a holiday photo

A holiday photo got me thinking about time, and place, and those who are no longer with us.  Or in the case of this photo - people yet to arrive - since the photo was taken  more than a year before I was born... 

Everyone in this photo is dead.  I knew them all - but at this stage in life I know a lot of dead people.  It happens. So here they are- the people who begat me.  The one exception, my aunt (who passed just last fall.)  

starting from the left - approximate ages at the time of the photo December 1952:

My great grandmother Ella Maas Heltman age 75 (born 1877- died 1969) aka Grandma Grape 

My aunt Phyllis Haight Mead age 18 (born 1934 - died 2024)

My grandmother Catherine Cox Haight age 45 (born 1907 - died 1969) aka Katie

My father Jack Edgar Heltman  age 24 (born 1928 - died 2001) aka Dad 

My grandmother Lorene Woellner Heltman age 49 (born 1903 - died 1989) aka Lori or the big granny

My great grandmother Margaret Woellner age 77 (born 1875 - died 1960) aka Maggie

My mother Alice Jane Haight Heltman age 22 (born 1930 - died 2010) aka Lil or Jane or Mom

My grandfather Edgar Milton Heltman age 49 (born 1903 - died 1983) aka Pop-Pop or Ed

photo taken by my grandfather Kingsley Haight age 44 (born1908 - died 1990)

So when I was growing up - we went to my grandparents house for dinner every Sunday - Ella (who we called Grandma Grape because we were apparently confused as children LOL) and Lori would cook a terrific meal - home made noodles with butter and croutons (also homemade) and every week a pie and a roast of some sort and coleslaw that we kids would grate veggies for on the finest side of the grater. We were also in charge of whipping the cream for the pie topping with a hand cranked mixer. Yes, I am that old. My father's mother and grandmother were fabulous cooks. My mother's mother made pork chops and applesauce LOL that was - to my knowledge- her only meal.

So it was a big deal - the night of this photo! My mother who knew nothing about cooking was entertaining all living generations of her and of my father's family for the holidays.  It seems they were having sandwiches made from cold cuts based upon a close perusal of the photo.  

My parents had married in November 1951 and moved into their first apartment on MacMillan Avenue in Clifton near the University of Cincinnati. My father had graduated from Miami University in 1950 both he and my mother had jobs. My father worked for the Sperti Company and my mother for the Cincinnati & Suburban Bell Telephone company. We used to hear my mother tell the story about how romantic my father's marriage proposal was "if you can find an apartment for $37.50 a month we can get married." Remember this was post WWII and there were severe housing shortages. 

So here is a photo of three generations together for the holidays at my parents apartment on MacMillan Avenue. And I began to think about this post when I came across this photo because I am older now than all but two of the folks in this photo and I am the oldest of the next (at that point yet unborn) generation. 

And the strangest thing about the whole tableau is that - they all look SOOO old  despite my "grandparents"  being decades younger than I am now, at and age roughly only 3-5 years younger than my great grandmothers were in this photo. YIKES!!!

I find that mind boggling. Of course - some of that is style based - clothes and hairdos etc. but not all of it...they lived through rationing and the war years - some of them had memories of the post Civil War period and lived through two World Wars a Flu epidemic and the great Depression. All those things are bound to age you. We of the mid boomer era of course had our own experiences - Vietnam etc. but we also had a lot of great stuff - astronauts, TV, expanding rights for women and blacks and gays (at least until recently) so maybe we have aged at different rates. Just musing on things....

So back to Christmas Eve 1952 - here are some more photos of the gathering - 

Three Ladies - a great grandma sandwiched between two my two grandmothers

 

My Dad's parents (my grandparents) dancing to the record player 

my Dad always had the latest hi-fi he could afford ! 

(remember they are both under 50 here!)

my Dad with his two grandmothers - Ella on the left and Maggie on the right 

So based upon the photos I would say the first family holiday event that my mother hosted went well. 

Things got more relaxed over the years- by the time this next photo was taken it was late 1950s (likely 1959) and the 1960s were about to take center stage- smoking/ ashtrays/ drinks and mid century decorating were raging. LOL

You will recognize a few folks- all now seven years older- Phyllis (second from left) is now married to Bill (far left) She's gone from 18 to 25 and was by then a mom of an almost two year old. My parents (center) are now parents of two girls my sister (4.5 years old) on Dad's lap and me (a few months shy of 6 years old) on his shoulder and a six month old son (no doubt asleep upstairs) in the newly constructed home in a subdivision (as was the time.) My grandmother (front right) was now 56 (but could still sit on the floor cross legged!) 

I will say it doesn't look like my mother's cooking has gotten appreciably better but maybe this was the cocktail hour... some sort of dip and crackers and three packs of cigarette and a least two ashtrays. Clearly days gone by... time flies- Today I am the only living person from the 1959 photo.

I do not take a single day for granted. 

sunday night

we frequently go out for dinner on Sunday night - often we meet friends who, like us, don't work regular hours either because they are retired or they are in a business where they work "odd" hours...

tonight we had dinner with John and Barb - they are in process with selling their condo in the Chicago burbs and planning to live full time in Florida (where we met them and they are roughly a mile from our Florida place)  We decided to have dinner at Anteprima (which has just celebrated their tenth anniversary) in Andersonville (our old 'hood)

both John and Barb had the soup as a starter and I had the octopus and Phil the salumi platter-

then in the mains John had the gnocchi and Phil the chicken and Barb the chicken livers and I had the tagliatelle...

for dessert (sorry no photos LOL)

a relaxing Sunday night - I guess when I think of it, the tradition is long standing.  As a child, we would always have Sunday dinner at my grandparents' house.  My grandmother was an excellent cook and we went early enough that we could walk up to the corner drug store with my grandfather (Visconti's on Hamilton Avenue in Cincinnati) and buy a comic book (Betty and Veronica for my sister and me- Superman for my brother) before dinner time.  The littlest kid had to sit on the phone book because there was no booster chair at my grandparents' house...LOL

After dinner if it was a summer Sunday, my dad would drive home in the convertible with the top down and my sister and I would sit on the floor of the back seat with the windows up trying to stay warm.  Back then my brother always sat in the front seat between my parents (when he was little in a "car seat" of the era which was hung over the back of the front seat and had its own "steering wheel.")
Sometimes my dad would let us "drive" home and we would sit on his lap and "steer" the car... Sunday night dinner out.... a lot of good times... when we got older my grandfather would pick an argument with my sister and me, just so he could be the devil's advocate.  We always said it was our grandfather that got us through law school because he would make us defend our positions...

above- at my grandparents' house on a Sunday- Pop Pop, Janna (my sister) and me (L to R)
below- with Pop Pop in front of our house (his car- my Dad always drove convertibles)

the whole family in front of my granparents' house at 1502 Elkton Place-

below- probably on our way to grandparents on a winter Sunday with hats my grandmother knit - LOL

even in Junior High school we went there for dinner- below in the living room of my grandparents' house - in  1967 we moved away from Cincinnati and that was the end of our weekly Sunday dinners at our granparents' house - I was 13 and Janna 12 and Jeff was 8...

and this was the house we came home to for virtually all of those Sunday evenings -
5693 Woodhaven Drive  (we lived here from 1959- 1965)

that was a blast from the past -  all because tonight we went out for Sunday dinner....