Tag Archives: vintage family photos

Backyard games

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On August 12, 2021, the United States Postal Service issued “Backyard Games,” sure to appeal to the nostalgic baby boomer like me.

481204-Z0 Backyard Games stamps
“Backyard Games” issued by the United States Postal Service August 12, 2021 (usps.com)

Per USPS:

The stamp pane features eight unique designs illustrating eight backyard games:

  • badminton
  • bocce
  • cornhole
  • croquet
  • flying disc
  • horseshoes
  • tetherball
  • variation on pick-up baseball

Each design emphasizes the movement of the game pieces, giving a dynamic quality to the artwork, with a simplified style that evokes the nostalgic feeling of playing backyard games as a child.

Later my brother scanned some old slides, likely taken when he was home from the Army. They included photos of two of my aunts and me playing Pop-A-Lot, a backyard game from Tupperware I’d half forgotten.

Our trailer was at the end of a row, with a field beyond. My dad and the trailer park owner had an understanding. We could use the field next to the trailer rent free if we were willing to mow and maintain it. Our yard on the other side was small and shrank more when my dad planted a shed in the middle of it, so this was a great perk.

field
Part of the trailer park’s field

The field offered us two to three times the space, up to the point it turned into an uneven, weedy, wet depression. My dad had borrowed a glider, which he put on that side of the trailer along with a table and umbrella. (Later he moved them behind the shed for shade. Your choices were roast in the sun all afternoon on one side, or get eaten alive in the evening shade by mosquitoes on the other.)

Dad put up a trellis or two for morning glories and, later, a wild rose he dug out of the wet depression. He got enormous tires to use as raised flowerbeds. He planted a rectangular garden with flowers like zinnias and vegetables like bell peppers, anchored by Virgil’s Arbor Day ash tree at the southwest corner.

Family
Dad’s garden with fence and a piece of the orange-painted metal table; this was around the time of the Pop-A-Lot games (I’m wearing the same shirt)
Frontier graduation 6-24-1979
1979 high school graduation photo shows horseshoes, garden minus fence, and trellis. The glider and table had been moved to the other side

A light pole next to the trailer sported a board with horseshoes tacked to it. I have no idea where they came from. We may have used them once or twice. I loved the idea of having horseshoes, once associated with luck, and wondered if ours had been worn by a horse.

Of course we tossed a flying disc around (maybe a Frisbee). We played badminton; I remember I hit the birdie too hard like it was a tennis ball. Virgil and his friends played a few games of pick-up baseball and even flag football. They were surprised that I could sometimes hit the ball almost as far as the woods. Not bad for a girl eight years younger than her brother and his friends. The trailer park also had a basketball hoop stuck to a light pole in the field. The last time the basket went missing it wasn’t replaced. By then, most of the people who would have used it were gone.

The backyard games we played that aren’t on the list: Jarts and Pop-A-Lot.

The last (and possibly first) time we broke out Jarts, my brother (if I recall correctly) speared the top of his friend’s foot. It was quite gory.

Pop-A-Lot’s packaging said:

  • Fun
  • Safe
  • Develops coordination

Could “safe” has been in response to Jarts, which were as unsafe as anything could get?

I recall it was fun. It looks like my dad’s sisters liked it too (as long as it didn’t muss their hairdos).

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Aunt Marietta playing Pop-A-Lot by the driveway
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Aunt Thelma playing Pop-A-Lot in the field (I recognize the sumac behind her)
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Me playing Pop-A-Lot in the field with woods behind me

Although it wasn’t a game, the other backyard activity we indulged in involved water. For a while I had a wading pool — two, actually, one boat shaped and the next round. I outgrew both quickly. We also had a sprinkler attachment for the hose that spun around — it was great fun. The only reason I can think of for not using it more was not wanting to waste too much water.

Diane Virgil sprinkler
I’d forgotten about this sprinkler attachment
pool
The boat wading pool

Sadly, by the time I was old enough to play some of these games, my brother had left for the Army, and his friends had dispersed to begin their own futures. The demographic of the trailer park changed, too, with the families moving out and retirees trying to stretch their pensions moving in.

The Forest Preserve District of Will County’s “Winter Wonderland” at Messenger Woods reminded me of Pop-A-Lot and backyard games, even if they weren’t all “real” games. I could see myself working to consistently get a plushie snowman’s head into a basket on my head. After all, it’s fun, safe, and develops coordination.

Basket toss game
No backyard game is too silly . . .

Meet the Schirfs, updated

Beginning with my paternal grandparents, we move on to my parents, my dad’s family, and my brother — characters, each and every one. Arranged roughly in chronological order.

