It finally looks like winter here! It was a steady, gentle snowfall, more decorative than disruptive. A good day to be outside taking pictures!

We still haven’t had any snow worth mentioning — I haven’t had to break out the shovel yet. But it’s definitely winter!

It’s not really winter — the weather is mild, and we haven’t had any real snow here yet other than one surprise snowstorm in October when the leaves were still on the trees. (But even that was only an inch or so where I live.)

I don’t really like having to deal with the snow. I hate dressing for it, I hate shoveling it and I hate driving through it, but I do like taking photographs of it. The weather we’ve had so far this winter has just left us with something that’s not even winter. It’s no season at all: no light, no color, no flowers, no plants, no snow. Nothing.

Newbury, Massachusetts

When I was a little girl, I used to love to rummage around in the drawers of my father’s desk or in various little boxes around the house where there would be random small objects like buttons, which didn’t interest me, and foreign coins, which did. I don’t know where most of these coins came from, other than the ha’pennies my grandmother brought back from a trip home to Scotland. But I loved touching the coins, studying the words and images, feeling the foreignness, dreaming of travel.

Now I have accumulated a lot of foreign coins from my own travels, and they’re completely disorganized, all mixed up and sitting in various small containers. I still like spilling them out, and looking through them, remembering past trips and dreaming of new ones.

This photograph has been around for as long as I can remember. When I was a child, it was in a big box of unsorted photographs my mother kept in a cabinet in the living room. I used to love going through those old photographs, spreading them out on the coffee table and looking at them individually. Many were people I knew — my mother as a child, my Scottish grandparents and great aunts and uncles. This one, and a few others of this girl, fascinated me because they were taken in Scotland and were family members that I had never met. I imagined going to Scotland and meeting this girl and pictured us running through hills of heather together, although I knew that of course she wouldn’t be a girl at all anymore, she’d be my mother’s age or even older. I remember asking my mother who they were and her answering rather vaguely that she thought this was [someone] and her daughter [someone].

But who? I don’t remember what she said, and there’s no one else left who might know. It looks like it was taken in the 1920s, which was when my grandparents emigrated. Was this taken on an outing before they left, or sent to them in a letter later? Was this the wife and daughter of one of my grandmother’s brother, William and James Ross, who remained in Scotland when their mother, stepfather and four sisters left for America? Or was my grandfather the photographer, and are these members of the Rennie side of the family? I’ve done a little work on Ancestry.com, trying to figure out possibilities, but I have no idea.

I love the photograph anyway, especially the smiles on their faces and the comfortable affection of the girl’s pose. Someday I hope I’ll solve this mystery. I’m hoping that someone else has another copy of this photograph, or other photographs of this woman and girl, and they’ll find this scanned image or I’ll find theirs and we’ll connect. Stranger things have happened. I truly believe that photographs have a way of finding their way home.

In the meantime, I post this as a reminder to everyone to identify everyone who is in a photograph. When photos are new, it’s so obvious who the people are that there’s no reason to record this information, but as the years pass, photographs (printed or digital) can get scattered, and the information can be lost.

Atomic Cafe
265 Cabot Street
Beverly, Massachusetts

This was a large, noisy family group, and no one seemed to hear the boy or respond, but I thought that was excellent advice!

Woburn, Massachusetts, is only about 25 miles from where I live, but I don’t know anyone who lives there, and I’ve never had any particular reason to go there. I think have only actually been in the town a few times. Recently, however, I realized that Woburn happens to have five of my favorite things:

#1: A Massachusetts Bay Colony Tercentenary Marker
I love these beautiful cast iron markers, erected throughout the Commonwealth in 1930, and have been photographing and documenting them for a few years. Many of the original markers have been lost over the years, and others are in rough shape or located in places where they’re seldom seen. This one, however, is beautifully situated in the center of town on the Common, surrounded by grass, trees, flowers and monuments.

Massachusetts Bay Colony Tercentenary Historical Markers — I manage a Flickr group for photos of these historical markers.

#2: A Worcester Lunch Car Company Diner
The Lanna Thai Diner was custom built in 1952 for its small lot, and was originally Jack’s Diner, and later Genia’s Diner and Main Street Diner.

Although it’s now a Thai restaurant rather than a “real” diner, it’s nice to see it still serving food in the location where it’s been for over fifty years.

#3: A Colonial Filling Station
There are only a few of these beautiful domed Beacon Oil Company filling stations from the 1920s still standing, and this is the only one I have seen that still a service station — the others that I have visited are the Dairy Dome ice cream store in Stoneham, and Maria’s Pizzeria in Malden.

This is also the only one that I have seen topped by the original globe decoration — either original or a good reproduction.

#4: A Hiker Monument
Spanish-American War soldiers were known as “Hikers,” and this sculpture of a Hiker holding a rifle was designed by Massachusetts sculptor Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson to honor soldiers who died in the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War and the Boxer Rebellion. Her Hiker monument was cast over fifty times, and can be found in public squares across the United States.

The Hiker Monument — I started a Flickr group for photographs of these monuments.

#5: An H.H. Richardson Library
The Woburn Public Library, built in 1879, was designed by my favorite architect, Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886.)

I love neon signs, bulb signs and arrow signs, so I really love the Salem Willows Arcade sign, which is all three.

Salem Willows is an old-fashioned place, a seaside park that dates back to 1858 and a popular site for shady picnics under 200-year-old willow trees, with a small beach, fishing, an arcade and great popcorn!

The Flickr Commons is a program that encourages museums, archives and libraries to share collections of historical images on Flickr where the active community of members can not only enjoy them, but add comments, notes and tags to help make them more searchable. Flickr members often identify people, places and events, and add other interesting information about the images.

You might recognize a photograph of a relative here, pr a photograph of the town where your great grandfather was born. Even if you don’t find anything that relates so directly to your own relatives, it’s interesting to look through these photographs just to see the faces, the clothes, the toys and tools and houses and landscapes.

Links

• National Library of Ireland — Flickr Commons
• National Library of Ireland — Website
• Commenting the Commons — My 2009 post about the Flickr Commons

Music

Just in case the title of this post made you want to hear the song, here’s the late, great Gracie Fields (1898–1979) :