Well, it's a scanned slide, circa 1956, and very very blue. When I tried to straighten the horizon (I remember how hard it was to see well enough through that little viewfinder) it cropped my baby brother off the edge. I wanted him in, so I left it the way it was.
I think this is my mother and father with my three youngest siblings on the farm near Rexford, New York. This is the fabled home place that was ours only from 1950-1957, when GE transferred my father to Cleveland, Ohio.
I didn't remember that John Updike wrote poems, but I was trolling around looking for a snow poem and found this captures that time very well, especially the piled up parkas. I love the two-stress lines!
January
by John Updike
The days are short
The sun a spark
Hung thin between
The dark and dark.
Fat snowy footsteps
Track the floor
And parkas pile up
Near the door.
The river is
A frozen place
Held still beneath
The trees' black lace
The sky is low.
The wind is gray.
The radiator
Purrs all day.
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