Saturday, July 27, 2019

An Ohio Mystery Solved



I found the above photograph among a bunch of others that my mother Mary had in a drawer in her Stuart, Florida condo that I hadn't looked at until now.  It was taken on Sunday, May 5th, 1963, in front of my Uncle Bill and Aunt Elsie's home in South Euclid, Ohio, but it took me a while to figure out what the occasion was. From left to right are Val, husband of Margaret (seen on the far right), my cousin Judy, my father Nelson, my Aunt Elsie, my Uncle Bill (my mother's brother), a man unknown to me, Mrs. Blackburn (my Aunt Elsie's mother, who my sister Susan always used to call Grandma Blackbird), my mother Mary, and Aunt Elsie's sister Margaret. However, Aunt Elsie is wearing a flower, which was a clue.  I finally remembered that Uncle Bill and Aunt Elsie got married 2 years before my parents, which would have made it 1938, 25 years before this photo was taken, and so this was their 25th wedding anniversary celebration. Mystery solved, but why weren't my sister Susan and I invited, let alone our grandparents? In any case, South Euclid is an eastern suburb of Cleveland.  I visited there a few times, and was really impressed with the area, mainly because it had lots of hills, unlike Chicago, which is flat as a pancake. Of course, back then, Cleveland was known as "the mistake on the lake," and has a river that actually caught fire.  I hear it is much nicer there now, and I have not heard any more reports of the Cuyahoga River catching fire again.  How boring.

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