Sorting photos (old ones from mother)

Yesterday, we brought a box of old photos down to the living room and the three of us (Beth, Sandy and myself) proceeded to sort through them.  The box was removed from my mother's apartment when she moved from there into  the care center.  It is a very interesting task.

For starters, most of the photographs are not labeled.  That's no  problem for those that were taken in the last 20 years.  But when you  have photos of some of the more distant cousins  taken in the 40s and 50s, it is sometimes a real guess who it is.  Many of the identifications were done by noting who else was in the photograph.  What we couldn't discern for now was laid aside for a family gathering next weekend.  Lesson for all: Have your parents label old photos now.

We also grouped loose photos according to family.  So each one of my siblings will get a package, as will some cousins and my one living uncle.  There are a couple of photos that I assume were classmates of mothers when she was confirmed 85 years ago.  We'll find out for certain next weekend.

Of course, there were a few conflicts also.  There were a couple of fuzzy photos that I felt we ought to keep (and did keep).  I know that the picture quality was poor, but it reminded me of some hard times of years ago. One photo that I've wanted to see for along time was found.  It is a picture of dad's tractor with a mounted corn picker buried to the axles in mud in the corn field.  Eventually they used a couple of tractors (with steel lugs) and a team of horses to finally free it.  I was about 5 at the time and obviously, not much help.   We did find a photo of an old hay baler that dad had.  It was a wire baler where dad poked the wires from one side and I sat on a seat on the other side and tied them while my older brother drove the tractor.  (I was about 8 then.)

Today it is on to bigger and better things.  Beth is back into  the office and thus Sandy and I can set our own schedule.  Beth is coming to the farm next weekend to make sure we seriously sort the stuff in the basement of our motorhome.   We're still looking for our wedding photo album (besides trying to reduce our load).  After two years of looking, we found Sandy's wedding dress this spring in a box on the floor of one of Beth's spare bedroom closets.  We were looking for a white box. It was in a white box, but hidden in a black bag, neatly wrapped.  At our family reunion, a granddaughter modeled the dress as part of our 50th anniversary celebration.

Doing more stuff today!

Gene