Our First Picture

I was born in 1923 and now that it is the year 2000, I got to thinkin’ back on my childhood in the 1920s. Maybe it’s a good thing that we don’t remember everything about our early years. Maybe it’s good enough that we learn about it from what others tell us. Much of what I learned about my early life and my cousins’ came from visiting our nine aunts and uncles. We visited them as often as we could. In each house there would be pictures – photographs – of each child, hangin’ or sittin’ on every empty spot. I wondered in later years just how many pictures of kids and then their grandkids they were given and just where they managed to put them all. The top of the piano seemed to be the favorite place to display family photos.

I often wondered just where they got all those old pictures? Some were made in town (San Antonio) in a portrait studio. The rest were made by traveling photographers in my aunts’ and uncles’ homes on those dusty sand roads. Now if a young mom with no ready money to pay for a picture of you babies for all the world to see, what would say to the next photographer who knocked on your front door?

Back to the question: If you didn’t have much or any money and a traveling photographer stopped by asking if you wanted a portrait of your young children, what would you say? My mom, Clara knew she didn’t have any cash money lying around, but she knew she made excellent sweet butter from our cows because we had the best well water in the area. She also molded her butter and wrapped it in good parchment paper before taking for sale at our local grocery store. AND, she knew she had some of the freshest yard eggs and even some good fryers runnin’ around…so what to do? Her tradin’ began.

When her tradin’ with the traveling photographer has been hasseled out, she knew she’d have to clean up the kids, dress them in their best, then get them to pose… right on the dining room table. So, there I was, sittin’ on the dinin’ room table in my best clothes, where I’d been told never to sit, with my bare feet hangin’ our in front of me. Me, or Mom, didn’t think a thing of it because I was usually barefoot. I has outgrown the booties mom crocheted or knitted for me, as well as the first pairs of shoes she had bought for me. Now, the photographer asked where my shoes were.

There weren’t any. I didn’t have any that fit.

Shoes were not a priority in the summer time. About the only people we visited were neighbors and family and none of my cousins or the neighbor kids wore any in the summer either. The photographer suggested I at LEAST find a pair of socks, just any kind to cover my legs, then we could cover my toes with a pair of old, outgrown shoes. He took that picture and said he’d return with the finished photograph the next time he was in the neighborhood.

Nobody else would have ever known about that “coverup” if mom would have just kept quiet about it. Nobody else would have thought it was sooo funny or ingenious and explained to any and all who would listen how I got all dressed up for that first picture. Later on, I was happy that the photographer di’n’t take a baby picture of my lying nekkid on my stomach on a sheepskin like so many others did. I di’n’t need to feel embarrassed if nobody pointed out the effort to make me have somethin’ I di’n’t have. And, every person needs a first picture to be proud of. I know I sure appreciated it …. many years later.