Vintage photos from a time long gone . A time never known. And in the pictures they live again. Capturing that moment when...........
This week I received an incredible gift. A gift of 1930'2 1940's family photos, from my cousin Murray.Rounds out my collection of vintage family photos. I scanned , searched , poured over . Tried to see if I recognized names. Places. Someone. Something.......... A barn raising. A man who thought he would fly. The bravery.
Houses. Perched like toy boxes on the prairie countryside.Women in rumpled aprons, tidy dresses and even tidier hair.Laced Shoes. Sensible shoes. Scrappy grass and old cars. Well, they weren't so old. Then.
People long gone. Standing, Laughing. In blistering prairie heat. Wind torn.
And then all of a sudden. Two people I recognize. My mother and her mother. Side by side . In a garden with a path. Long ago. Not the ripped up prairie. Somewhere else. More genteel. My mother in her stylish coat and strappy shoes. She always wanted to dress well. My grandmother. The one I never knew. Looking austere. Formidable. I remember my mother saying she was a stern, hard worker. Good stock. Very good stock.
Cousins in cute outfits. Murray and his sister Elaine. Crawling on cars. Long ago. Dressed to the nines. Cute as buttons.
Young women in crumpled dresses. All with perms. Dress prints that would make good quilts. My uncle in his black shirt, and aunt with her corsage. Maybe this is some sort of engagement party. With friends all round. Always people gathered. Together.
Men in fields. Taking a break. A smoke. Time out.
Women in black. Women on the snow. Women banded together.Through thick and thin.
Farms and scrub brush; mud and men who worked and toiled. Worked through the cold and the heat.
Who took children like Elaine, and her brother Murray, on amazing rides.(1946) Where they could dream and imagine what was to come. So high up . Like a giant among the fields.
A moment to take a break. A Ford ( doctors coupe). A cow. Chickens cackling underfoot.
From Threshing to looking stylish. With a load of friends. All for one and one for all!
And Uncle Stuart, at Hart House. Mum's youngest brother. I only met him once. a few years before he died. He was a war hero, wounded at Dieppe. With his niece and nephew in tow. Still in uniform, after the war. Hart House was owned by Gizzy Hart, owner of the Hart Coal Co ". Murray tells of Stuart making helium balloons , by cutting pieces of zinc metal into a beaker, add acid, and then wrap a balloon over the neck of the beaker. It must have been glorious!
And cars, cars cars. Everywhere you looked. A car.
Then one more look. Grandma Shiels with Murray and Elaine ( 1943). Who was making shadows in front of the camera? Who was trying to get the children to look up on this sunny day...And below, farms with their bounty of squash and melons, and gourds.
"Not a breath of air stirred over the free and open prairie. The clouds were like piles of cotton, and where blue sky was visible, it were a long languid aspect. " (Francis Parkman 1823-1893 American historian)
(With great thanks to my cousin Murray, for giving these to me. Greatly appreciated.)
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