The pictures today are all from Wisconsin Dells and based on the slides from the late 1950s. By the time of the pictures my Aunt living in California was still in California. She moved back in 1960 or 1961. My grandparents would leave the Dells a few years later. I have a memory however of one of the pictures. This is not the actual picture just a memory of something similar just the chair by the stairs and my grandmother. It is one of the few Dells memories I have and one of the few with my grandmother. My father’s mother always struck as a very fragile person. But she was a great reader. She loved to read and did so all the time. Most of my memories of my grandmother are of her reading, not to other people, but herself.
My great aunt, my grandmother’s sister, worked for the Great Western Publishing company and access to lots of books. Not that the connection of sisters needed to be strengthened, but I suspect that did bring them closer together. My grandmother in the memory fragment I have, I was probably five and maybe six years old. We were visiting the Dells. I don’t remember upstairs at the Dells. I do remember my Grandfather’s basement. He had his Cavalry gear down in the basement. I still have one of his military issue saddlebags, and his 1917 issued US Army Bible and US Army Handbook. Grandfather was a member of the 101st Cavalry during the time of WWI, but he never left the US.
Grandma was sitting in the same chair in the picture nestled by the chair. She read the classic comic “Moby Dick: to me; I couldn’t tell you why except my grandmother never talked to us like we were children. My parents didn’t do that either, but Moby Dick was much for a five or six-year-old. It did kindle a love of reading, but not the way school taught. I learned later to read for content, but my first exposure to reading was as a door opener. Where can the gr3at work take you and what story will it share with you. I still Moby Dick to this day. I suspect it comes from that day, sitting by stairs in Wisconsin Dells Wisconsin as my grandmother read the Classic Comic Moby Dick to me.
There are some great smiles here.
They were great smiles, these are all my father’s father’s friends!