A clean-cut trio

I wish I knew exactly when this picture was taken. Judging from the hairstyles, I'd suspect in the late 40's or early 50's. Tootie will know. It's in a nice cardboard frame with a hinged back on it, so you can fold it up and it stays nice. It was always important to Mom that the family history be represented. I don't know if this was a conscious decision or if she simply felt a need to have photos taken. What is impressive about this photo is that it's obviously a studio shot, and that would have been expensive, and we didn't have a lot of money. My feeling is that Mom would have saved a dollar here, a dime there, in order to save enough to get the picture taken. In those days, family photos weren't put on the wall. They were tucked away in a drawer. Then, on special occasions, when family came to visit from Amarillo, we would haul out all the pictures, the adults would go slowly through each one, commenting at length, and the kids would suffer in fidgety silence.

The family in 1955

I think this picture was taken in the summer of 1955, when we made a trip from Alaska to the lower 48 (It was called "going outside"). I was 15, Tootie 14. A couple of things about Dad (aside from the fact that he's missing the top of his head). He always carried a little notebook in his shirt pocket. I still have one, full of notations, measurements, times and dates. Second, if you look at his belt, you'll note that the buckle is on the side, not on the front. Folklorists tell us that in one of his movies, John Wayne's belt buckle slipped around to the side, and that started a fad. Dad apparantly liked it, because that's the way he wore his belt. I tried to do it that way because he did, but it didn't take. Tootie is wearing a sailor cap. I think we shared it, but when I wore it, I gave it a sailor's crush, so eventually I think she just took it over. I'm wearing a haircut called a "Princeton," flat and short on top, long and swept back on the sides. It required a substantial investment in hair-care products. Mom was one of the first people I remember to wear sunglasses a lot. Most people just squinted. With pictures like this, I always wonder, "Who took it?" There's a whole story behind that question.

The family in Washington?

In the early 1940's, Dad worked construction in the Pacific northwest. The picture is, I believe, from the time when we lived in a part of Vancouver, Washington
called MacLaughlin Heights (I may have gotten the spelling
wrong). Tootie and I have tried to find the house, but I
suspect that it is long gone. It was a small house, very cosy,
though it seemed large enough for me. One memory I have
of this house is that mom would put us to sleep at night (T and I slept in the same bed) by reading poetry to us. I can still hear her reading The Highwayman and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. She put a lot of drama into the poetry. I kept wanting the highwayman to get away, but he always got killed in the end. Judging from the photos, I was somewhere around four, and T was 2 1/2. On the back of the photo mom had written "Lou, Jimmie, Ronnie, and Elizabeth Ann." So, why does T get two names?

Mom in her Parka

When we lived in Alaska, we didn't have a lot of spare change, although mom and dad worked hard to make sure that Tootie and I weren't aware we were poor. One winter, we hunted snowshoe rabbits. We tanned the skins and made mittens; we ate the meat. I thought it was a neat adventure in living off the land. Mom and dad probably thought it was a chore but one way to get by. Mom was handy with a sewing machine, and she made clothing for us, including winter clothing. I got a warm coat and mom made a fur-lined hood for me. She also made a parka for herself, the one in the picture. I think the body of the coat was an old fox fur, and she added the hood and the trim. She insisted that the proper pronunciation was "parky," though I never did hear anyone else call it that. Mom had a good sense of style and liked to look nice. She could look better on a shoestring than most people could with a handfull of cash.

Dad's hats

One thing I remember about my dad is that he always wore hats. Later on, when my hairstyle came to be more and more like his (gone), I realized why he did it.

My earliest memories of dad's hats were of the fabric fedora work hats he always wore. The picture of him under the tree shows one. They were cotton, I think, stiff and rugged. I wish I could find one like it today.

Later, he switched to caps. But, and you can see this from the photos, he always wore them, hats or caps, cocked over one eye. Never straight. I don't think he favored one eye above the other, but always that slight tilt to the cap.

I've tried to wear hats and caps the way he did, but, frankly, it drives me crazy.

Swimming in a glacier lake

When we lived in Alaska, we would swim in the summer at a place called Falk's Lake. It was on the farm of the Falk family, and I guess they let everyone swim there. Mom would usually load up the Hudson with a bunch of kids from Eklutna, the tiny community where we lived, and lug us there. She was the only mom who did this, by the way. The water was always very cold, very cold, but Tootie would dive right in. She was first in, last out. I took a lot longer to get in, but once in, was fine. I remember one time a friend of ours came out of the lake with a headache. The next day, he was paralyzed. In those days, summer was polio season, and everybody worried about it.

Jimmy's tombstone

Here's a story I remember about Dom and Dad's firstborn, James Walk Shook, who died before I was ever born. Mom and Dad were living way somewhere in the outback and she went into labor with Jimmy. They drove 35 miles over bad roads into Seligman, Arizona, with Mom in the back seat of a Ford Model A. When they reached the hospital, the doctor tried birthed the baby with forceps and the baby died after sixteen hours. They buried Jimmy in the Seligman cemetary, but Mom and Dad were so poor they couldn't afford a marker. So, Dad noted that Jimmy's grave was near a stump-shaped marker. What he didn't know was that the keeper of the cemetary tied his mule to that marker, and the mule dragged it all over the cemetary. So, Jimmy's grave was lost. I was reminded of this the other day when I saw a stump-shaped marker in the Hyrum, Utah cemetary (pic).