Cast of characters:

  • Nicholas Peter Schirf and wife Anna Marie Shank, married c. 1910
  • Children Mildred, Ralph (my dad), Marietta, and Thelma, plus a possible appearance by Harold
  • Thelma’s husband John Conner and granddaughter Erin
  • Daisy (my mother), Virgil (my brother), and yours truly
  • Possibly a few unidentified family members and/or third parties
Meet the Schirfs
Meet the Schirfs
72 photos

Marietta Schirf, WAC editor

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Marietta Schirf was my dad’s youngest sister. He said he didn’t know how she snuck into the Armed Forces because he was sure she didn’t meet the minimum height requirement.

At a 1980s July 4th concert on Capitol Hill, E. G. Marshall officiating, veterans by branch were asked to stand up. When the turn came for the Air Force, she stood and whooped, to the surprise of our neighbors on the grass. I asked why Air Force, and she answered she’d been in the Army Air Corps. That’s the first I’d heard that.

Aunt Marietta died in the mid-90s. How she would have appreciated the resources of the internet. She once took me to the Library of Congress to look up articles on sugalite.

I will have to look up Front and Center. On the internet.

Marietta Schirf
Marietta Schirf at work on Front and Center

Virgil’s school photos

I can date only a couple of my brother Virgil’s school photos, but tried to arrange them by apparent (to me) age. I wasn’t born until Virgil was almost eight years old, and I don’t remember much before kindergarten (except, I think, climbing out of and dangling from my crib, giving my mother heart palpitations when she found me). My first day of kindergarten was his first day of eighth grade.

Virgil and Diane, 9/7/1966
First day of kindergarten!
Virgil’s school photos
Virgil’s school photos
7 photos

Virgil’s reaction to these photos?

What a brutally handsome dude. Who is he?

That’s Virgil in a nutshell. Or old photos.

Shoebox gateway to past

Dad Oct1982
Dad in October 1982, age 69, with his reduced garden, about six years before offering to throw a lifetime’s worth of family photos away

I’ve seen vintage photos and postcards for sale, and even bought a few myself, such as postcards of Starved Rock State Park.

I understand wanting postcards, souvenirs of places that have disappeared, changed, or survived — time capsules of a not-too-distant, recognizable past.

It’s harder for me to understand buying mundane photos of regular people the buyer never knew. Do they hope the photos will turn out to be valuable? Do they want to make up stories about the unknown, deceased-these-many-years people? Do they pretend strangers are their own family members, giving them names and histories? Or do they simply want to add old photos to their decor for a vintage look?

I was thinking about this when going through two shoeboxes of family photos. I’d finally found the perfect scanner for small photos (e.g., 4” x 6”). Many of my oldest photos are smaller. Some have typewritten captions on the back. I suspect these were added by Aunt Marietta, who after World War II became an executive assistant with the Atomic Energy Commission, later the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I don’t think anyone else would have had access to a typewriter.

Some have handwritten captions. Many aren’t labeled — no subject, location, or date. Dad labeled most of his photos, at least later. I think these random, unlabeled photos frustrated him — even though he knew most of the subjects. I wonder what a photo buyer would make of them?

I don’t know what to make of some of them myself. There’s a little blonde girl who is not the daughter of my mother’s best friend. (She agreed it’s not her.) There are a boy and a girl. The boy could be my brother, but he doesn’t recognize the girl. two of my aunts are posed with a taller man. I can only guess he may have been Harold, a brother had had epilepsy and died before he reached 21.

I have two shoe boxes and a suitcase of my dad’s photos and a lot of scanning to do of the people photos. When he moved to Pennsylvania to be closer to family, he threatened to throw out every photo. Panicked, I hastily communicated he was not to toss a single photo, and I would take them. I was shocked, but he was in a purging mood. Who knows? A buyer may have wanted them.

All this is a long way of saying to expect to see small vintage photos posted here once in a while, along with anything I know and think about them.

V-Mail from my dad, Ralph Schirf

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A few years ago I did a search on my dad’s name and found an old auction for V-Mail (“Greetings from Britain”) from Private Ralph Schirf. I hadn’t known about the auction, long since over, in time to bid. Here are the clues that it’s from my dad:

  • Ralph Schirf is a unique name. Schirf is rare, and we’re all related. Ralph Schirf is one of a kind.
  • He was from the Altoona, Pennsylvania, area.
  • He served as a private in the Army Air Forces during WWII in England (artillery, I believe, although he didn’t talk about it). He was honorably discharged as a corporal.
  • That’s his block printing.
  • His beloved sister Marjorie married a Way (Ellis G. in the obituary of one of their children).
  • He once signed a birthday card to me “Father Ralph.” It’s not a stretch to imagine him signing “Brother Ralph” to his sister.

