D.C.
Third from the left, top row.
My mother tells stories. She tells stories at my kitchen table. Long, rambling stories. She tells about my Grandfather hitching a train out west to be with the Indians and become a forest ranger. She tells about Great Aunts and Uncles and what they did. She remembers my Great Grandfather, Pa Pa (that's D.C.), as a teacher at some school in Zanesville before he was a postman. I perk up, shake off my daydream and ask the name of the school. "Some technical school," she offers before returning to Aunt Gretchen.
"That's the picture!" I say, standing up.
"What picture," she asks as I head down the basement stairs.
I return to the kitchen with one of those long thin sepia photos of students and teachers that we've all seen. This one is of the students and teachers of the Meredith Commercial School in Zanesville, Ohio.
"Where did you get that?" she asks. I stole it from my grandmother's basement years ago. I liked the picture but could never figure out its significance.
"Are any of these people D.C.?" I inquire? She almost immediately points out the third man from the left on the top row. "That's your great grandfather. . .where did you get this picture?"
Until last weekend I only remember D.C. as a 90-year-old man who hung out under the grape vines in his back yard, in a hammock mostly smoking Prince Albert from a pipe and smiling at me. Now I know another D.C. . .peering out at me.
D.C. background here.
Incredible.
And better that you stole it than have it molding under some garage someplace.
Reply to this