Sunday, January 22, 2017

40 Years Ago Today - January 22, 1977

On January 22, 1977, my mother and I paid a visit to her mother, Dorothy Hollingsworth. The first photo shows my mother wearing a souvenir shirt from her Hawaii trip and my abnormally large head. The next photo has a my grandmother holding me with a hidden gem in the background. I remember that lion pillow as a kid. It was one of my favorite things to play with, or lay on, when I went to visit. The last photo was just me on a Disney blanket, probably getting a diaper change.

What's interesting about these photos, besides who is in them, is who took them; Gibson Brown. Gibson Brown was the father of Phil Brown. Phil Brown married Diana, one of my mother's sisters. Phil and Diana lived in the suburbs of Chicago and were notorious for making me feel like family every time I saw them. When Uncle Phil's father, the aforementioned Gibson Brown, passed away, Uncle Phil was nice enough to let me inherit the Hardy Boy collection that was in his parents' apartment. This small gesture is what helped me develop a long-term love affair with reading.

I still have those Hardy Boys books. And I ended up collecting other stuff too. Tom Swift. Nancy Drew. X Bar X. Star Wars. The list just continues and continues. But that first bag of musty, dusty, wonderfully smelling books is the seed that got me started on the adventure of collecting and reading. Even this past weekend I bought two books that I needed to complete yet another series of books from an author.

One side note, we (my dad and I) inherited a few things from the Browns' apartment. I'm pretty sure one of them was a tape measure from US Steel and another was a painting or drawing by Phil's mom, Lois. It's weird the little things you remember.





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