Saturday's Old Photo

I mentioned earlier this week that I’d had a couple of interesting visitors to my old blog. Yes, this week I received  emails from a couple of previously unknown (to me) cousins, Cliff and Ken Melvin, who happened across the photo of my grandfather’s family that I posted back in January. Cliff Melvin is the son of my grandpa’s sister Virgie, who is sitting down in front next to her brother George.

 
Here’s what I wrote about the photo back when I first posted it: 

My grandpa, Ira Deckard, is on the far right, next to his mother, Mary Hepsibeth Deckard … and then his father, John Wesley Deckard. The rest of the group are my grandpa’s sisters and brother: Virgie and George in the front, with Effie, Ethel and Rosie in the back. I’m guessing, by the age my grandpa looks, that this photo was taken sometime in the 1930s. The family is standing in front of my great-grandparent’s home in rural Missouri.

 I learned a little more about the photo from Ken Melvin:

The picture was taken in Grovesprings, MO - early 50s?- shortly before your great grand father died. John Wesley was known as Bud and his wife as Hep.

I was wrong about the date of the photo, then. That means that not only was this picture taken taken shortly before my great grandfather died, it was taken only a few years before my grandpa Ira passed away in 1955. Bud and Hep, they were. I’m glad to know that, too.

The photo on the left is of my grandpa Ira Deckard alone. My mother’s label on the back says she thinks this was also snapped in Missouri. He was, I think, quite a bit younger in this photo than he was in the photo above. If you click for the larger view, you’ll see that Grandpa Ira is wearing long johns under his overalls, and that he has the same piano fingers that my mother inherited and passed down to my oldest daughter and my youngest son. Do you suppose any long lost cousins have piano fingers, too? 

One of the bonuses of blogging: You never know what you’ll learn or who you’ll meet. 

Update on Thursday, May 3, 2007 at 8:29AM by rebecca

A little more information from Ken Melvin:  The year is more likely 1946 or 1947, and the one my mother identified as Effie is really Lena.

A Meme for Me

(Did you ever notice how narcissistic the word meme looks?)

I’ve been tagged by Carla (who seems to read just about the same number of novels that I do) for a book character meme. I read lots of novels as a child and on into young adulthood. Then I had to quit, because once I started a novel, I felt compelled to read it until I finished it. Straight through, that is, without breaks. You can imagine what kind of a mother I was while I was reading a novel. 

True story: One day I found myself sitting on a rocker that I’d pulled into the kitchen next to the fridge so I could reach over without looking up from my page, open the fridge door, grab a snack, and toss it at whatever child needed my attention. That’s when I realised that I needed to give up novels while my children were young. Once I got out of the habit of reading novels, I just never went back to them.

I did read a lot of novels to my children, so if my choices of book characters seem childish to you, now you know why. 

Name three characters (from books)…

1). You wish were real so you could meet them.

• The mom in Little House on the Prairie. Okay, she was real, but I would like to meet her, so I could ask her how she did what she did.
  
• Aslan from The Chronicles of Narnia.  Who wouldn’t want to meet him?
  
• Eeyore.  I’d like to see if I could get him to crack a smile.
  

2). You would like to be.

• When I was a girl, I wanted to be just like Caddie Woodlawn.
  
• Tigger.  It’d be fun to enjoy life moment to moment like Tigger does, although I’m not sure I’d want to be Tigger permanently.
• I’m coming up short here. If I think of anyone else, I’ll come back.
  

3). Who scare you.

• Injun Joe from Tom Sawyer.
• When I was a little girl I was terrified of the wicked witch from The Wizard of Oz. The movie, not the book. I couldn’t bear to read the book if she’s in it, and I’ve never watched the movie again and never will.
• I’m going to have to come back later for this one, too.

If you want to be tagged, let me know. I’m coming in on the tail end of this meme, so I’m not sure who’s done it already and who hasn’t.

Book Review: The Hidden Smile of God

The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd by John Piper.

This is the second book in the series The Swans are Not Silent. Like the other books in the series, it contains three of Piper’s biographical sermons on historical Christians. In this case, those featured are John Bunyan, William Cowper and David Brainerd, three men who endured great suffering during their lives, and whose suffering bore fruit, both in their own times and onward through history to the present day. Piper’s purpose in telling the stories of these men’s lives and expounding on them is so that the story of

how they suffered, how they endured, and how it bore fruit … will inspire in [the reader] that same radical Christian life, God-centered worship, and Christ-exalting mission.

The first section is on the life of John Bunyan, best known for writing The Pilgrim’s Progress, one of the best-selling books of all times, although he wrote at least fifty-seven other books. Bunyan was a “brasyer” or tinker who became a nonconformist  preacher. He suffered in many ways throughout his life, including spending 12 years in jail away from his wife and children for refusing to stop preaching. Bunyan’s imprisonment drove him to God’s word. Piper quotes him:

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