Other Peoples' Families

Click on pictures for full-size images.

I ran into this picture on the Internet so, like any good Internet "appropriator" I took it. (We don't want to say "thief," because after all, it's just out there for the taking, isn't it? Like peaches on your neighbor's tree. You can take them because the branch is hanging over the fence into your yard.) For some reason I love pictures of other peoples' families. I like to look at them and try to figure out the approximate dates based on clothes and hairstyles. I like to think of what the people were doing when the picture was being taken.

This picture says it was taken "probably at Skegness," which is a seaside resort in Great Britain. I love Grandfather in the center. What a classic-looking granddad! Like Paul McCartney's "clean old man" granddad, Wilfred Brambell in A Hard Day's Night. Hard to tell the date, but maybe early 1960s?

The other picture below is of my friend Dave and his family, taken in Sacramento about 1959 or '60, if I'm good at guessing based on fashion. Dave is the youngest one. I love his dad's tie and the glasses on his mom. I love the clip-on ties and the way all three boys show their mom's hand in the way their hair is combed with the same upsweep in front. These are definite mom-combjobs. No boy would wear his hair like this voluntarily. I'm sure as soon as they got out of their suits and raced around the yard a few times the hair didn't look that neat.I bring this up because there are no pictures of my family all together. There were individual pictures of us all, or maybe two or three together, but there was never a formal portrait and never a picture of the four of us. I remember lots of pictures of us individually I wish I had now, but the only place they could have been would have been at my mother's apartment, and when I cleaned it out in 2004 after moving her into a nursing home there were no pictures. You take this stuff for granted--or at least we did--and then it's gone.

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My friend Eddie's blog Chicken Fat has a nice segment for March 18 about a favorite barbecue restaurant that closed.

Years ago Eddie and I had a discussion on restaurants. He said when a restaurant got fancy décor and added ferns it was no good. I told him about a barbecue restaurant we had called Bubba's. I wish I had a picture of Bubba's. It had an airplane on the roof, which was made to look as if it had crashed into the building. It was set at a 45º angle. Part of one wing and the pilot's compartment of the small plane had been sawed off, and driving up on it the first time was startling. On the inside the restaurant was set up with long wooden tables with benches. You sat Army-style, either by or across from strangers. And there were no ferns. Eddie said, "Any restaurant called Bubba's with an airplane on the roof has got to be good!" It didn't last long. The county came along and said, "You can't put an airplane on the roof." Killjoys. So Bubba took off the airplane and it wasn't long before the restaurant closed. It opened later as The Firehouse, and we ate there once. It was OK, but unmemorable. I never went back. They closed their doors, too. Now the restaurant has stood empty for years, the lot around it getting more weedy and seedy looking.

Sally and I also ate a few times at a strip mall restaurant called Tio's. It was just six or seven tables set against a wall in a skinny building. It was great Mexican food, but it also didn't last long. It turned into a Chinese restaurant and I lost interest. Eddie's law was in effect: Tio's had no ferns, the Chinese restaurant did.

After Tio's closed we found a Mexican restaurant on South State Street in Salt Lake County. I won't say the name because they are still there. When we went in we noticed we were the only gringos and I thought, great! This food has got to be authentic. We had good Mexican food at reasonable prices and drank Corona beers with lime. About the third time we went into the restaurant we noticed more Anglos in there and when I bit into the complimentary chips I felt the top of my head lift off. They were coated with cayenne pepper, and the whole meal was hot like that. I couldn't eat it, but rather than complain we just left. My paranoia was full-blown, thinking, "They did that because we're not Mexicans. They were trying to chase us off." I have no way of knowing if that was true or not. I mean, why would anyone chase away customers. It doesn't make any sense, but then paranoia makes you think things like that.

Ciao for now.