Posers

I've been looking at a lot of old pictures lately and the memories are really flowing. :-) Here's a story my kids have already heard a bunch of times but I personally think it's funny enough to repeat a whole bunch more times :-)

As I've mentioned many times by now, my mother's life was a 'performance'. Hence it should come as no surprise that there are very few true candid pictures from my childhood. When the cameras came out the posing started.
This story is from Easter 1960. (Process of elimination - there is a 1960 Chevy in the pictures and 1960 was the last year we lived in that house.)
The occasion was the obligatory Easter Sunday pre-church photo shoot. At one point my mother said "Look up in the tree!" Here's the picture:



As you can see, my mother and my big sister (who obviously understood what was going on) are pointing up into the tree, and I'm standing there with my hand on my hips because I don't see a freaking thing other than bare branches. Is it a bird? Is it a plane?? Is it a squirrel??? I don't know!!! I was confused and irritated at the same time. Sometimes I don't catch on very fast :-)

Now here's another picture taken later in the 'session':


As you can see, I'm still looking up into that freaking tree because I can't figure out what's up there and it's driving me nuts! And my mother and sister are apparently trying to figure out what my problem is. (I think I was supposed to be looking at my sister as mom gazed adoringly at us.) BTW - I still can't believe the way she used to dress me...

When we were on our way to church I finally asked my sister about it. I don't remember the verbatim conversation but I think it went something like this:
Me: What was in the tree?
Sis: What??
Me: Mom said to look up at the tree. What was up there?
Sis: There wasn't anything there. We were just pretending there was.
Me: Oh ... ... Why???
(Now I'm even more confused.)

Those of you who are not into cars can stop reading here. The rest of you may wonder how I know that the car is a 1960 Chevy and not a 1959 Chevy, which (of course) is quite similar from the front and the sides but has very different taillights:

Cars have always been my thing. My earliest dreams (3 years old) were of having my walls covered with steering wheels (I loved the emblems on the horn rings.) At the time these pictures were taken I could identify the year make and model of any (American) car built since 1954.
My dad got that 1960 Chevy at the start of the model year - it was the first one I'd seen. I liked the taillights on the 1959 but thought the 1960 ones were butt ugly. I was really irritated with him for not getting a leftover 1959 model...
Of course, I was even more irritated when I found out that my dad had people working for him who drove Cadillacs. I couldn't believe he was satisfied with the new Chevy his company bought him every couple of years... I guess cars just weren't his thing...