50 Years and Counting

Fifty years ago a young couple stood in front of a young minister and took the vows of Holy Matrimony.

Saturday, they once again stood in front of the same minister, now retired, and renewed their sacred vows.

HAPPY 50TH ANNIVERSARY

Uncle Herman & Aunt Verla

14 and Counting

Today marks our Fourteenth Wedding Anniversary

Fourteen short years ago today; on a hot Father’s Day afternoon, I married my soul-mate. Along with a wonderful wife I also gained a great son that day.

They say time flies when you’re having fun, so this marriage must be fun, for I don’t know how those fourteen years slipped by so quickly.

Not by Accident

As illustrated here, not all images are captured the way nature composed them.

Amy composed this interesting arrangement and turned it just so to catch the evening light while Chad watched closely.

I found it very interesting to watch these two young photographers at work. We were all in the same place but each had their own style of capturing a memorable image. Like Amy, I seldom have human subjects to work with and found myself capitalizing on the opportunity as did my brother Willard.

Willard very rarely photographs anything other than wildlife but I learned today upon visiting his blog that while each of us was engrossed in our various subjects he was busily capturing us! For another view of our outing visit him here

Leaf Filter Technique

It seems that the Family Photoblog subject of the day is leaf filters. As I didn’t shoot any of these creations I decided to post the technique by which these images were captured.

Amy is pictured here shooting with her handy little Canon S2 IS. This camera has the ability to focus on the front lens element in the super macro mode allowing her to hold the leaf directly against the front of her lens hood and capture only the light passing through the leaf.

To see the Leaf Filter creations simply click on Chad or Ash, if you have not already done so.

The Family Photo Bloggers

Chad’s vacation provided the opportunity to get our family of photobloggers together. Plans were made to meet up and do a few group shots followed by a hike to an old abandoned homestead in the nearby mountain. With Chad (the photog blog) living in Florida and Amy (Ash’s Eye) two hours away this was a rare opportunity that could not be missed. Of course the photo could not be complete without my brother Willard (The Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer).

If you are unfamiliar with any of them please click their blog name for an enjoyable visit.

Family Picnics

In his rush to make the steamer disappear
Logan has forgotten to wipe off the telltale signs of its demise

Remember when we were young? For some of us it has been more years than for others but fond memories always linger on. Great food along with family and friends, jokes, stories, and good conversation are not soon forgotten. Family picnics create memories that last a lifetime.


Logan, pictured here, is just beginning to fill his storehouse of memories while at the same time giving us older folks new ones along with refreshing our memories of our own childhood long past.

Cannas, Memories of Mother

My Mother always grew a large vegetable garden. She grew and preserved huge quantities of food for the family. Mom loved to plant the little seeds and watch her garden grow. She grew green beans, sweet corn, beets, cabbage, broccoli sweet potatoes, squash, strawberries, lima beans, peas, tomatoes, and potatoes. She enjoyed shopping from the seed catalogues and was always trying new varieties. Even though she grew a large veggie garden she always found room to have flowers in it. She tended these with the same loving care that she gave her food bearing vegetable plants. Looking back I am sure that her flowers were food as well, food for her soul.



I learned my love of gardening from her. As a child I spent many hours with her in the garden and in helping her with the canning and freezing. During the summer it seemed she always had baskets of food from her garden sitting in the kitchen awaiting processing.



One of the flowers Mom planted in her garden was Cannas. She admired the large plants with their beautiful foliage.



Cancer took Mom from us nearly seven years ago. Mom was many things to me, my mother, my teacher, my mentor, my friend. She is gone but her memories and her Cannas remain.



Each spring I plant her Canna bulbs across the north end of my garden. As I plant them the memories of her come flooding back. Each time I look at the garden the sight of the Cannas reminds me of a most wonderful loving caring person.

The School Teacher

Morton’s Point School
March 29th 1923
Granddad is the teacher in the rear

My Grandfather’s was a school teacher during the one-room school era.

Granddad would sometimes tell stories of his life as a country teacher. The teacher would be hired by the school board year by year. Ladies were only employed as long as they remained single. The job entailed much more than teaching the students. Cleaning the school, splitting firewood, firing the stove before and after school along with disciplining the students was all a part of this demanding job.


The teacher would be roomed near the school. The school board would provide these accommodations by contracting with a nearby family to provide a room and meals for the duration of the school term. It was common for teachers to only serve one or two years at a particular school before being moved on to another location.


I recall hearing Granddad reciting poems he used while teaching his students. Poems such as, Thirty days has November………., Red sky at night, sailors delight, red sky in morning sailors take warning, were used to teach useful lessons to his hardscrabble country students.

