Tuesday, January 4, 2011

An Old Picture...

It's funny how you remember some things as clearly as if they happened yesterday, while other stuff, equally as important, fades into nothing over time. I don't remember who took the photo below and I have no earthly idea who the girl on the left side of the photo is, but I remember the setting and the circumstances very well.

I had driven my truck home from high school on a lovely, warm late May day in 1987. It was right in haying time, and on my way to the house I saw my grandad working away at one of the barns, loading and spreading manure on a field he'd recently cut and baled. I well knew that job went better and faster with someone else to operate a loader and fill the spreader, so I threw my book bag down, changed my pants (but evidently not my shirt as my mother later reminded me....) and went out to lend a hand. That was no hardship; truth to tell it was such a pretty day it was a treat to be outside working as opposed to holed up in my room, studying my books. Shortly after I went outside, a distant cousin Myra (pictured in the yellow shirt) and some other folks who I don't know arrived from Toronto to work with my mom on doing a detailed and extended family tree and some how they decided that nothing would do until they had a picture of my grandad.

Grandpa came of age at a time when pictures were something you got dressed up and posed for and he wasn't very happy about getting his picture made in his work clothes. As I remember it, he also wasn't super happy about having his work interrupted that afternoon either. To help appease him, I was elected to stand in the photo with him. I didn't think much about it at the time, but it turns out that this is the only picture we have of he and I together as we mostly appeared each day. It's an ordinary photo, but it's one that I wouldn't take a million dollars for today.

Hope today is a good one, wherever it may find you !

2 comments:

RuckusButt said...

What a great story and momento! I love how those simple moments that we take for granted at the time can end up meaning so much later.

Jason said...

Thanks RB ! :)