A Smile From Pee Paw Circa 1920

Earlier today, I was wondering what I would end up writing about tonight.  I didn’t really have anything in mind.  I wasn’t too concerned, because I usually find something to write about.  But really, after sharing around 400 photos on this blog, you would think that I’d run out of photos!  Not that 400 photos are that many photos.  Right now, I’ve got 1, 874 photos on my phone.  Not that they are all worthy of something to write about, but it’s still a lot more than 400.  And I clean out my photos somewhat regularly.  I’m sure there are people reading this who have photos numbering in the thousands on their phones.  Am I right?

When I was walking home from work, I thought that maybe I’d title my post “Photos of Dead People.”  While not everyone in my photos have died (myself included), many of the subjects in the old photos I post have.  And I was not planning on posting photos of people who were dead in the photo.  There is a history of people photographing the dead to preserve their memory.  That was back in the day when photographs were relatively rare.  But the tradition has carried on in my dad’s side of the family.  

My paternal grandmother Germaine Erie Patureau Landry died in 1973 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  I remember going to Mee Maw’s funeral.  I have a few memories of that day.  My brother-in-law at the time gave me a piece of polished smoky quartz that I cherished for many years.  Not because of who gave it to me, but I have always liked rocks and minerals.  I haven’t seen that piece of quartz for a while now.  I also remember going to the restroom and my belt buckle fell off and fell into the toilet!  I wasn’t about to fish that thing out, and I hoped that no one would notice it was missing.  Nobody noticed and I think I’ve only told one person that story.  Now everyone knows the secret.

It was at Mee Maw’s funeral that I saw my dad crying for the first time that I recall.  For some reason that seemed like such a big thing to young pre-teen Van.  I don’t remember my grandmother or her coffin or that much of anything else.  But I do remember that afterwards, my dad was given or sent a photo of her in her coffin.  He kept it in the top dresser drawer in my parents’ bedroom.  I know that, because I remember looking through that drawer from time to time and looking at the photo.  I was just a little curious.  When my sister Jodie died in 1989, one of my cousins gave me a photo of her in the coffin.  I have the photo, but I never look at it.  After my parents died in 2017, similar photos were offered to me, but I politely declined.  

Because really, wouldn’t you prefer to have a picture like this one I’m sharing?  Of course, you would!  This is a photo of my paternal grandfather Rober Joseph Landry, Sr. from around 1920.  I always title posts about him using the name that his grandchildren called him – Pee Paw.  He went by Rob or Bob or Pappy.  But when I think of Rob Landry, I think of my brother.  And Bob Landry was my father, and all of his grandchildren called him Pappy.  So Pee Paw is the only name he went by that doesn’t confuse the issue for me.  He, of course, was married to my Mee Maw.  They actually got married around the time that this photo was taken.

I estimated that this photo was taken in 1920.  Rob Landry married Erie Patureau on November 21, 1921.  He was 28 years old at the time and she was 26.  That’s a little older than I would have thought, because they ended up having 8 children together.  That was over a period of 14 years, so Mee Maw was 40 years old when she had her last child.  My mom had her last child when she was 29.  It’s interesting how our idea of ‘normal’ is what we grew up with.  Though that is not always true.

And some of you are probably happy about that.  Because, like I said, I grew up in a family that takes pictures of dead people.  And while I do share photos of people who are no longer with us, they were very much alive when the photos were taken.  Just like this photo of Pee Paw with a big smile on his face.  You can’t do that with a dead person, and I wouldn’t want to see anyone try.