Nostalgia Time!

When my sister Susan and I were growing up on the south side of Chicago, we had a very large extended family, all living fairly close to each other. Back then, that was the case for most families.  However, as children began to move across the country seeking job opportunities, families began to scatter, and all that changed.  Although I still keep in contact with my Uncle Jack (my father's brother) and his children (my cousins), and have recently resumed contact with Carrie, my 2nd cousin on my mother's side, I long for that time all our grandparents, uncles and aunts, and cousins were alive and living close by.  That is a long gone era, and the photograph above, from 1968, is one of the last taken when we were all still alive and together. It shows (from left to right) my great Aunt Babe (my Grandmother Spillard's sister), their long time friend Viola Miller, and my Grandmother Louise Spillard (my mother Mary's mother) on the couch of our family's home in south suburban Country Club Hills, about 30 miles south of downtown Chicago.  Babe, my grandmother Louise, their sister Irene (who passed away a few years earlier), another sister, Addie (who remained in Quebec when the family moved to Chicago), and their brother Eddie (who died young), had a hard childhood, but persevered to live a happy life on the south side of Chicago.  Call me a sentimental fool (or for that matter, just a fool), but those to me were the good old days, even though I didn't realize it at the time.