Marv & Cathy's New House in Prescott

Becca took all of these pictures. You can see in this picture that I took pictures too but they are in Papa's computer and not mine. (Computer is complaining so this may be the only picture for now.)

Another Rock for Emma

Papa and Becca tried to move this rock so we could mail it to Emma. The Post Office said it would be very expensive to mail. It was their idea that we take a picture of the rock and send it by the web. So that's what we did.

Pictures on the Porch

I found this little porch photo in my special photos I got from my mother. The children in the photo are Ernestine, called Teenie, my mother, Caroline and my Uncle Ray. They were born very close together. Caroline, 6 Oct '21, Ray 2 Jan '23, and Teenie 24 Aug '24. I noticed that all 3 children are wearing the same kind of outfit. I wonder if my grandmother, their mother, made them herself. I have read her diaries and they tell of the many things she sewed for other people. I know she made a lot of my mother's clothes. If this photo was taken in August 1926, how old would each of the children be when the picture was taken?
This porch photo was taken on Papa's front porch in Rialto where he grew up. The girl, Aunt Catherine, or Papa's sister, looks like she is about 6 or 7 years old. If she is seven Papa would be 11 and would be in the 6th grade. The boy in the middle is their cousin, David Hallmark. He was just visiting at their house that day. Papa and I will be 65 this year. With that information can you figure out when the picture was taken?

Road Trip Photos

From Needles we went south and traveled on California roads that we, who grew up in San Bernardino County, had never been on. Now I know why. The dictionary people must have traveled on the road from Blyth to Brawley when they devised the word "desolate". But David would have enjoyed the many "bump the bumps" as he says. The road engineers must have been practicing dips. Many sections stretched out ahead of us like a licorice Christmas Ribbon Candy complete with a yellow line down the center.
One very interesting stretch was the massive sand dunes area east of Brawley. The area was jammed with RV's and dune buggies. Yesterday the high winds were blowing Serious Sand across the road.
In a few places, the sand had accumulated into dangerous speed bumps. After one particularly dangerous sand speed bump we came across several vehichles pulled over to the side of the road because they were involved in an accident after hitting that sand. As we continued west, several emergency vehicles passed us going to the scene of the accident. There were even 2, what Idaho and Utah would call snowplows, would be "Sand Plows" here, heading for the scene to clear the road. The sand drift buildup could not be seen because there was a sand screen blowing over the top of them. The one that caused the accident hit us pretty hard too. At first I thought that people were just pulled over to make sure they still had all their parts. Then we saw the car that no longer had a front fender and All their Air Bags had deployed. There were people walking around in the sand storm trying to help. We just drove past. We didn't really understand the seriousness of the event until we began to see the Ambulances and Sand Plows headed that way. Dad heard today's News Report that said Highway 8, the one we took from El Centro to I-15 is closed today because of high winds. So now we've been there, done that. We'll go back to Needles on the interstate freeways.

My Mom, Her Sisters & Their Husbands

I was looking at my Genealogy Calendar recently when I discovered something I had never noticed before. My Uncle Charlie was born in February just 4 days after my Uncle Alfred. My father was born on January 1, 1920 and Uncle Al was born just a month and a half later (or 45 days later).
I actually knew that Uncle Charlie was the same age as my father because I was told the story about how he met Aunt Ruthie. My dad went to work for the Bank of America when I was in 1st or 2nd grade and he became friends with Charlie Coombe who already worked there. I'm guessing Charlie met my mom and said, "Are there any more at home like you?" The answer was "Yes, Ruth Elizabeth, but she is 12 years younger." I don't know how Aunt Teenie met Uncle Al but Teenie was nearly 3 years younger than my mom. There were 3 Taylor girls, all different ages, who married guys who were all nearly the same age. Uncle Al and his brother Francis came to California as migrant workers. Al was a pilot and later worked at Lockheed where Aunt Teenie checked out equipment. That's how they met.