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 !