Basement Archeology: a Six-Picture History

I found a rotting frame holding six pictures. I was able to retrieve the pictures, but the frame was falling apart, so reluctantly I discarded it.

I remember the frame hanging in my grandparent’s home. I never thought too much about it at the time, but looking at it now, I see that my grandmother had organized in those six pictures a narrative of her life.

Starting with her marriage in Sonneberg, Germany in 1922, the picture was taken on the veranda of my great grandparent’s home. This was the start of their life together. Shortly after their wedding they moved to Detroit for about two years, when they returned to Sonneberg.

Following that is a picture of her favourite aunt, Fanny, sister of her mother. Fanny lived up the street, about a block away from her parent’s home in Sonneberg. Fanny and her husband, Oskar, owned a packaging factory. My grandmother’s father and mother owned a toy factory. My grandfather’s father was an exporter, so the three of them had not only a family relationship, but a business one as well: manufacturing, packaging, and exporting.

Next is a picture of herself, in her prime, happily living in her homeland, with her family, before the tragedies and the loss of hearing and vision as a result of scarlet fever. In 1929 my grandparents, father and uncle moved to Toronto. My grandmother didn’t like Toronto; she thought it a backward and uncivilized place.

Next is a picture of her first son, Bill, in his uniform. He joined the US Army in November 1943. I can only estimate that the picture was taken sometime after he completed boot camp in 1944 and before he was killed in April 1945.

Next is a picture of my father, taken in our backyard in Vancouver. It looks like the mid 1960s.

To bring the story full circle is a picture of my grandparents taken towards the end of their life. My grandfather retired in 1959, so I’m guessing the photograph is from about that time. My grandfather died in December 1971, just before their 50th wedding anniversary. He was 78. My grandmother lived into her 90s. She was able to meet my children.