Flashback Friday

When my grandparents died and we cleaned out their house my aunt took all of the family photos and stored them. She recently had a party so that the family could go through everything and take what they wanted. I found an album with these pictures.

Today we're flashing all the way back to the mid-1980's.

It was the summer of 1986 and my mom (mom) and grandmother (Gramme) decided to drive to Arkansas with me, my 2 brothers (Nathan and Nick) and our cousin (Drew) to visit Gramme's father (Great Granddad Jones). My grandparents had a Lincoln Towncar and my mom and Gramme took turns driving while the 4 kids rotated seats- 3 kids across the back seat and 1 kid in the middle of the front seat. Nobody can remember why my dad and grandfather didn't come too. The air conditioning broke on the way. In Texas. In June. It wasn't fixed until we reached Arkansas. Good times.

(Here's an interesting tid-bit about me. I have been to 49 of the 50 states. What state do I not have the pleasure of stepping in? North Dakota of course. It's on the way to so many other places I might drive to from Arizona. I can't imagine how I've missed it.)

We left Arizona and, probably around the time the kids needed to rotate seats, we stopped at the border of New Mexico. My favorite part of this picture is that the 4 children standing on rocks, next to cactus, by the freeway are sans shoes.

Magically, shoes were available at the border of Texas. You have to click on this photo so you can see it bigger. Could we have blonder hair?
No shoes on the way into Oklahoma
Finally, we made it to Arkansas Here we are with Great Granddad Jones and two of our 3rd cousins. That purple outfit was my favorite that summer. Interesting fashion choices a 6 year old makes.Great Granddad Jones was 86 the summer we were there. He would load all us kids into the truck and drive way too fast while yelling "whoopie". We'd go to his farm and he would let us feed the cows. We dared each other to taste the salt licks. We concluded that salt licks are salty. He took us to lunch at Barnett's Dairyette and told us we could order anything we wanted. Nick and I ate ice cream cones. When you're 6 years old and an adult lets you eat ice cream for lunch it is a BIG deal. He had a big garden in his backyard and he let us pick anything we wanted. He sprinkled salt on his watermelon which we thought was weird.

It's odd for me to think about how Great Granddad Jones is Spencer's Great Great Grandfather. They share the same genetic code yet they will never meet and Spencer will have no memories of him. I can only hope that in 28 years, when Spencer is my age, I will have done my job as a mother and provided him with wonderful childhood memories of family and fun and summer adventures.