Last pictures

Here are a couple more family pics from back in the day. From left to right, Jack, Rosemary and Dad. The little boy in bibs in front of Dad is his brother Dave. The two little kids in front of them are cousins. It's funny how many dogs pop up in these old photos. There were six kids in Dad's family. One died when she was a toddler. Dad was the middle kid of the five who lived. Yep, they were pretty much stairstepped.

This is the house that belonged to my Grandpa and Grandma once they settled down. They were really quite nomadic during the early years of their marriage. I'll have to blog about that sometime. They even car camped with a tent that attached to their Model T. I come by the camping gene honest!!!

Grandpa and Grandma retired from farming and moved to town in the 1960s, Dad married Mom and bought the family farm and this is where I grew up. It was a cool old Victorian, built around the turn of the century. It had beautiful woodwork, stained glass windows, carpenter's lace, pocket doors and high ceilings. Most of that is gone now, "remodeled" in the name of energy efficiency and ease of maintenance. But this is what it looked like in the 1930s or 1940s. The big tree on the left is a Dutch Elm. Obviously, it's not there anymore. 

PS. My aunt Rosemary WAS a dog person. She and her husband had a sheltie they loved very much and who traveled with them wherever they went. Meghan stood 17" at the withers and probably weighed 45 pounds. She, um, never missed a meal.