Photographs from our younger years remind us of who we were way back when. Here are four of me. The first photo is from 1950 when I was 6 years old. Two are from 1960 and the last photo was taken in 1970 when I was 28 years old. Each of these photographs has a story to tell and seeing them again has taken me on a surprising and enlightening journey into my past.
1950 6 YEARS OLD In this photo I’m wearing a one-piece bathing suit, decorated with stylized fish swimming across my little belly which I am proudly sticking out just a bit. I’m barefoot and standing with my legs planted firmly on the ground. My arms are bent at the elbows, my hands are holding onto my waist. My hair is blunt cut to my neck, with straight bangs, and sets off my square shaped face. And then there is my smile, not a full smile, but it is a confident smile that crunches up my eyes and puffs out my cheeks.
The photo was taken when my family was
in the “country” which is how we identified the place where we and other
families rented dilapidated cabins for seven summers, from 1947 to 1953. The
cabins were on Cross Lake in Wisconsin, just north of Antioch, Illinois. The
lake which we called “little lake” was about 80 acres in size (the equivalent
of 16 Chicago city blocks) and was one of the Chain of Lakes in northern
Illinois and southern Wisconsin.
Looking at the photo, I know that six-year-old
Betsy owned the world. I had no fears in the country at Cross Lake. There were
lots of kids, some my age, some older, some younger and we children were free!
The days were ours to fill with whatever we wanted. Most days we went swimming
in the lake. Sometimes we collected tadpoles or rubbed our faces on the soft
furry white fly-away seeds of the cattails in the swampy area adjacent to the
lake. We rode our bikes on the unpaved roads outside the cabins and up and down
the one very small hill in the community.
On some days I walked by myself in
the field across from our cabin, through knee high grass taking in the sweet
smell of clover. Other days I went with my older sister Susie, or on my own
when I got older, by way of a country road to the town of Antioch, where there
were two attractions: the white frame house that held the Antioch public
library and another frame building that housed the general store. Days were hot
and the library was cool and spacious. As
soon as I could read well enough, I devoured the Oz books (there were many),
Black Beauty and other horse books in the series and of course the Nancy Drew
mysteries.
At Antioch’s general store, Susie and I bought paper dolls to add to our collection. On rainy days, we would play paper dolls on the double bed in our parents’ bedroom, making up stories about mothers, fathers and children, as long as the stories included many different scenarios requiring outfit changes.
1960 SIXTEEN YEARS OLD I found two contrasting photos of me from 1960; both were taken by my father and I am standing in the living room of our brick bungalow on the north side of Chicago. The first photo was from my sweet sixteen party in May 1960. I have a fake formal smile on my face, and my hair has been fixed by the beauty shop lady. My bangs are plastered in place, the hair above my bangs is teased and the rest of it is pulled back into a twist. The whole hairdo is held in place by lots of hair spray. The photo is black and white but I remember the dress was green taffeta. It had wide lapels that came down to a v-point at the three-inch waist band. My bosom is modestly covered by a white linen dicky. The dress has a straight skirt down to just below my knees and sleeves that come to just below my elbows. Two-inch heels finish off the look.
I’m standing stiffly in front of
the tables my mother set up for the party. She coordinated the napkins, paper
plates, and plant centerpieces with the green color of my dress. My eyes are alert
behind the white cat glasses, but it seems that my expression conveys a
tentativeness about the whole experience. Or it could be that I remember to
this day how tentative I was about having the party.
In the second photograph from 1960, taken in the fall of that year, I am standing in front of our spinet piano with a somewhat open, half smile on my face. I’m wearing the same white cat shaped glasses. My bangs and my softly curled page boy haircut frame my face. When I was six my hair was straight as a stick, but in the intervening years my hair developed a bit of a wave and in my normal life, I didn’t need any beauty shop lady to arrange it and spray it into shape.
The camera must have been angled
slightly upward and I look taller than my full-grown height of 5 feet. I’m
wearing a black sheath dress with a cowl collar and buttons down the front. The
dress is cinched at the waist with a thin black belt, It fits me well and shows
off my slim womanly body. I have on black two-inch heels and though I am posed,
I look relaxed with the heel of my front foot meeting the middle of my back
foot, like a very casual third position in ballet.
Comparing the two photos today, I am
surprised and delighted at the transformation I went through in 1960 from a gussied
up awkward sweet sixteen girl to a sophisticated confident young woman.
1972 TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS OLD When I went to college in the mid 1960’s, I discovered blue jeans and t-shirts which have continued to this day to be my comfort clothes. In 1969 I married a guy who loved hiking and camping and in 1972 we bought some land in Wisconsin. We thought we would learn how to live off the land. It never happened but we spent many weekends on our 9-acres of wooded heaven, camping and hiking and cooking our food on a Coleman camping stove.
This photo shows me standing on the
rock outcropping that was part of our little world, in jeans and hiking boots,
wearing my artist/photographer husband’s well-worn paint splattered oversized
khaki jacket. My short hair is windblown.
Let the wind do what it will, was what I thought in those days when we
were out in the wilderness. I’m standing confidently, trusting that my hiking
boots will keep me steady on the uneven rock. I have a small smile and a
knowing look on my face. I was where I wanted to be; I had my whole life in
front of me and it looked to be full of adventures. Indeed it was.
About the land: we purchased it from a farmer and it was only accessible by driving on an unpaved tractor road through his corn fields. The farmer expected, and so did we, that within a few years we would find the funds and get the permits to build our own road with direct access from an adjacent county road.
About our dream and our marriage: We lost interest in our dream of living off the land; ost likely we came to understand how impractical and expensive it would be to make that dream come true. And we lost interest in each other; we had no idea how to do the hard work necessary to become a loving, caring and respectful married couple. We divorced and my former husband eventually ceded our 9 acres back to the farmer.
I had a fine time remembering the stories associated with
these photos.
WHAT PHOTOS DO YOU HAVE? WHAT STORIES DO THEY TELL?
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