Needmore Normal School
1918
Granddad has a small asterisk above his head

Becoming certified as a teacher was considerable different in those days. Following completion of the eighth grade the prospective teacher attended Normal School for the summer. Following this course they were then qualified to teach. They were also required to attend Normal School each summer during their teaching career. Granddad first attended Normal School at a local one room school and near the end of his teaching he attended State Normal School at what is now Shippensburg University.

Granddad left the teaching profession in the summer of 1927 to take up farming. With a wife and a new son it was time for him to settle down to live in one place with his family. Little did he know that teaching was about to undergo a revolution that would make combining family and teaching much easier.

Tubby Time

What better way for a little fellow to get clean than to splash around in a wash tub on a warm summer day!

Snapshots like these become more precious to us as the years pass. My Big Brother certainly has changed since Mom captured this moment back in 1951

Great Granddad's Barn

Although it has been out of the family for over forty years my Great-Grandfathers barn remains in great condition. Good construction and timely maintenance have kept this structure looking good for well over one hundred years.

With the light dusting of snow and a partly cloudy sky creating a spotlight effect, Saturday morning was the perfect time to photograph the old barn.

David Byron Shatzer

My wife and I have been working on collecting old family photographs for over two years now. We have contacted many extended family members and have been very pleased with their willingness to share. We have scanned hundreds of old photos and attempted to identify as many of the individuals as possible. As a reward for their help we always give a CD of our collection. Finding photographs of people with no way of identifying them is very common. Genealogical data bases are very helpful with names, dates and relationships but they cannot positively identify old photographs

At times a photograph will lead one on an interesting mystery; such is the story of this photo. We located it in a small leather bound album from the collection of one of my wife’s aunts. The album contained twenty five photographs mostly taken by studios in Chambersburg, Shippensburg, and Greencastle Pennsylvania. No one had taken the time to record any information on the page provided.

This one photograph though was identified by the following writing on the back side. David Byron Shatzer, photographed Chattanooga Tennessee, Army of the Cumberland.

A search of Civil War Military records revealed that he enlisted as a private August 27th 1861 at Chambersburg Pa. and was discharged August 13th 1865 at Philadelphia. He was twenty six years old 5’ 8 ½“in height at enlistment. His residence is listed as Franklin County Pa. It is also noted that he reenlisted at Portsmouth Va. November 18th 1863.

One day while my wife and I were searching for her ancestors in the Cashtown Cemetery, near Chambersburg Pa., I happened upon his grave. From this chance encounter we learned that he was born July 26th 1830 and passed away March 26th 1910.

We have not been able to establish any family ties to David and have no idea of how his photograph came to be among our family keepsakes. If anyone who views this happens to have any additional information I can be contacted at chesyrock@hotmail.com

Auto Art

Shortly after the purchase of our latest “new” used car, my wife took it out for a photo shoot spin. The above photo is the finished product. She was so pleased with the outcome that this collage quickly found its way into one of her many scrapbooks

Our Christmas Morning

The Mrs. and I spent a quiet Christmas morning together opening our presents. Chad made the morning complete with his phone call. Our quiet time will soon end for many family members will be arriving shortly for an evening of festivities

For all who may be wondering following my last post;

I DIDN’T SNOOP!

A Tribute to Aunt Mae

My Aunt Dorothy Mae passed away this past Tuesday. I will always remember what a quiet sweet lady she was. Mae was my mother’s big sister and they remained close through out their lives. When I was a child, Mae and her husband Paul would come to our farm for Sunday afternoon visits. While the adults sat around and talked I would frolic around with my cousins showing “the town kids” all the wonders of the farm. They were enjoyable days which would always end too soon.

My last memory of Aunt Mae is of a day my wife and I visited her and Uncle Jr. We were working on collecting our “Family Genealogy in Pictures”. They had an old portrait of their father and his brother taken in the early 1900’s which I photographed to add to our collection. Mae and Jr. spent the afternoon telling us stories about their childhood. It was a most enjoyable afternoon spent with two lovely people.

This photograph of Mae and Paul was taken somewhere in the mid 1940’s when my mothers family was enjoying a picnic. The photographs from this day make up the majority of the pictures in our collection of their side of the family from the earlier years.

Our Neighbors Home

Our next door neighbor’s home was built around 1908. The architecture you see here is typical of the more upscale farm houses in our area at that time. The original design was meant to house two families. This was the home of the folks featured in my August 16th post “Family Photos. I took this photo in 1976.

The farm has been in the same family for well over one hundred years now. Gerald and Virginia are the current owners and are the third generation to have lived in it. The house has been remodeled and still retains all of the charm and beauty of the country farm house.

