The Photos Not Taken - Wishful Wednesday

Supine, horizontal, procumbant, flat on my back, with foot elevated.  That's me, most of the time, for the next several weeks after foot surgery last Thursday.  No laptop, no i-pad, no i-phone... just books, magazines, TV, and my imagination!  It's led to wishful thinking on my part, and not only that I could walk....  So for the next several weeks I'll be composing Wishful Wednesday posts.  Join me in posting your own if you'd like.

This week I've been thinking about photographs I wish someone had taken, both from my own life and from the lives of ancestors.  Yes, I know, wishing never accomplished anything, but it does pass the time and there's the slightest possibility that some other family member may have the very photographs on my wish list.

These are the photographs I wish existed.

• The trike I used as a young child.  It was a positively dandy trike.  Not your little 12- or 18-inch miniature thing, but a real trike.  I think the handlebars were probably 30 inches high.  It had a wide rear wheel-base, which meant few spills.  And unlike the image at right, it had a platform between the back wheels where another child could stand, hold onto my back, and we could wheel around together.  As far as I know, no photo exists.  


• While I'm talking about wheeled vehicles, I wish someone had taken a photo of me on the big bicycle I learned to ride
before I was tall enough to sit on the seat. It had been my aunt's, was handed down to my brother, then to my sister, then to me.  It was one of those old-fashioned affairs with wide handlebars, wide wheels, and a wide seat.  It was as heavy as all get-out.  Yet somehow, as a 6 or 7 year-old, I learned to ride it while standing on the wheels to balance and pedal.  (Above, my 6'4" tall brother-in-law is about to give his son a ride on it.)

• Couples on their wedding days.  While the newspaper description of my mom in her wedding dress (a gown of blue velvet with a cameo brooch... an arm bouquet of pink roses) is helpful, it's not the same as having a photograph of my parents, Lee and Audrey (Meinzen) Doyle together on their wedding day.  Ditto a wedding photo of my paternal grandparents, Gust and Beulah (Gerner) Doyle, except in their case I have no description.  If a wedding photo ever existed it's a likely possibility that Gust's second wife would have destroyed it.  I have no wedding photo of Robert and Emma (Bickerstaff) Meinzen, or of most of my other ancestors.  Does some other descendant have photos to share? I'm wishing!

• My great-grandmothers' kitchen. I would love to see how their kitchens were arranged, the appliances they used, how they organized their storage, dishes, utensils. I think it would be fun to have a photo of Elizabeth (Armitage) Meinzen, Mary (Thompson) Bickerstaff, Tressa (Froman) Doyle, and Elvira (Bartley) Gerner in their kitchens. Likewise, I would be thrilled to find photos of their husbands, Henry Meinzen, Jesse Bickerstaff, William Doyle, and Fred Gerner, at work.

• One of our catches after a very successful fishing trip to to Mosquito Lake.  Several times we caught so many fish it look longer to clean and fillet them than to drive to the lake, catch the fish, and drive home. Without the photo it's just an unbelievable fish story. 

Do you have a Wishful Wednesday list?
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