Good Carma II

A few more pictures via Cousin Carma. These are a bit more random but one of them certainly got to me too. I’ll save it for the end. First there are a couple photos from in front of the church that I grew up in. It was called…don’t laugh…South Colon Mennonite Church. Okay you can laugh. The name has been changed in the last 20 years or so.

You know how when you grow up with something, especially from infancy, and you don’t realize it’s something that can be made fun of until you tell someone who is unfamiliar with it? Well there are several things like that in my past. My church’s name was one of them. My neighbor being named Kandi Kane was another, and another boy that went to school with us and rode bus with Kandi Kane and I was named Rusty Sword. No lie. It didn’t dawn on me until later in life (like 18) how strange/funny that is. My friend Cabrina with a C. My cousin Carma…Oh yeah…pictures!

So this is my parents and my oldest sister standing in front of our church:

Not sure where my sister Kathy is. It seems like Becky is older than 1 year here and Kathy was born just over 13 months after Becky. My poor mama.

This is my mother’s sister Esther and her first husband, Richard. (Richard was killed in a farming accident when I was 7 or 8 I think.) They are holding my cousin Regina who was born two months after my sister Becky. The first two grand-babies for my mom’s parent. Wish you could see all the faces better, but don’t you love the hair?:

This is another one of my favorite people. My uncle Fred. He wasn’t in the Colorado pictures so we’ll give him a spot here:

I’m going to follow with another picture of Fred from about 10 years ago. Just cause I like it:

Uncle Fred is an auctioneer. Every family needs one. He also does a pretty good Donald Duck impression…at least I thought so when I was 7. When I went to college in Nashville and added a roommate to my life, she (Juanita) decided that my uncle Fred looked like Harrison Ford and held a not so secret crush on the guy for a long time. We called him Harrison Fred for a while.

Now for my favorite picture. My grandpa was a dairy farmer. I probably mentioned that. Because my memories are few the ones I have are fairly distinct. One of them was of being at grandma and grandpa’s house, sitting around the kitchen table eating a snack while grandpa and my younger uncles were outside working. They came in for lunch and though the air outside was pretty cool, they were sweating profusely. I remember grandpa standing in the kitchen and unzipping his blue coveralls at the top to cool off and talking to grandma about getting something to eat. I think it was the sweat that made the memory stick, but the blue coveralls are pretty vivid. When I saw the picture below I think I teared up a little.

I love his smile. His brothers outlived him by several years and seeing their very familiar smiles, eyebrows and almost worried expression (even when they were smiling) was precious too me growing up.

Thanks again Carma…for sharing these with all of us.