Friday Family Photo

This is a really terrible polaroid shot--wasn't even good when it was new. I think my father-in-law was just learning how to use it and didn't get the preservative fluid on it right--remember you had to smear it with something? This was taken at my in-laws' ranch style home on Mitchner on the east side of Indianapolis. They had moved there in 1957, and in order to finish at Arsenal Technical High School in the city, my husband listed his address as his aunt Bert's--the other half of the double they had lived in for about 15 years. And the furniture! I still remember the bright red couch with lime green accessories, step end tables and those funny lamps. One looks like a flying saucer about to land, the other like a strangled boa constrictor. That huge old TV with rabbit ears--wow! Did my parents even own one? Their decor was so much more modern than my own parents' style, that I'm sure I was impressed. My father-in-law worked for RCA and they had had a TV since the late 1940s. I wore that outfit, which was new then, for years--black and white wool tweed with black leather trim.

This photo is so tiny I had to see it on the computer screen before I realized that we still have the coffee grinder that's sitting on the end table. I knew it was from their home, but didn't know its age. Now I know it is at least 45 years old.

What you don't see here is our struggle to smile. Our only child had died about two months before, so this may have been one of our first ventures back into normalcy by attending a family function, perhaps Easter, but I noted only the year on the back of the photo.