No, not quite all one family.  That's our neighbor from down the road in the front seat, Mrs. McGrath, and three of her boys.  My mother's in the back, smiling and keeping me from climbing out.  That's my older brother of suspicious watchful eye sitting next to her, and lost in shadow, my little sister in her lap.  My other sister and brother flank the biggest McGrath boy in red in front of the living room window.  Note the black-out shade and the organdy tie-backs.  It was a simpler time back then, with simpler tastes.   

We're parked in the half-circle of driveway that swung up from the road to the front door, and no, there's no horse waiting to be hitched to this load but, cropped from the shot, our faithful green and yellow John Deere tractor instead.  My dad, who is also the photographer, loved all things mechanical.  He tolerated dogs, was not at all fond of cats, enjoyed deer and other wildlife insofar as they offered an excuse to go hunting, and would take a tractor over a horse almost any day. 

Of course, my dad had not originally planned on being a father of five with a wife on a farm in the middle of nowhere, but the War, a couple divorces (his and hers) and events unfolded in the way they have a way of doing, or did.  Maybe that's why he's invited the neighbors along for the ride, for the sake of the picture, throw a few more kids on the pile, symbolic of what, the Baby Boom, Post-War prosperity perhaps.  Later, transmitting from his ham radio set-up in the barn, enjoying an Iron City Beer (not allowed in the house) the youngsters all tucked away safe in their beds, he'll reflect on what he's committed to, how he's played his hand, how his life's panned out, how, if it hadn't been for this or that he might still be back in Pittsburgh, at one of the mills with less mouths to feed but a whole other set of responsibilities, and so he'll croon into the airwaves of the quiet rural night from "Fertile Valley."  Recently I've begun to think I've inherited the old man's penchant for irony.  

Why am I telling you all of this now?  The barn is still there but that house burned down long ago and those sitters have widely dispersed.   Dad's been gone for almost forty years.  My mother, had she lived, would have turned 93 this month.  And I have been so busy lately enjoying the ride I haven't had time to post.  So here you are: an image of travel and of expectation of things to come, because after all, what is a picture of a bunch of kids and their mothers but a vision of hope and a brave investment in the future, wouldn't you agree?  Where we were going I don't remember now.  But we survived that part of the journey.  Not knowing how it would all turn out was surely part of the fun.

I was reminded recently by my dear old friend at Rabbit Meets Hat that Mathilde Bonaparte, Princesse Francaise and daughter of Napoleon's brother Jerome, died in 1904 in Paris at the age of 83.  She once said to Marcel Proust, referring to her uncle Napoleon, that if it hadn't been for him, she'd be back in Corsica, selling oranges on the street.  Instead she wound up being a princess.

See?  Isn't that the way it is?  You can never be sure where you're going.  Or where your journey will end.