It's all there . . . in Black & White

My maternal great-grandparents. I don't remember a lot about them, but I remember that couch was RED!!!!

It's hard to believe that I'm old enough for my baby pictures to look so old. Black and white???? Those were the days, though. My mother wore cat-eye glasses and the worst word she ever said was "confound it!" My daddy rolled up the hem of his short-sleeve shirts and instead of showing his anger, he gave silence. But did he REALLY wear white shoes???? Pictures don't lie, do they? These pictures have nothing to do with this "Workin' Out the Inks" blog, but they have a lot to do with me. I'm really intrigued by old photographs--love looking at them! Even if I don't know the people in old photographs, I like to imagine what they were like. What they talked about. While they were sitting, specifically posed before the camera, what was going through their mind . . . was it the chores they needed to get back to? Sometimes, it's really hard to tell if they were happy people. Of course, you can't assume that just because people are smiling for a picture that they're blissfully happy. Or if they appear to be frowning, that isn't proof that they were miserable. Some of my favorite old photographs are ones where a nice chair, perhaps from the living room, has been brought into the yard for the photo. There seem to be a lot of photos taken outdoors, and I suppose that's because you just couldn't beat Mother Nature's lighting. And I just LOVE pictures where a car is in the background, out in a field that seems to be at the edge of nowhere. And it seemed that no matter how busy people were--tending to all their children, hand-washing the laundry, laboring on their farms or working in steamy plants . . . they still found time to visit one another and plan family picnics and day-trips to the mountains. Family values seemed to be something of value back then. There's a lot we can learn from those old black & whites!