Looking at old pictures I see things that are sort of familiar or perhaps ought to be. For instance here is one taken in the front or side yard of an old house. I see shades of gray in broad outline except for things that are familiar such as faces and certain shapes. I depend on the vision of others to identify for me other shapes. That’s how I determined that the picture was taken in the yard of an old house. The house appears in one corner of the picture. My vision person described the house just as I remember Grandpa Wells’ house. The reason for the photograph is a woman standing cheek-to-cheek with a handsome year old child in her arms. One can’t blame a woman for wanting to cuddle with such a precious, loveable child.

The woman is my Aunt Tump, a woman of ample girth dressed in a long dress that barely exposes the ankles. To the back and to one side of the picture is an unidentifiable woman looking on while shading her face from the sun and wearing the same style long dress. She could be the child’s mother.

If the child is, as I suspect, yours truly, then the picture was taken about 1923. Tump was a young school teacher just starting a lifelong career. She taught elementary grades where she was assigned. She loved kids. It’s plain from the picture that the women of this family were not of the flapper crowd. The child is clothed in a dress; yes, girl’s clothes. That’s how it was so long as a child was in diapers. My boys got to wear modified dresses. Some smart person invented snaps that could close the botton of a dress-like garmet to make it look like pants. I was a proud wearer of the dress, just like my sister.

I found an interesting picture in my archives that shows a group picture of my Jessee Grandparents’ family at some time during their lives. Both of my Jessee Grandparents died before I started to school. I recognize the family because I remember seeing pictures of both grandparents copied from the group picture. A second clue is Daddy, number thirteen in his family, at perhaps twelve years, along with his brother, Uncle Emory a couple of years older. The picture is set in front of a house with a large porch. Most of the people are standing on the ground in front of the porch. Young people sit on the steps leading to the porch.

It must have taken a month of planning to get ready for this picture. There are the two young boys and eleven adults including the parents. One woman brought three little children to the party. Everybody was dressed in their Sunday best and most of them came from different farms around the county. The men wore suits of homespun wool, the scratchy kind. Granddad kept sheep on his farm for the wool, and had all the necessary tools to produce the cloth. There is no one around to identify those in the picture. I guess the women are my aunts. Aunt Becky got enough cloth to make herself a new dress in bold stripes and one for her little daughter.

Judging from the size of my dad I’d guess that the picture was taken about 1903, The faces all look rather stern as if the photographer had said “Don’t move until I say it’s all right.” The main thing I take from the picture is that Granddaddy James Abel Jessee ran a good farm and stocked it with good workers.