Phamily – Piled High in the Front Seat

Easton, MD

REVERSE SHOT

What’s your earliest memory involving another person? Recreate the scene — from the other person’s perspective.

Whoops! Took a detour from the directions…always a constant problem of mine. (Wink) The perspective is mine. 🙂 *

The caption on the photograph says “Easton, Maryland.” In my earliest memories I am with my parents and Susan, my sister. Although I am much older in the photograph, my earliest memory takes place in late March/early April of 1960. My family lived at that time in New Castle, Pennsylvania. My father was a pastor in the Pilgrim Holiness Church. How times have changed! Most cars didn’t have seatbelts. Children didn’t sit on boosters, babies weren’t strapped into car seats. In my fleeting remembrance I stood (gasp!) between my parents on the front seat of the car so I could look down on the baby sleeping in my mother’s arms. I remember my mother’s gray tweed coat and the baby swathed in layers of blankets. I wore a heavy coat and some kind of furry bonnet-type hat. I think I had a little muff to keep my hands warm. (It stays very cold in western Pennsylvania in early Spring.)That’s about all there is of that memory, but it is a good one. I remember feeling happiness piled tightly in the front seat of that car with the people who made up the whole world for me.

* “I’m of a mind that if I think deviating from the directions will make anything better…well then GO FOR IT!