Virtual Family Reunion

     

I spoke too soon the other day! On this Tuesday afternoon—following a downpour of rain and gusts of biting wind—everything’s getting chilly. Maybe we’ll have a little season of cool weather for a while.

                      

            Like the weather, let’s shift into another mode. My intention all along has been to put out there some old photos that many of you may have seen, but  not in a while, and that others may not ever have looked at.

            First, let’s go back to Maggie Petty (Mayo Sweeney Skinner), my great-great-grandmother. In my files I found this picture labeled “Maggie Petty about 1900?”.   

   It’s a copy, so I’m certain someone else has it, somewhere. I’m curious about whether it’s actually her. I see a real similarity to the old photo I put up earlier,

but I want to be sure about this. Does anyone know where it was taken?

            For fun we’re going to take a trip back through the years to a time around maybe 1944, early -45.   I estimate this because of the ages my brothers appear to be in the picture.

            Some of the kids were not happy: observe Bill Perkins’ expression of terror as his cousin Don Smith wrangles him for the photographer (left side). Or maybe that’s just fury at not being able to run around.

            I’m not sure who Agnes Smith (Pilgrim) has in her arms. I wonder if it isn't my fourth brother Kenny; the age might be about right. That baby is decked out in SOME KINDA ensemble, though, and really seems to love the buttons on Agnes’ dress!

            The brothers are easy to ID. Left to right: Roosevelt Alawine, Sammy Alawine, Jackson Pruitt Alawine, Bob Alawine. They look dashing—those leather jackets! An interesting thing to consider, which some younger family members may not know: Uncle Sammy served in WWII and was held in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp for some time.

            Not all the sisters were there. Missing were Aunt Clara, Aunt Creacie, Aunt Sylvia, and Aunt Turin.

            Those four lived pretty close by at the time the photo was probably taken. Maybe they just didn’t get into the shot. Who knows? But left to right: Ola Mae, Bessie, Bonnie Fay, Beatrice, Omera and Ila Dean.

            The in-laws were grouped, too: Mildred (Pruitt’s wife), Ernest (Ola Mae’s husband), Cecile (Bob’s wife), Marcus (Bessie’s husband, Artie Mae (Roosevelt’s wife).

            Maybe that’s Uncle Ernest’s hat behind him on the car? It’s not in the other pictures.

            I wonder if some people just didn’t want to be in the photograph. No matter: there were at least 26 adults and children posing in front of someone’s car that day. I’m adding Sam and Maggie Alawine, of course, to the count:

            There’s no date on this particular photo—and none on the others—but they’re wearing coats, like many of the other relatives, and the general “feel" of the picture is the same as in the family group shots. There must’ve been a family gathering going on, and someone wisely decided to document it.

            Speaking of Sam and Maggie, here are a couple of photos of them—one at a time around 1949 and one when they seem fairly young.

            Maggie was 14 when she married Samuel Thomas Alawine (I guess that was legal in the 1890’s). She had sixteen children (one set of twins in that number). She died in 1950. Both of these pictures are copies, so probably many relatives have seen them before. I wonder if anybody knows when the one with the wagon was made?

            Reunions—actual reunions—are things I myself find really hard to do these days. It’s not that I’m too far away, geographically, but that I’m too far away, temporally (that is, in time). All the adults in the pictures I’m posting are no longer with us; three of my four brothers in the “grandchildren” photo  (if I’m right about the baby) are gone also.

            This is partly why this blog is being done—so that those relatives who don’t have memories of the individuals standing in these snapshots can more easily envision them. They were having a good time that day. Someone thought that car was a great backdrop. The children were being typical kids—some standoffish, one or two crying, the older girls (Agnes and Dean) looking as if they were just a little above it all.

            I feel warmer on this chilly evening.  
                                                                                                                  Ælfwine