Recently Found June 1980 Photos

... or so that was the date imprinted on the slide.



Dad's brother, Uncle Tuney, and Aunt Edna.




Mom's oldest sister, my Aunt Marie.

Martha, Uncle Glenn, me.

I used to stay with my cousin, Rita, a lot. They lived next door to Aunt Marie and Uncle Glenn. We always played outside except when it rained. When it rained we played on the screened-in front porch at Aunt Marie's and Uncle Glenn's. They had an old phone (the heavy kind you dial) to play with there. I thought that was about as great as it could get ... a real phone. Not a plastic play phone. (People didn't own phones back then. The phone company graciously let you borrow one while you had a phone line connected.)

With brother and sister having houses next door to each other, it made for an extended yard for us kids to play in so we often played under the shrubs that marked Aunt Marie's far yard boundry. The shrubs were old and woody and had plenty of room for little kids to climb in underneath and play. I seem to think they may have been some gardenias in there because I remember there being something fragrant.

Things that always come to mind about Uncle Glenn is first, that he smoked a pipe and always smelled of good pipe tobacco. Also, he was missing fingers ... that was pretty fascinating to a little kid. In stories Dad has told me lately, he says that Uncle Glenn was locally known as "Stubby" because of those missing fingers lost in a mill accident. And he almost always wore that straw hat.

And during the time period when that photo above was made, I almost always wore a hat, too. I wore hats for years. A trademark kind of thing I guess. Now I'm glad I liked hats since we didn't know about sunscreen back then. And also in that photo above, I can't believe how long Martha's hair is. She's always been a short and sassy haircut kind of gal.