Patty and I were recently in a Cracker Barrel restaurant and, as always when I frequent one of their stores, I was observing all the paraphernalia on the walls. I love the antique signs, tools, and other items from long ago that are displayed. I am a collector, in a small way, of old things. I love old metal advertising signs. I have lots of old tools from my great-grandfathers displayed in my office, shop and den. Patty and I love farm auctions that are held on the farm where we get a sense of the history of the items we may buy, and of the owners of those items.
This particular day at Cracker Barrel however, it was the old photographs I paid particular attention to. I gaze at these old black and white or sepia photos, often wrapped in ornate wooden frames, and I wonder “Who were they?” There are faces of men, women and children; in studios in fancy dress, on front porches in work clothes, beside farm implements and animals. What were their lives like? Were they happy? Did they live long and prosper? Were their lives cut short? These photos are not depictions. They are lives, people who lived and breathed and walked this earth as I am, captured for only an instant in the frame of a camera. Where are their families, did they have heirs? Why are their photos here among so many strangers, and not hanging on a relative’s wall?
Several years ago my daughter and her husband bought a house in a town not far from the Chicken Ranch. The old folks that had owned the place had passed and the house had been emptied of their material possessions. The basement and attic, however, contained box after box of photographs. The man who had last lived there was an amateur photographer. The basement even contained a dark room.
In the dark room were a number of photos showing the couple on trips to
On perhaps the most important day of their lives, someone pushed the button and captured their joy forever. There were pictures of them as aged folks, up in years. A whole lifetime of this couple was captured on film, and now it was a dust covered, mice ridden, forgotten past. It made me sad to sort through them.
As I perused their photos I looked for clues of any children or family life. I don’t know if they had any family that they left behind. I do know that they had none who cared enough to keep the albums of their lives together. Here they were, photo after photo, in the hands of a complete stranger. I felt like a Peeping Tom and a detective at the same time. After a while, I had seen nearly all of them and I put them back where I found them. I marvelled that no one wanted these photos. Pictures showed them in what seemed to be happy times with others, friends or family. Yet somehow, for some unknown reason, there was no one who had wanted to keep these boxes of memories. The photos were left at the house when the kids moved out, still sitting in boxes and, except for the few who have seen them, forgotten.
When I was in Desert Storm I heard an old Marine Gunny tell a group of young soldiers to “live your lives in such a way that if something happens to you, there’ll be someone back home to miss you.” Live well, die well. Make relationships. Garner love and trust. Was there anyone who missed these folks pictured in the boxes of photos? It didn’t seem so. The man and woman were gone and the pictorial history of their lives forgotten. Like the old photographs on the walls of restaurants and antique shops, the faces looked out into a world that had forgotten them, or never knew they existed at all.
All of us have photos of our lives. Some have hundreds of pictures on computers these days. I have photos of my family, even great-great-grandparents, on my walls at home. I don’t know every detail of their lives but I know they lived. I know that they built a family, and that family includes me.
I feel with some certainty that, when my boots are turned backwards in the stirrups, a photograph of me will remain behind. Some moment in my lifetime that has been captured will be displayed on a computer screen or hang on a wall. Not because I have accomplished some great thing, founded a mega corporation, or became famous. It’ll hang on a wall because I had lived, because I had some one who wanted to keep the memory of my life, at least for a while. Perhaps my photo will outlive my lineage as others seem to have done. If so, who knows? Maybe in some mercantile a hundred or so years from now, my mustached face will smile down at the crowd, and someone will look up and ask themselves “ I wonder who he was?”
Great-Great Grandma Armstrong-Hendriks
