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Flashback Friday





When you end up with the bulk of the family photos you treat them with reverence and strong sense of responsibility.  They are more than just photos, they are living existing bridge to a different time, you are temporary curator till someone else takes up the task. 

Your job is to preserve, interpret, explain, keep alive, if you will, those folks from when you came - those souls which are the foundation of whoever you are.  I began Flashback Friday becasue I don't think dusty phto books should remain in the upstairs hallway only to be shoved around when looking for somethign else.  Our photos whould be exposed, displayed and brough out as a small circular monuments of who we are.  

Weekly I post pictures of my family and while I have never been told to cease from anyone, neither have I actually sought approval.  When posting past dates or other people, i tend to use first names only or last names when given permission.  It is not always a perfect protocol.  Sometimes I trip up but for the most part it has gone OK.  

The family archives I have been entrusted with is the usual stuff - great-uncles, grandparents, parents, kids and so on.  School pics, posed and unposed.  Christmas pics, neighbor kids and everything that families do from point A to point B.  Frightening onlyu in our awkward smiles or unwanted attention.  And then I came across this.  

I should have saved this for a Halloween post but I wanted to get it out in the open than shove it back into the musty darkness.  Maybe it is just me, but I think this is one of the scariest pictures I have in my collection.  Maybe I have seen too many Paranormal Activity movies with the killer covens creeping around dark houses.  

The house looks dark with strange lower lighting that casts unusual shadows.  The ladies are unknown to me.  I do not think they are any relation to me.  The date reads Feb 55.  

The lady on the left has a strange dead bug-eye look that means she was made up like this or has some round-rimmed glasses. Either way this is spooky.  Is she holding some wrestling-like belt or is that a pattern sewn into the apron?  The hat is a weird nurse-like or kiddie thing that looks slightly hideous.  

The lady on the right looks a bit more reasonable - regional coven leader?  Tilted hat and parka inside a home lends credence to some form of ceremony rather than trying to keep warm.  And add that the photograph is deteriorating that gives it an extra dollop of creepiness.  

My grandmother Orpha was a member of the Order of the Eastern Star, which is a branch of the Masons, which at one time had a unit in Seaton.  My grandfather, V.G., was a member of the Masonic lodge, as was my Dad, and which I was asked to join once.  

I hope that the picture above, in a room I an unfamiliar with was an Eastern Star function, a ritual full of promise, fun, and personal reward.  Regardless, I am stuffing it back into the ziplock bag with other old photos and hopefully not opening again for along time.  It's just too scary.     



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