This photograph of my brother (sucking his thumb)
and me was taken in 1960 in my grandparents home in Wichita, Kansas. I
remember being very proud of our "muscle man" sleeveless t-shirts. My
brother always required a deflated balloon when he was feeling sleepy. He'd
rub the end of it against his upper lip and bottom of his nose. Often
my brother misplaced his "loony" and became impatient. My dad would
hurriedly blow up another balloon (color was insignificant), then stick
a pin in one end so it was freshly deflated. Then my brother could
chill-out. I'm certain that parents today would consider having a
child fall asleep with a slippery wad of latex near their mouths pretty
much out of the question.
In this photograph (1961) I'm sitting on my grandpa's
lap. My Grandpa Hammer worked as an editor and librarian for the Wichita
Eagle newspaper. He also was an avid collector of coins, a numismatic,
and often gave his grandchildren silver dollars for birthdays. Grandma
Hammer made sheet after sheet of Christmas cookies of dizzying shapes, colors
and sprinkles. All of the cousins would sit at our own little card table
at family holiday dinners. Grandma Hammer was a geneologist who
painstakingly typed family lineages on a big black typewriter in her office
in the days before word processors and the "information age".
This photograph (1958) includes my Grandpa Bixler (upper
left), his dad (my great grandpa), my mom and dad, and my beloved Grandma
(Ruth) Bixler. My dad is petting Bobby-dog, a maternalistic boxer who
guarded me ferociously and followed me everywhere until I was in second grade
when some mean person poisoned her. Great Grandpa Bixler had lost his right
eye long before I was born while cutting and making chainlink fencing. Grandpa
Bixler, Grandma Bixler, and Great Grandpa Bixler are buried in a lovely rural
cemetery in Turon, Kansas, a small farming community to the west of
Wichita. My mother's remains are enshrined on top of a grassy hill,
shaded by an edge of post oaks on my little brother's farm in Jones, Oklahoma.