post title like that, I bet you are wondering what in the heck I'm talking about now. It all started long ago when I began to 'rescue' photos I found at the flea market. I would find a great old photo and feel terrible that the person or persons pictured in the photos were now relegated to sitting in a box in a place where no one knew their names...or even cared. So I bought them. Well, not ALL of them...I can't do that..there's not enough space in my house. However, I have managed to bring home some of them and still do when I find one that 'speaks' to me. I call them my "new old relatives."

A few years ago we had a mirror in a frame over the buffet in the dining room. One night, very late, we heard a loud crash. Well, I was concerned, Richard wasn't, so I got out of bed and looked the house over trying to find out what had caused that sound. Eventually, I stepped into the dining room and turned on the light......that mirror had fallen down onto the buffet, bounced off, hit the dining table, bounced off..then crashed into a zillion pieces onto the floor. It took hours to get up all the glass, with me wondering the whole time what I would do with that empty frame as buying another mirror was out of the question. Of course throwing it away wasn't an option. You know I had to find another use for it.

Eventually, I decided to cover some foam core with fabric, put it into the frame and I would add "something" to fill it up. So, I did that and left it for a while...only to come back later with the idea of putting old photos in it. By then, something else had taken up space over the buffet, so I had to find a place for the photos. Not so easy in a small house already filled to the brim. I had a quilt hanging in the entry way.....it wasn't too hard to figure out that the photos COULD go there if I so desired. I did. There they are today. And, there they will stay until I get the urge to move them somewhere else. I do so love to move things from "here to there and back again" depending on my mood. I love these people. I always love finding new ones too, but these have lived here long enough to "belong."

There are two photos that are REAL relatives, so they do truly belong here. There is a photo of a lady in a long dress with a little boy...that little boy is my husband's Dad when he was a kid and the lady is his grandmother...who would be my husband's great grandmother. There is also a little oval photo button picturing Richard's Dad, Vincent, and his brother (Bob). This is really a neat thing and I have since found out this type button is quite collectible. I just like having it. Richard lost his Dad when he was nine years old, so any thing like this we get...well, it's special.

One of my favorites of the old photos shows two little girls with their dogs. It makes me smile every time I look at it. Underneath the picture, someone has written: "Your grand daughters and sons - Sport and Ted." The smallest little girl is standing on a box.....so cute!

On the far left of the frame is a beautiful woman in an oval frame.......it was given to me by my friend, Jim. She was just so pretty I pinned frame and all to my collection of new old relatives. There is a family of girls...can you imagine how much time it took to get them ready to have their photo taken? There are a couple of guys in the service...love them! One of an older lady (given to me by friend, Keri). She has such a sad look on her face I wish I could make her laugh. I wonder if she ever did? There are several that include houses...love finding those and I imagine walking through the houses. If you click on the full photo of my frame, you can probably see all the pictures.

I chose to use buttons and straight pins to attach the photos to the fabric/foam core. That method seemed to fit "in" with the type photos I had....what do you think?

The big oval picture over top of the frame was given to me by Richard's cousin, Jr. He's in his eighties now and tells me this lady was a cousin or aunt or something to his late wife, Nell. I thought a lot of Nell and he gave me this picture, saying, "well, it's about to fall apart and I knew you'd be the only want to want it." Yes, sir. So, I hung it right up where it is now.

I always look for photos when I am out hunting and gathering. I look for photos that picture people with their quilts, but have never found one of those....at least not yet.

You might be wondering why I am so interested in these old photos. Truly, I do not know. It might be because I never had many photos of relatives......other than my parents. Actually, I never laid eyes on a photo of my Dad's mother until 2004 and she died in 1918! Having never seen her before, I was shocked at how much my Dad resembled her. And me also.

I love these old photos.....just as I love so many of the old things I run across at the flea market. And, even though I don't know who these people were......I bet I would have liked them very much!

I'll share some more new old relatives at another time. I just received two more very interesting photos from my friend, Brenda. She discovered them on a trip to Columbus, Ohio....yeah...must be my Ohio side of the family!! Pat