Funny how an old photo can stir such precise recollections and it’s a struggle to remember something much more current – like yesterday.
A cousin of mine who lives in Onalaska, on the edge of Lake Livingston, messaged me with a photo of me, my brother and our cousins on a boat on a lake.
That lake was later swallowed by Lake Livingston in the 1960s.
Anyway, my cousin asked if I knew everyone in the photo.
There are some things that are hardwired in us and while I never had seen the photo before, I knew everyone.
Three people in that photo are dead – my brother was one of them, as he died in 1985.
But I knew all of the names and messaged my cousin with IDs and proof that some of my brain still works.
I’m positioned in front of my brother in the boat.
His haircut was a fish haircut from A&M that was slightly growing out in the summer of 1957, between his fish and sophomore year.
Me, I’m between first and second grade.
We lived so far from the Livingston area then, the summer was the only time we could visit, with my brother and I in tow.
I cherished that photo from the moment I laid eyes on it.
There was Butch and I together.
We were close then.
Anything Butch did, I followed – through high school and A&M.
In a few short years, he would be in the Army, then he married and he later worked at the newspaper my dad bought in New Mexico.
That photo stirred long, lost memories of a brother I adored and there was a 19-year-old who looked impossibly like me.
Over the years, I didn’t see us looking the same.
We did in that photo.
I have no idea who took the photo and the cousin who sent it to me was too young to be on the boat when the picture was taken.
The body of water the boat was on was near an old farmhouse that my uncle inherited when he bought the property decades before that photo was taken.
A bare bones house, the entire family would stay there for reunions – to the kids’ delights, but not for the adults I’m sure.
Another tidbit was the jacket I’m wearing – I mean like a child’s sport jacket.
My mother was protective, and that jacket was a reminder.
