Sepia Saturday: Old Dogs and Children and...

Yesterday Vicki Lane posted about a wonderful box of family photos and letters that her husband received from his cousin. One of Vicki's commenters, Martin, provided a link to another blog, Sepia Saturday, that I think most of you will enjoy as much as I did. Sepia Saturday sets a different theme each week and challenges readers to post old photos related to that theme. As luck would have it, the theme for this Saturday is DOGS. Now, you know I can't leave that one alone, don't you?

I'll start with the oldest of my old dog photos and apologize for its poor quality. It's actually a photocopy of the original image. The lady at the left of this photo is my great-great-grandmother, Amy Lucinda Smith, née Hagadorn, and the man is her son, Arba. It's my understanding that Amy was a serious participant in séances in her later years and that Arba was at least a little bit dimwitted. Amy passed away at the age of 80 in 1923, so we know this photo is older than that.

Amy and Arba Smith and man's best friend.

There are two spotted pups in the next photo (also scanned from a photocopy). The family group at the right is headed by my paternal grandparents, Erna and Audrey Barclay. The small blond boy with his thumb in his mouth is my dad. The other family is known to me only as "the Pinkertons." I don't know if they were friends, neighbors, or distant relatives, but I know from this picture that I would have liked them.

The Pinkertons, the Barclays, and the pretty, speckled pups.

Next we have my maternal grandparents, Lewis and Lola Saunders, with my mother, her older brother, and someone's dog. I'm guessing this photo was taken about 1928. It's interesting to me that these stern-looking grandparents are the ones I remember as the fun ones, while the other grandparents, shown smiling in the photo above, were stricter. (I thought Grandma Barclay would either have a stroke or kill me one time when I helped myself to a piece of salt pork before grace was said.)  

The Saunders family with a dog who may or may not have been theirs

but recognized a photo-op when it saw one.

I love the photo below of my mother's first cousins, the Gaylor kids, sitting on a hill with their dog. This photo probably dates back to the early 1930s. The boy on the right was written up in the local newspaper a few years later in an article that begins as follows: "With his 2-ton Flying Fortress so badly damaged by anti-aircraft fire that it could not reach a speed equal to that of a fast automobile, Second Lt. William R. Gaylor, 19, Springfield bombadier, rode his bomber back to a night-time landing in England after an Eighth AAF daylight attack on oil refineries at Merseburg, Germany." Quite a change from this peaceful scene, don't you think?

Bob, Pat and Bill Gaylor with faithful companion.

The girl snuggling the terrier in the photo below is my mother. She was probably about 10 or 12 in this picture, which would date it in the early-to-mid '30s. I never thought about it until this very minute, but there weren't very many years in my mother's life when she didn't have a dog. Maybe that's where I get it.

Wanda and the furry object of her affection.

My plan was to end this post after the preceding pre-1940 pictures, but then I came across a "recent" one (from 1957) and couldn't resist adding it to the mix. In the summer of that year my family traveled from our home in Missouri to visit with Mother's older brother's family in East Texas. The photo below shows my sister and me (I'm the one in the doorway) with our boy cousins. Does it strike you as odd (and more than a little creepy) that three of the five of us are scratching our heads? What the heck? Other photos from that trip show us all at the beach, so I'm choosing to think that our heads were itching from sunburns. Yeah, that's it, sunburns.

Saunders boys, Barclay girls, and, yes, a dog.

After all that, I'm reminded that the theme for this post is supposed to be dogs. Regrettably, I can't tell you a darn thing about any of these dogs. I wish I could. Maybe, if you check out the Sepia Saturday site, you'll find it will lead you to some blogs that feature dogs the writers knew well enough to tell stories about. Click the image below to go there:

BUT WAIT!  DON'T GO YET...THERE'S MORE!

Usually, if I post on a Saturday, I post a music video. I 'd planned not to do that this time, but then I remembered the perfect song to go along with these photos: Tom T. Hall's "Old Dogs and Children and Watermelon Wine." (I can personally testify as to the blessings of old dogs and children, but I don't know nothin' 'bout no watermelon wine.) Enjoy!

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Thanks to consman22 for posting this video on YouTube.

Lyrics are posted here.