This is one of the Saturday’s Old Photo posts from the old blog. The old post lost its photo when my son closed his Smugmug account, so tonight I’m uploading the photo here and reposting the text that went with it. I chose this piece to repost because it gives background for the old photo I plan to post next week.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you who this little person is, but I will anyway. This is me when I was around 18 months old. This photo was taken by a photographer for the yearbook at Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee. My dad was a student there and this picture was taken for use in the photo spread on Trailerville, where all the married students and their families lived. I don’t think this actually made it into the yearbook, but it did make it into my family’s collection of photographs.
You’ll notice I’m playing with a slinky, which I suppose was the latest thing back then. That I have a slinkly rather than a stuffed animal tells you a bit about what kind of toys I liked. I had a doll—one with outfits my grandma and mother made—but I didn’t play with her much. I tried to play with her, but after I’d changed her clothes, I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I preferred cars and trucks and building blocks—things you could use to do something or make something.
When I was school age I mentioned to my parents that I remembered how much I’d loved playing with my toy 7-Up truck—the one with the little crates of pop that could be loaded in the back.
“Seven-Up truck?” they said. “You didn’t have a 7-Up truck.” It turns out that my first toy memory is of a toy that wasn’t mine, but belonged to a boy who was my neighbor for six weeks when I was two.
This slinky isn’t mine either, but belongs to one of the other Trailerville kids.