Tennis in the Past

With Wimbledon going on this week, I thought I would go with a tennis theme.  Besides that, I recently came into possession of an old photo of my grandfather on a tennis court and holding a tennis racket.  I had never seen the photo before, so I was excited to see this new image.

I got this photo from my cousin Carla.  She let me know that she had some photos that I might be interested in.  I was thinking it was just a few photos.  Boy, was I wrong!  There were dozens of old Bucklin family photos from the 1920s of my grandfather and his siblings.  What a treasure trove!

Carla and mom (Betty Lou Bucklin Landry) were first cousins and their dads were identical twin brothers.  Carla’s dad was Clarence and my grandfather was Fred.  Since neither of us can tell which one is which in the photo, I’m gonna go with Fred being the one on the left and Clarence on the right.  I don’t know who the girl in the middle is. 

The twins were born on October 2, 1907.  The photo was taken around 1924, so they would be teenagers at that time.  That looks about right.  I know that the family played basketball a lot and I did get some photos of that, but evidently they also played tennis.  Being a fan and a player myself, I was excited to find a picture of them in tennis gear from the time.  Those old wooden tennis rackets look so small, but that wouldn’t be changing for another fifty years or so.  They look like the first racket I had in the 1970s.

They also look very similar to the one my mom is holding in this photo from around 1950.  Though my mom is holding a tennis racket, she is decidedly not dressed for tennis.  I think the tennis racket is just a prop to hold while modeling her dress.  The intent was probably to show off her dress-making skills, not her tennis ones.

I don’t even know if she ever played tennis.  She was a very serious basketball player all through high school and equally devoted to playing in the band.  But tennis?  Not so much. 

The other thing I realized is that the two photos show both my mom and my grandfather at about the same age.  Even though I played tennis a little bit in high school, there isn’t a photo to prove it.  That’s just as well –  I posted a photo of myself at seventeen years old only two weeks ago.

Tennis anyone?