I would love if the buyer found this post and offered to sell me Dad’s V-Mail, but in lieu of the physical pieces I’ll have to be content with small digital photos.

rare-wwii-1943-v-mail-greetings-from-britian-private-ralph-schirf-ww2-64c32fc9481c6b1dd5f09fd063e84227
The long view
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Brother Ralph
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Sent from Brother Ralph to his sister in Juanita, Altoona
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Closeup of the address and date

Here’s more from the Postal Museum about V-Mail.

USPS PDF about the history and process of sending V-Mail.

My dad:

Dad_service 2
Dad in the Army Air Forces, year unknown. He served in Hawaii before WWII, was honorably discharged, and re-enlisted after Pearl Harbor. His youngest sister, Marietta, also served.

And his grave in Bellwood, Pennsylvania, outside Altoona:

Untitled
Dad’s marker at Logan Valley Cemetery in Antis Township/Bellwood

My portrait

I found this portrait on my computer the other day. An online acquaintance drew it in 1998 based on a scan of a portrait photo taken of my brother and me in the late 1980s or 1990s at a Sears store in San Antonio, Texas. The original photo is from a different era in my life, and the artist has never met me face to face. It’s a wonderful work, and for many years I displayed it on my Web site. I removed it primarily because I thought it might appear that I am claiming I look like that now. (I don’t.)

portrait
diane-virgil portrait

From the perspective of 2006, I don’t recognized the woman in the portrait. It is not simply that she is younger, fresher, more innocent, less jaded than I am. It is not that she looks a little shyer, a little more hesitant, a little less confident. It is all that, but it is also more, more than I can probably see or sense. What strikes me most, beyond her reserve, is how happy she seems; her smile is calm, warm, open, and genuine.

I do not think I have ever felt that way as an adult. At the time, I worked at a job that was tedious, meaningless, and draining in an environment that was difficult and without intellect, heart, or spirit. I tried repeatedly to escape, but each failed attempt reminded me that no one elsewhere wanted me and that my chances were small and stagnant. No one could see my potential, nor could I persuade anyone of it. My apartment was small, poorly maintained, and neglected, and was neither a refuge or a home except in the most basic sense. I was not in love and had long ago given up on the idea that I ever would be, or could be.I was existing, not living, and was miserable in that existence.

I do not see any of that in the portrait. I see someone who was, or who has become, a stranger to the person I am today. I could wish I still had her youth and freshness and especially of the openness and optimism that still lurk in her eyes, underneath the guardedness.

But they are gone, and I do not think that they will return.

Easter memories

Easter Sunday, 1960s
Easter Sunday, 1965

As a young girl, I engaged in what is surely a quaint, discontinued custom (or perhaps not?) of getting a new, light, springy dress to wear to church on Easter. I also had two straw hats; one was blue and one was white or pink, if I remember correctly. They were uncomfortable, hot, and scratchy, but I thought I looked elegant in them. I looked forward to having a reason to wear such a hat.

My favourite Easter dress, or the only one I remember, was solid pink with plain lines. It was very comfortable and simple. It came to a sad end. A long time afterward, while we were out driving around, I found some chlorine bleach in the car and accidentally spilled some on the dress, creating instant white blotches. It was a moment I agonised over long after, wishing I could take it back — partly at the loss of the dress, and partly because I felt it must have upset my poor mother as much as me.

On Easter, as on birthdays, we used to sit at the kitchen table and pose for a photo with our filled-up Easter baskets. Mine had broad bands of straw in natural, blue, dark pink, and yellow — again if I remember correctly — and had a handle I’d tie bows and other things to. Virgil’s was smaller, had narrower colored bands, and had no handle. We both had had our baskets for as long as I could remember — that is, I don’t remember acquiring them. They were kept in my closet the rest of the year, along with colored plastic eggs which, at Easter, would be placed in the baskets empty and found the next morning filled with jelly beans or M&Ms.

I associate the baskets and the eggs strongly with the happier aspects of my childhood, which made them a little magical and mysterious somehow. Knowing now that they were just things that were bought at the store in the plaza across the highway has diminished the emotional resonance but little. I sometimes think about whether today’s kids have things that they feel the same sense of wonder about, or are they all so in tune with advertising, marketing, and shopping that every childhood belonging is a mere object with no emotional meaning.

When my dad had to move out finally and we had to decide what to keep and what to get rid of, I thought about saving the baskets and plastic eggs. But space did not allow me to, and to this day I wonder if the actual objects would help me preserve the memory and the feelings any better than I have — if I would be able to look at them now and remember those Easter Sundays and how I felt then. I do not know.