The Bucklin Boy Twins Circa 1927

I was originally going to call this post “The Bucklin Twins,” but I realized that Joseph had already written a post with that name.  Then I was going to add “Circa 1927” at the end of it.  But since Great Grandma Addie had two sets of twins, I thought I’d use the gender modifier.  The Bucklin twins in question are my maternal grandfather Fred Bucklin and his identical twin Clarence.  I got this photo from Clarence’s daughter Carla a few years ago.  Don’t you just love it?

The Bucklin twins circa 1927.

I do.  There’s a lot going on in the photo.  I’m thinking that it might be a picnic or camp out and they are getting ready to cook their meal.  The guy on the left looks like he is tending to a campfire.  I’m not sure who he is, but he kinda reminds me of some of my grandmother’s (Myrtle Phenice Bucklin) brothers.  There were lots of friendships between the seven Bucklin brothers and  five Phenice brothers. 

The guy sitting at the front wheel of the truck looks like it is one of the Bucklin twins.  I’m still not able to tell them apart.  I wasn’t the only one.  School teachers would try to keep them identified with a blue and red ribbon, but they would always switch with each other to fool them.  My mom used to say that she had been fooled a few times when she was a kid.  Anyway, the brother in front looks he may have been roasting a marshmallow or something on a branch.

The guy next to him looks like the other twin.  He’s getting a pot of something ready to cook on the fire.  I can’t make out exactly what he is doing.  What makes me think it might be a picnic is the big picnic basket in the middle of the truck bed.  Not really!  It looks like it’s just a big cardboard box.  Maybe it was used as a picnic basket.  Maybe it wasn’t.  I don’t know the identities of the other two guys on the back end of the truck.  They could be friends, or they could be more Phenice or Bucklin brothers.  It looks like kinda like they could be eating something, but even more so it looks like they are smoking pipes.

What I like about these photos from back in this time is that it shows the brothers before the Big Rift.  Nobody knows (or is willing to tell me) what the Big Rift was.  Whatever it was, it kept the twins from being social with each other for the rest of their lives.  And they lived right down the road from each other!  When I would ask my mom why they didn’t get along, she would say that Grandpa would get upset when someone would show up at his brother’s nursery (they were both plant nurserymen!) thinking it was my grandfather’s.  He claimed his brother wouldn’t correct the person and take his business.  But this explanation only made sense if they were already not getting along.  Before the Big Rift, they had a nursery business together.

It’s odd how this Big Rift carried on after both of the brothers died.  When I started interacting with my cousin Carla a few years ago online, I felt like I was crossing a line that I wasn’t supposed to.  For a rift that no one knows what started!  I didn’t let it stop me, though.   It’s a shame the brothers weren’t able to cross that line back to the way it was, though they may have felt they had good reasons.  I still enjoy seeing these old photos of when they enjoyed each other’s company, whether they were camping or having a picnic with friends.

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