John Meeker and Ree Carter, 1941

John Meeker drinking from the hydrant

John Meeker always struck me as a very serious fellow. He toured the country giving lectures about the importance of teetotaling. He briefly went to an Ivy League school for seminary before heading to transferring to a California seminary. He was a Presbyterian minister, particularly interested in missionary work throughout the west. He camped in a suit.

But this picture is a bit goofy ...

Taken probably around 1910

Fording the river

Ben and Ruthe in the river on the 1936 vacation to Colorado.

Ben and Ruthe, 1918

Ben and Ruthe Meeker, American Fork, Utah. 1918.

Ben on horseback

Ben Meeker riding on horseback during the 1936 family vacation to Uncle Dwight's cabin in South Fork.

Meeker children, 1917

Ben, Mil and Mary Meeker (plus cat and baby doll) in 1917 (?). The picture is taken in American Fork, Utah.

Mil, Ruthe, and Ben, 1941

Meeker siblings Mil, Ruthe and Ben loiter about the backyard while Georgia and John work in the garden. The picture is taken in Del Norte, Colorado.

Ruth as a toddler

My grandmother, Ruth Meeker, was born in 1918. This picture dates from sometime late in 1919 or early 1920.

Wild West Action

Or something.

Ruthe and Ben Meeker riding horses on the 1936 camping trip to the Poage Homestead near South Fork. Ruthe's caption reads "a la Wild West."

This is the sort of picture that always surprises me. My grandmother never struck me as someone to really camp and ride horses -- but here she is.

Georgia camping

Georgia Meeker at the Mineral Spring. Near South Fork. 1936.

John Meeker's Sunday look vs. his Monday look

Summer project

I have a number of summer projects -- writing projects, moving projects (we're buying a home -- hooray! but that means we have move -- a little less hooray), reading projects -- but the biggest of the projects (okay, besides the house purchasing ...) is to archive the photos/albums from my grandparents house. When the family started cleaning out the house, I asked if I could take the photographs for now -- to digitally archive them so that they'd be preserved in an additional format. That way, we can share the best of the pictures, at least digitally.

It was agreed that this would be acceptable. I will pass the pictures on to my mother when I'm done, but I'll hold them for now.

I had no idea how very many photo albums there would be -- as well as miscellaneous boxes of already-mounted portraits of family members. This is going to take longer than I thought. But it will certainly keep me busy and out of trouble. Or something to that effect.

What you see above is a page from Volume One of my grandmother's photo albums. I'm working to preserve the early albums as full pages (because the notes are often funny) and as highlighted individual pictures. (Click on the above image for closer inspection.)

Hopefully, I'll be bringing those pictures to this blog in short order as well. I'll have enough to keep me going here for a long time to come (if I can keep things organized and remember what I've already posted ...)

The pictures span from nearly 100 years old to about 10 years old. That's a lot to work on. The page from above includes pictures from about 1936 or 1937.

More will come ...

Prom night

It's that time of the year ... so I thought I'd pull out an old shot of Barbara heading to the prom.

Early school pictures ...

Are always pretty fun

Looking lovely, probably in about preschool or kindergarten.

Camping

Kenneth and Ruthe honeymooned at the Lake of the Ozarks, in Missouri. Good times with camping.

Florida vacation

The Isaacsons on vacation in Florida, 1950s

1951

Will and Josie Cooper

New Big Sister

Barbara holding a very young Kent.

1954

Barbara hanging out in a park. Presumably on a picnic.

Play-doh master

Jon doing some serious work with the play-doh thingy.

We sometimes would make play-doh -- you know, family science project. Sometimes it worked out okay. But the first time we tried it, it turned out like oobleck.

Happy baby

Ruthe Cooper holding a jolly baby Barbara

Gifts for Great Aunt Dorothy

Tackling the stairs

Barbara in 1951

(I still find them a challenge.)

Let's go fly a kite

I vaguely remember this day. We went to fly a kite in a field next to Our Savior Lutheran Church in Memphis. I think the kite-flying was probably something that Jon and I were to do -- but clearly, it's not holding a whole lot of interest for him here.

Barbara, Tennis Star

The grandkids

Will and Josie Cooper, surrounded by their grandchildren, Barbara, Kent, John and Phillip Cooper.

School days ...

Among those new pictures were a set of school photos -- or at least early school photos.  I'm going to forego sharing the photos from about, let's say, 3rd through 9th grade.  Those are a bit more embarrassing.  Here at least, I'm still pretty cute, even if the color in the photo is fading.

The Isaacsons, 1971

I recently acquired some new photographs from the Cooper household.  Among them I found this great picture of my paternal grandparents, Oscar and Ruth Isaacson.  The picture is from around the time of my parents' graduation from Augustana and their wedding.

Incidentally, those would be pretty hip outfits on my college students.  Or maybe would have been when I was in college (I guess it's now been something like 10 years since Lisa Loeb glasses were in).

Blowing bubbles

One of the disappointing things about being a grown-up is that you don't get to blow bubbles.

I also wonder if they still make these sorts of pipe-bubble-blowers.  I suppose they don't make candy cigarettes, either.  All that "smoking is bad for children" rhetoric, you know.

Ruthe at her wedding

I guess rather than toss the bouquet, she choose to hand it off to a friend?

This is Ruthe wearing her mother's wedding dress. And looking, as always, quite fetching.

"Getting Writer's Block From Calling You is Still All I Wanna Do"

Today, we celebrate four years of marriage. We've been together even longer than that. I like you even more now than I did then.

Joe Bradley, Batman

It's been a while since I've contributed to this blog. In my defense, I'm lazy.

Today's my dad's birthday. He was born on January 7, 1948, so by my count that makes him... 94 years old.

(In addition to being lazy, I'm also quite stupid).



Here we see him as a young man, wielding the bat he would later use to beat the unholy crap out of me.

(In addition to being lazy and stupid, I'm also compulsively dishonest. In fact, my father never beat me with a baseball bat, despite the fact that I most certainly deserved a severe batting between the ages of 13 and 22).



And here we see an honestly paternal moment between Joe Bradley and the aforementioned, batting-deserving son.

Note the beer, cigarette, and wood paneling. The seventies were an awesome time, and I think we'd do well to try to make 2009 look more like 1977.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Christmas break

So I haven't been posting here all that much.

But now, we're heading out for our Christmas travels.  So consider this a Christmas hiatus.  I'll be back in the new year, with more frequent posts.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Photos of clocks, II

Clocks on the mantel in the Coopers' front room

Photos of clocks, I

One of the many many clocks in Kenneth Cooper's clock collection.

Snow falling

In honor of our first flurry of snow here in NC.

Meeker family photo

My great uncle Ben Meeker has always taken a lot of pictures (okay, every Meeker takes a lot of pictures. One of the things about being a younger member of the family means that you're well documented doing anything. We have lots and lots of documentation of cousins sitting on the shore of Lake Michigan, cousins sitting around the table, cousins hanging out at the family cabin in Colorado at the family reunion, and on and on). Ben is the one pulling the string for this photo.

The younger family members look prepared for bed (and look to be in various states of amazement over Ben's technique).

Young Dorothy

My great aunt Dorothy (Cooper) Leighton as a teenager

Cars

Young Barbara with her little car, near Kenneth's big car.

Learning to ride

That's a bit of an oversized bike there.

But the big sister is there to make sure he does it right.