With life in the present presenting so many challenges, it's appealing to turn to the past and disappear for hours in boxes of musty old papers and photographs. I share this escape with my 97-year-old mother who's spent countless hours with old family records and photos. She delights in bringing me little gems like the photo below.
That's my great grandmother MeMe, (Anna Warner Stevens) on the right, with her daughter, Mildred Stevens Knox on the left. My mother had written that information on the back of the photo and had also scrawled year ???
Have you ever put a magnifying glass to work on old photographs? I am intrigued by the details revealed, like Aunt Mildred's beautiful boots and the way her collar is turned up. I look at her face and think about the old lady with deep set eyes who came to Thanksgiving dinner in Danny and Grandaddy's dining room on North Main Street.
The bench they're sitting on appears to be made from twigs and there's a jacket hanging over MeMe's shoulder. It appears they're in the country but, of course, Coudersport looked very different in those days.
MeMe's hair is styled as I remember it too, though in my memory the little bun at the back of her head was gray. And then, I looked closely at what was in MeMe's hand.
Vivaudou, I read, and just a few keystrokes on my computer brought me to this.
It's an advertisement for Mavis perfume, most likely on the back cover of The Ladies Home Journal, and dated 1920. In 1920, Aunt Mildred would have been 35, mother of three little girls, and MeMe was 55.
1 comment:
Regarding the rustic furniture. Grandaddy was fond of that sort of thing, so he may have had a hand in this, also he certainly adored his Stevens bride, and perhaps the other women in the Stevens clan as well. The women appear comfortable, but maybe that's just a pose to please the photographer.
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