An Historic Family Moment?

I ran across the photograph on the left a few years ago, which shows my Grandmother Spillard and her son, my Uncle Bill, behind their apartment at 5731 South Prairie Avenue, on Chicago's South Side. Is that a moving van in the background? If so, was that photograph taken the day they moved from that apartment to the Brainerd neighborhood, where both sides of my family, including me, lived for many years? I can only guess, since my mother Mary is no longer around to ask. I suspect the photograph was taken in the 1920s, but can't pinpoint it any closer than that. About 10 years ago, I went back to Chicago and checked out that neighborhood, but there was only an empty lot where that apartment building once stood. And yes, those are indeed the "L" tracks they are sitting beneath.

My mother remembered that neighborhood very well. She went to school at St. Anselm, just a few blocks away on South Michigan Avenue. Her Grandmother (my Great Grandmother) Spillard, also named Mary, paid the tuition. She also remembers meeting her father, my Grandfather Spillard, at the nearby "L" station when he came home from work in the evenings. My grandfather was a legend in the family for bringing home a huge Xmas tree Christmas Eve on the "L" train, during rush hour no less.  I imagine his fellow commuters must have just loved that. The photograph on the right, by the way, is of my mother next to those same "L" tracks around 1920 or so. It is such a cliche to look at the past through rose-colored glasses, but those were definitely simpler, and perhaps happier, times.