"Oh you bad little children"

"Oh you bad little children,” is the caption written below the 106 year old photograph attached to this story.

I’m continuing to explore several old family photograph albums and scrapbooks. As I wrote last night, this project is one of the delights and benefits of retirement. Instead of writing lesson plans, grading papers, performing the duties and obligations of a university professor, I’m engaged in a project meaningless to anyone but me. It’s grand. I’m engaging with my family’s past because I want to!  …and I’m sharing it here, because I want to.

The attached photograph was made in 1910 on the campus of the long defunct Galloway Female College that was located in Searcy, Arkansas.. It is of four 18-year-old college friends. My grandmother, Mary Virginia Jones (1892-1976), on the left, her best friend, Annie Sue McDonald on the right.  I don’t have the last names of the two young women in the middle, Stella and Clara.

Grandmother attended Galloway with her sister, Elizabeth "Bess" Jones , from 1907 until 1910 . Grandmother was a music major. Aunt Bess was a painting and drawing student.

Galloway no longer exists. It closed in the early 1930s. See: http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=4593)

I spent a great deal of time as a child with my grandmother, and  I remember these women in the photo. I have childhood memories of the four regularly exchanging Christmas cards and letters, even an occasional long-distance and costly telephone call. They kept up with children and later grandchildren.  They tried to get together every two or three years. My grandmother was at a disadvantage during those long ago reunions. We had no automobile, and her attendance at the meetings of the four friends was dependent on the railroad train or a bus. This was a time when railroad trains were still a major mode of transportation in the United States. We lived in Memphis, and the women lived in small towns in Arkansas. The meetings of the four women was an important part of grandmother’s life. As I assume it was for the other three.

I do remember one reunion, probably in the mid 1950s. My Aunt Virginia, grandmother’s daughter, and Uncle Paul had a car, and I believe that Aunt Virginia drove us to Annie Sue McDonald’s house in Arkansas. On the other hand, I also have some memory of riding a Missouri Pacific Railroad train with my grandmother. I don’t rremember if we were going to the reunion that year on the train, but it was either to visit family in Augusta, Arkansas, or to visit Annie Sue McDonald and Stella and Clara.

 As I recall Annie Sue was then living with her son on his farm. I played with Annie Sue’s grandson while the women had lunch and talked…   and talked… and laughed. That lunch took place, probably, about 40 or 45 years after the making of attached photograph.  These four were young college friends in 1910. They maintained the bond formed at Galloway for 50 or more years.

Not too long ago, I located several photographs grandmother had inserted in a college album 66 years before her death in 1976. So many memories, so much life, so many experiences that have now faded into nothingness.  Almost.

I know that as long as I’m alive, these dear souls continue to exist if only as weak shadows of the partial memories of a seven or eight year old boy..

I supose that’s the reason I’m sharing the pictures and as much as I can remember the stories and lives they represent. They are still alive. Aren’t they?

Keep smilin’ and keep love in your hearts...