GeoCities.us GeoCities.us » Heartland » Farm Get your FREE home page!

Pictures from the 1999 Reunion
Sunday, July 18, 1999, at the home place
[ Back to the Reunion Report ]

These are from my camera, which prints the date in the corner. If you took pictures too, I would love to have copies for the family album. Just mail me the doubles and I will send them back.
The dinner line in the machine shed, with Stanley at the end of the buffet table
Dinner in the machine shed. Noon sharp, after the prayer. Three hams, two turkeys, more potato salad than any family could eat, deviled eggs, Aunt Eleanor's green gelatin salad (made by her granddaughter now, from Eleanor's card), sliced tomatoes from everybody's gardens and a whole tub of watermelon. That's Stanley at the end of the buffet table serving up the ham, and the line went back out the door. Through the doorway you can see the farmhouse and the barn.
Great-Aunt Eleanor in a lawn chair holding baby Conor in his white sun hat
The oldest and the youngest. Great-Aunt Eleanor, 93, holding Conor, 9 weeks, in the shade of the big maple by the house. She wore her cardigan all afternoon in 97 degrees and said she was comfortable. Those are Conor's mother's hands just in case, but Eleanor didn't need any help. She raised six of her own.
Stanley throwing a horseshoe by the red barn while three men watch from the far stake
Horseshoes by the barn. Stanley letting one go in the championship round, with the other team and the judges watching from the far stake. He and Uncle Herbert won it, same as last year and the year before that. The pits have been in the same spot beside the barn since before I was born.
Children in yellow shirts running the three-legged race, with one pair fallen in the grass
The three-legged race. Legs tied together with strips of an old bedsheet, same as when I was a girl. The pair in front went down about ten feet from the start and laughed so hard they never did get back up. Every child got a prize anyway, because that is the rule.
Me pointing at the family tree taped along the wall of the machine shed while two cousins look for their names
The family tree. That's me pointing, with two of the Kansas cousins looking for themselves. The tree is on long sheets of butcher paper taped up along the shed wall, all 614 names. The flash made the paper glare so you can't read a word of it here, which is just as well, because this is before I found the three mistakes.
Mother and her three brothers sitting in a row on the front porch steps of the farmhouse
Willie's children. My mother and her brothers on the front steps of the house where they all grew up. From the left: Uncle Herbert (79), Mother (Jean, 75), Uncle Gerald (77) and Uncle Roscoe (72). I asked them to sit there because I have a picture of the four of them on those same steps from 1931, with Roscoe on Mother's lap. I am going to put the two side by side in the album.
The whole family in yellow shirts in rows in front of the red barn, the oldest in lawn chairs in front
The big picture. Our neighbor from down the road stood in the back of his pickup to take it; that's his tailgate at the bottom. Aunt Eleanor is in the middle of the front row of lawn chairs, the little ones are on the grass, and the teenagers climbed up on the hay wagon in the back. The man on the right walking in is my husband John. He spent ten minutes taking the picture on everybody else's cameras and nearly missed being in it himself. Nobody's face is bigger than a pea, so if you would like to know if you're in it, you are.
A blurry picture of grass, the toe of a sneaker, a lawn chair leg and a dropped paper plate
And one more. One of the grandchildren had my camera for a minute. This is my shoe, somebody's paper plate and the leg of my lawn chair. I am keeping it, because that is exactly what a reunion looks like at 4:00 in the afternoon.

[ Back to the Reunion Report ]

Roberta Powe · [email protected]