THREE SETS OF STAIRS...

It’s amazing what a Sepia Saturday prompt can reveal!

          I spent some time rummaging today, thinking that I might be able to find a photo of members of my family on stairs; imagine my surprise when I found these three shots (I actually found more, but these three were the best).

The first is of the Gould children of Newton Upper Falls, Massachusetts. It’s a shot taken at the summer house in East Boothbay, Maine in 1900: Margaret and Howard are the youngest ones on the bottom step; the others (left to right) are Richard, Prescott, Allen and Gardner (my grandfather, who’s about 15 in this shot), the oldest. I’m not sure why Margaret is covering her ears; I just love their shiny shoes—Margaret’s with button laces. The boys all have short pants with stockings bagging at the knees, except for my grandfather, who’s old enough to be in long pants.

And then I found one of my father (Gardner, Jr.) sitting between his mother and his sister Shirley – again at the summer house in East Boothbay in, say, 1938-39; my father’s in baggy pants and loafers (such a fashionable look back then); his sister equally fashionable in tailored pants – just like Katherine Hepburn!

To finish the triptych, my brother, me and my mother on the back steps of my parents’ first house in Needham, Massachusetts; this is in 1950 or so. John’s all decked out in his cowboy shirt (with slide tie) and gloves; I’m in my bathrobe, recovering from the mumps!

          And that black-and-white cocker spaniel is Ferdinand, the wonderful dog who loved Oreos (see my post of November 23).

So here we are: three generations of Goulds, the oldest born more than one hundred years ago (1886); the youngest in 1946 and still going strong in 2014 (me).

Just think of all the stairs we’ve climbed!

(To see what other Sepians have found, visit www.sepiasaturday.blogspot.com)