Mudpuddle

I had posted my PhotoHunter post last night but thought about this photo when I was visiting some other peoples’ entries.

Grandmother and Mom at the Rocking Stones (Brimham Stones), Yorkshire

It was a photo taken by my grandfather, who I never met, of my grandmother (who I also never met, and my mother. My mother thinks the photo was taken at the Rocking Stones (Brimham Stones), in Yorkshire. The photo is hazy because I actually only have the negative. I scanned it using my regular old flatbed scanner and then making a negative of it. I have a bunch of old family photos that I have done this with, some more successfully than others.

This one was a surprise because, while I had seen the negative many times over the years, it wasn’t until I scanned it and blew it up that I realized it was my (step) father. It was probably taken when he was in University, thought, aside from skiing, I didn’t think he was particularly athletic. My sister swears it isn’t him but it is definitely his face — or the side of it, anyway.

Dad

Mom with her mother's parents

This was my mother with her father’s parents. He was a lovely man but she was apparently a grouch. He wore a toupee which, although you cal tell in the photo, Mom didn’t know was a toupee until once she accidentally yanked it off. He wasn’t best pleased.

During the war, her grandmother, who lived in Newcastle, came to stay with them because of the risk of bombing there. This was after her husband had died.

While staying with my grandparents, she complained all the time about the food. Nothing sat well with her… She didn’t like how it was cooked… always a complaint. One night, my grandfather heard someone downstairs in the kitchen and went down to find his mother chowing down on all the food she had refused at supper time. He told her off. Apparently, she packed her bags the next morning and left and neither she or any of his family ever spoke to him again.

Somewhere in India

I have no idea where this is aside from the general location “India”. It is probably somewhere in Bombay (now Mumbai). The edge of the lake is square, so it may be a tank (the name of man-made waterholes). On the far side, on the left of the photo are a man and a woman standing. Possibly my aunt and my father? If it is my father, it was while he was still a teenager because he left India to study at MIT before WII and didn’t return until we visited in 1968. Who knows… Mystery photo.