The photo below was taken November 1941. I was two months shy of my fourth birthday. My father was twenty-seven. In less than a month, Japan would bomb Pearl Harbor, and the United States would enter World War II. Jacob & Loretta Willems, November 1941 I have a dim memory of this photo being taken, … Continue reading Chapter 3: The House on Highway 99
Old photos
“Toddlers remember better than you think”
“Up until the 1980s, it was thought that babies and young toddlers lived in a perpetual present. … The paradigm of the perpetual present has now itself been forgotten. Even infants are aware of the past, as many remarkable experiments have shown. Babies can’t speak but they can imitate, and if shown a series of … Continue reading “Toddlers remember better than you think”
Old Photos
I have been going though my accumulation of old photos, trying to find a satisfying way to both organize and preserve them. Particularly urgent are the colored snapshots and portraits made back in the 1970s and 1980s. Unbeknownst to us then, that lovely color was doomed to fade. Before long they will be ghost photos. … Continue reading Old Photos
Young Mother
Paul Buxman painting: "Winter Vineyard" Winter is the rainy season in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Some years the rain is sparse; other years it rains and rains and rains. And when it isn’t raining, and the sun tries to come out, the dreaded tule fog rises from the wet ground and turns everything a uniform, … Continue reading Young Mother
Early Marriage
Sixty-one years ago this week I stepped on a Pan American plane at Los Angeles Internation Airport headed for Tokyo, Japan. There I would marry the boy who would become the father of my two daughters. I was seventeen years old. My groom was nineteen. We had not seen each other in over a year, … Continue reading Early Marriage
Old Photos: Golden Anniversary
Lena & Jacob Willems, 50th Anniversary February 1959 The marriage of my grandparents, Jacob and Lena Willems, lasted until Grandma’s death on August 1, 1963. They lived long enough to see their 50th anniversary celebrated by their children, grandchildren and even a few great-grandchildren. It was a big crowd in the Dinuba Mennonite Brethren church … Continue reading Old Photos: Golden Anniversary
Old Photo: The Family 1947
The photo below was probably taken in January 1947 when the family gathered for the wedding of my father’s sister Martha to Lowell Long, my Uncle Ed’s best buddy from high school days. Lowell and Ed were living with my parents when Pearl Harbor was bombed and the United States entered World War II. Two … Continue reading Old Photo: The Family 1947
Old Photos: 1930s
The photos in this week's post used to be mounted in a big photo album that sat on my parents' coffee table when I was a growing up. It had a hinged wooden cover held together by a leather shoe string threaded through holes drilled into the narrow strip of wood on the left edge. … Continue reading Old Photos: 1930s
The Canadian Twins
My father left home to make his way in the world sometime in January or early February of 1933. He was eighteen years old and restless. He said he borrowed a dollar from his young uncle, Jack Zimmerman, and caught a freight train going to Los Angeles where his oldest brother, Nick, was working on … Continue reading The Canadian Twins
Old Photo: Willems Family 1930s
During the 1930s Depression, my grandparents, Jacob and Lena Willems, leased three different farms from the California Land Bank. The first was near the town of Reedley; the second was just a half-mile east of Dinuba; the third was near the tiny town of Orosi a few miles east of the farm in Dinuba. The … Continue reading Old Photo: Willems Family 1930s
