Landry Family in 1964

I felt like posting a photo from my own childhood, so that’s what I’m doing.  It takes a lot of thought to try to figure out who’s who, what’s what, and when’s when in those old photos.  Not that I can remember everything about photos taken in my own childhood, but at least I have a better idea of what’s happening!

I was drawn to this photo for a couple of reasons.  It’s a good photo of everyone, it has the family dog and the family car in it, and it’s obviously taken after we went to Sunday church.  I had also previously edited the photo and enhanced it.  That saves a lot of time for the evening of putting a post together.

I don’t have to guess about who is in this photo.  It’s my siblings and me with our dad.  Behind most of us is my younger sister Jamie in the arms of my dad.  His name was Robert Joseph Landry, Jr.  He was called Bobbie, Bob, Pluto, Daddy, and Pappy, depending on who you were.  In the front is Rob (RJL, III), Al, Van (me), Jodie, and Karen. 

The dog in the photo was Princess.  She was a good dog.  She had at least one litter of puppies, because I can remember climbing under the house around this age to get the puppies out so we could play with them.  Princess had them under the steps of our old house in Jennings just north of the Interstate 10 on Highway 26.  We had Princess with us when we moved into town later this year.  She ended up getting hit by a car and killed on Roberts Avenue just a few blocks from our home.  I remember Jodie coming in the house crying and frantic because Princess had gotten hit.

The Volkswagen van in the photo also brings back memories.  It must have been our family car when I was born or shortly thereafter.  I remember it being under the carport at our house in Lake Charles when I was just 1 or 2.  The funny thing about it is that in my memory, there are no back seats.  It was just open space.  Maybe my dad took the seats out so he could haul something around and that left an impression on me.  Even after we got rid of the vehicle, we had the seats at our house on Lucy Street.

I can’t believe it!  That’s not a Volkswagen van!  I think I started to realize that because I was questioning the spelling of the name.  I looked at another photo of this van and it definitely had ‘wagon’ on it.  Obviously, I have never been someone who knows what kind of car they’re looking at.  My adjectives for vehicles are mainly a color and whether it is a car, truck, or van.  So I asked Chuck and he said it was a Ford.  So I did a search for Ford vans in the 1960s and I found the Ford Falcon Club Wagon in the same color blue as ours was.

But then I did a search in our older photos and found the 1961 photo of the family and the vehicle in that photo definitely was a Volkswagen.  So there were two vans that we had back then.  I can be forgiven for making that simple mistake.  And here I was saying how at least I know what’s going on in photos of myself as a child.  I had considered using this photo in the post, but decided against it since Jamie wasn’t around yet. 

So I saw photos of two different vehicles and didn’t notice the difference.  In my defense, there are no color cues to give it away.  That’s my main way of distinguishing vehicles.  So if this vehicle was also blue, then I would have made the same mistake anyway!  I’m thinking that they were both blue.  It’s like Karen was choosing the color of our vehicles back then!  This photo has my mom in it and it was taken at our house on Clover Drive in Lake Charles.

So there you have it – a trip down memory lane.  And we were not just traveling in one vehicle, but two.  We may not have realized it was two at first, but at least we caught on after a while!