On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Keep those cards and letters coming.It’s not too late to send in holiday pics from when you were little! Or when your kids were little! Or your holiday decorations and lighting pics.
Elma
Per WaterGirl’s request, here are some memories of years past.
Not technically my first Christmas, since I was born in September, but 1950 was the fist where I was a semi-independent being. With my mother, who came from upstate New York and was not impressed by Wisconsin snow.
In front of Uncle Joe’s Christmas tree with cousins Betty and Carol
That year we got velvet bonnets and muffs. Can’t tell in the b&w pic, but we each had a different color. I recall mine were red.
In 1953, I had an encounter with the corner of a bookcase, just in time to mess up the Christmas pics. I can still feel the scar.
In 1954, a windstorm damaged the little house we were living in. My dad and his brothers had been working on building a new house for us in their time off from work. After the storm, we spent a very crowded summer in the spare rooms at my uncle’s house in town. By Christmas time, the guys had made the basement of the new house habitable, so we moved into it. That house was never actually finished in the 50 plus years that my parents lived there. This is me and my sister Ruth.
In 2018, the grandkids mugging for the camera, in another house that was never actually finished before I finally sold it. The original house was an 1870 log building that had been remodeled and added to many, many times.
Barbara
I hope you didn’t live in the basement the whole time. Great pictures!
Trivia Man
I especially appreciate the injury picture. A fleeting incident frozen in time. When I see pictures I sometimes reflect on what it tells me about my daily life at that very instant. Very helpful when event or place can freeze it to a hyper specific time.
What did my bedroom look like, did we have a pet, who was the neighbor… so many associations to time and place triggered by a picture.
Thanks
Yarrow
Great pictures. Your mom reminds me of a movie star from that era. Those cheekbones!
Nukular Biskits
This reminds me of some old home movies we came across when cleaning out my momma’s house after her passing.
As I had no way to view them (we found the projector but didn’t trust it to not chew up the reels), I sent them off to have them digitized.
What we found was a brief glimpse into what appears to be Christmas 1963 through Christmas 1966 and other occasions in between. There was no sound and some of the movies were too dark to make out but I saw myself as a 2-year old. I also saw, for the first time in anything other than photos, the older sister who died about 6 months before I was born.
Bittersweet.
JPL
The pictures are wonderful and thank you for sharing. The tinsel does bring back memories of x-mas past.
Elma
@Barbara: It took about 2 years before the upper floors were ready for us to live in. After the house was sold 50 plus years later, the new buyers extensively remodeled the house; but the original structure that Dad and his brothers did by hand was so well built that they kept it intact.
zhena gogolia
You were so cute. I had a muff too! It was so cool.
We really threw the tinsel around in those days, didn’t we?
stinger
What great photos! Looks like you got two dolls in the Year of the Bookcase — I hope they made up for it!
The bonnets and muffs are adorable. I had a cousin who was close to me in age. When we were probably 11 or 12, their family visited ours for more than a week, and my mother made us matching dresses. We wore them to church, and the newish pastor, who remembered that my mother had several children, said, “Why, Mrs. Stinger, I didn’t know you had twins.” (We were both blondes but didn’t look much alike.)
stinger
@zhena gogolia: A packet of tinsel is cheap and can be reused year after year. Fragile bulbs, in a house with active kids and pets, maybe not so much!
Barbara
@stinger: Plus the kids can throw it on without breaking it.
Cheryl from Maryland
I remember my mother telling me that electric lights were very expensive until the 1970s (electric lights have been around since the early 20th C), so tinsel was used for the sparkle. I also remember that we had an aluminum tree is the 60s, so lights could not be used being a fire hazard. The tree came with a “color wheel” that projected light onto the tree.
WaterGirl
These Christmas pics are wonderful, they definitely evoke Christmas memories for me.
I have a question for Ema and Elma – are you guys in cahoots? At least 3 or 4 times I have received OTR posts from you guys within the same day or two. I always do a double-take as my brain works to distinguish Ema from Elma!
Albatrossity
Thanks you for this glimpse into the past! It all looks very familiar (except for the snow).
Elma
@WaterGirl: Great minds as they say; but no relation, no connection.
HinTN
@WaterGirl: You have email. I have Christmas pix but the form burped on me.
MagdaInBlack
@WaterGirl: Well, Im kinda dumb,but I blame stress. I was oblivious to there being a form for Xmas pics, so I can do that as I should, with the ones I sent you. I just dont know where the form is?
Eta: oh duh, use the on the road form. ffs@ me
zhena gogolia
@Cheryl from Maryland: Oh, I wanted one of those “color wheel” trees so much! But we just had boring old evergreens. 😄
Elma
@zhena gogolia: The Evergleams on 8th Street, festival of aluminum Christmas trees is going on now. The Mirro Corporation once manufactured those trees here. I’m looking out my window at the storefronts across the street where there are several aluminum trees with rotating color wheels on display.
sab
I remember those little hats for girls. We have (had?) a picture of me wearing one while looking stunned while sitting on a department store Santa’s lap, circa 1959.
mrmoshpotato
LOL! Tis a dusting!
sab
My mother wanted to use her parents’ lights on our tree in the 1980s! Grandma died in 1979 at age 84, so you can imagine how old (and unsafe) those lights were. We used the old ornaments for another 30 years, but I hid the lights up in the attic.
Ohio Mom
Looking at mom in the first photo in her heavy coat and hose and shoes, she looks cold. How fashion tortures women, if there is that much snow, the temperature is too low for what are essentially bare legs.
At least nowadays it’s acceptable to wear pants.
Yutsano
Your mother reminds me of my long beloved German grandmother. I don’t recall her ever smiling even though she had a great laugh. Thanks for the memories today. She’s been long gone but she had a big hand in raising me.
pieceofpeace
@Yarrow: Yes, Meryl Streep cheeks…
These pictures, remind me of those years, tinsel, muffs, dolls and all dressed up. Thank you.