Sisters and Photographs
What a week! My four amazing sisters and I gathered for our near-annual Sistapalooza which, as always, involved (in no particular order) an abundance of talking, laughing, music, dancing, hugging, eating, drinking, reminiscing, singing, etc.
They are all amazingly witty, talented, and intelligent. It’s true. Just ask them if you don’t believe me.
We had our typical discussions, speculations, and debates about where particular events in our families took place, who was there, and what years they happened. That last topic—when—came up frequently. When you add up all our people, years, locations, and first-person experiences, it can be hard to pin down specifics.
Until now!
One specific, at least. I found an original document I can rely on to tell me a specific month our family of then-twelve lived on the bus. (see previous missives).
My sister Maria— The Original Maria, aka The Real Maria, aka Young Maria, as opposed to me, Maria Lynn aka (see appendix) (Joke, there is no appendix)—Maria came a few days early. We went through six or seven large boxes of photo albums left behind by our father’s sister, Aunt Hilda, along with an undisclosed number of Barrs-Kemp family photos that were at one time just about to be put into an album.
Between the two of us, Maria and I had an adequate supply of the ruthlessness required to dispose of old family photographs. Good thing. There were a lot of them.
Of course we saved important ones, and distributed batches to siblings and offspring, but we also discarded many, many pounds of blurs, random scenery shots, and backs of heads. You know. The classics. You may have a few like that tucked away in a closet yourself.
Inspired by the well-organized and growing piles of discards, I decided to tackle my personal and office boxes, which contain notes, documents, and memorabilia dating back to the seventies, including paycheck stubs and utility bills. I owed Pacific Gas & Electric $10.56 in 1976, when I lived in Watsonville CA in a studio apartment over a garage.
I found the scarf I got at the 1977 Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain. It was a blast, but hell no, I did not participate. Women weren’t allowed and anyway, I had absolutely no desire to be chased by an angry bull.
Boxes from later years include various iterations of stations’ mic flags and mugs, media passes, awards, documents, printed emails, mementos.
I’d forgotten I applied for so many jobs I didn’t get. Much of that material was just taking up space, but I’m keeping the good stuff. There’s value in original source material, in documents printed and kept in the family for longer than the seventy years I’ve been alive.
A receipt sent to my parents in 1969 after our bus broke down in South Carolina confirms a memory I can place in my timeline and plan to write about.
And it was interesting to read the results of a test from 1976, back when I used one of my fake names. I have no idea why I took the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, but the interpretation of results was fun to read.
Apparently the survey (test) revealed that when I was twenty I had “anti-authority tendencies” and a “heightened sense of personal virtue.”
Verbatims. Hmm.
I’m now inspired to get back to work on the story of my life and family. (More photos here on Instagram) I’d love to hear what’s turned up in your family archives!