
The place where I grew up had beautiful surroundings. Delta is at the base of Grand Mesa, and up on Grand Mesa, aspen trees grow like weeds. Aspen trees are nice enough during the summer, but during the fall they turn all golden and beautiful and sound fantastic. I imagine it’s like hearing the ocean a little – lots of wooshing and rustling.
Anyway, sometime during the fall, while the trees were still golden and not yet brown, my parents would round their ungrateful children up, put clean clothes on them, pack them in the car and then put up with their bickering and whining for twenty minutes while we drove to the beautiful trees for a family photo.
This was pre-digital, too, when posing nicely mattered. We couldn’t take this shot twenty times and pick the best one. You smiled when it was time to smile and let your eyes dry out so you wouldn’t be blinking for the photo.
See? We look happy, but secretly we are plotting one another’s demise. Well…. maybe that was just me….. Huh. Maybe all of it – the bickering and whining – was me.
Hmmm… maybe the problem child in family photos is always the youngest… Beth always had issues with the sun when we were taking family photos.
If Mom didn’t wake us up before dawn and then make us stand looking STRAIGHT INTO THE RISING SUN (fer gosh sakes!), I wouldn’t have had any trouble at all.
And apparently, in every 70s-80s family, there’s always one brother with huge rimmed glasses. Hmmm…
For the record, the youngest child in the family is always the most amazing, wonderfulest, bestest child in the family! It’s a fact.
Do you remember the “bubble” flashcubes? I always thought it was fun to watch those things melt before your very eyes. We never had a Polaroid camera; I felt cheated. The dentist had one, though. Every time we had a good checkup, we’d pick out a stuffed animal and have our picture taken.
Even when those bubble flashes were used up, they were still great. There were the ones with 4 flashes that rotated and the long kind with something like 8 on a stick.