I enjoy living beside such a picturesque home, but the best part is not the house,
but rather what good neighbors Gerald and Virginia are.

Thanksgiving Tradition

When I was growing up our family’s way of spending Thanksgiving was different than most of America’s although not uncommon here in rural Pennsylvania at that time.

Thanksgiving was hog butchering day. I remember our family butchering on Thanksgiving from when I was a small child, too young to help. We continued the tradition until my Grandparents passed away in the mid ‘80’s. Granddad and Grandma would purchase pigs at the livestock auction in the spring. Raising the pigs was Grandma’s project. She would feed them a wet feed mixture twice daily along with corn on the cob. The weeds we pulled from the garden would also be carried to them. They would grow quickly and by Thanksgiving would normally weigh 225-275lbs.

When we were ready to begin Grandma would go in the house and turn up the radio so as not to hear the shots or the squeals if the shooting should go awry. Grandma’s attachment to her hogs ended once this part of the task was completed. Being the sturdy farmwife, she viewed the processing of her pets into the winters meat as just another part of life on the farm.

We actually did the butchering as a two day operation, Thursday we killed, scalded, scraped, hung, and gutted. Friday was reserved for cutting meat, grinding sausage, cooking lard, and applying the first of the sugar cure to the hams, shoulders, and bacons. Mom would refrigerate the sausage keeping it fresh until deer season the following week. She would always count on her successful hunters to provide venison burger to mix with the sausage and increase the lean content.

The old butcher kettle heating up for the hog scalding
Note the scalding barrel in the far right of the photo

Pork, soon to be made table ready

With Thanksgiving being a very busy work day our family always postponed the traditional feast until Sunday. My brother’s wife continues this tradition, although we now call it the pre-Buck-season dinner. As for the butchering, I alone continue this tradition by purchasing a slaughter hog from market each winter. This year, as in past years since my mothers passing, my father will spend the day with my wife and I, and yes, we will have the “traditional” Butterball!

These photos were taken the Thanksgiving of 1971.

This was the only time I can remember that we had a deep snow to butcher in.

Early 1900’s Style

Great Aunt Grace was posing in Style in her father’s motor car

Grace, born November 25th 1906 was my Grandfathers youngest sister. Grace married Rinehart, a young farmer and lived out her years as a farm wife. This coming Saturday will mark Grace’s 100th birthday. Colon cancer claimed her life in 1964

Meet Buzz Lightyear

Last Halloween Buzz scared up some treats.
Tonight he is scaring up more in a whole new costume.

The Wildlife Photographer

As young men in the mid 70’s my brother and I shared many similar interest. We had become interested in taking pictures at a very young age and now that we were working we had the some financial resources to pursue a more sophisticated level of equipment. Our first good cameras were the then popular Minolta SRT 100 series. This photograph is one I took of my brother on an early April day. We had hiked over the mountain from home to visit the Meadow Grounds Falls. The photo I posted October 6th was taken that day. While I strayed away from photography for many years, my brother has remained a dedicated wildlife photographer to this day. Throughout the years he has used a wide variety of equipment, always striving to improve his craft. In the early 90’s he began experimenting with video and now although continuing to shoot many stills, video is his primary focus. My brother’s basement is an amazing assortment of computers and monitors, all dedicated to his photographic obsession.

Today when I returned to my truck from a day spent hunting in the mountain I encountered my brother set up for his evening wildlife shoot. With his impressive array of equipment around him I thought it the perfect opportunity to photograph him for this blog post. I have encouraged him to begin blogging, but he feels that with all of his photo processing and video editing he does not have the time to take up yet another hobby. His photography remains a hobby, although he has had one photograph published in the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s annual calendar. My brother captures wildlife, from the smallest bird to the largest bull elk all become targets in front of his Canons.

Champion!

Congratulations to the New

National Nerd Word Champion!

Pictured above at the age of three

It could have been termed the World Championship since it was conducted in a forum open and accessible to the entire world, but maybe Luce has that planned for a later date.

Your new champion is a very deserving young man. I have never considered him a nerd, but he certainly does have a humongous vocabulary of nerdy words! Like many of us he reserves them for those “special occasions” where they most certainly will get a laugh. He is the number one fan in the Napoleon Dynamite fan club.

He came into my home at the age of fifteen. This is an age at where many young folks are difficult to deal with in a stable home let alone moving into an entirely new family situation. Chad was not! He quickly became the son I never had. I can’t say we shared all common interest because we didn’t but we never let that stand in the way of becoming a family. Chad did take some to my fishing but hunting was never his forte. About as close as he came to hunting was eating Bambi. Which I might add was done with gusto!

Maybe he will take up hunting some day, hunting ligers or wolverines!