Saturday's Old Photo

In this week's old photo we have my grandma--my mother's mother--with her sister-in-law, showing the catch from their latest fishing trip. I can't tell what fish those are; some may be salmon, since there were Pacific salmon in the rivers around where she lived in southern Idaho.

My grandma's name is Rosa Mackie Deckard, and her sister-in-law is Beatrice Mackie, who was married to my grandma's brother Hollace. The home would be Beatrice and Hollace's. My grandma's home was not nearly so nice.

My grandma had a difficult life. She moved, when she was only nineteen, from Missouri to Idaho with her new husband in order to make a better life for them there. I wouldn't say she got the better life. She had very little, managing to raise eight children on almost no income while living with an alcoholic husband who was not a good provider and a very nasty when he was drunk. And when she left her family behind, she really left them behind. Trips back to Missouri were not in her budget, and she only made a couple of them over her whole life. Of course, she had her brother Hollace and his family, who lived in the same small town in Idaho.

She was a strong woman and a hard worker, and a lonely woman, I think, after her children left and her husband died. My family lived in a little town 5 miles south of her for a couple of years, and I remember several times when Grandma Deckard came over for an afternoon visit and then just stayed for several days. Then she'd wake up one morning and announce over breakfast that she thought she really ought to go home.

It looks like she had a good time on her fishing trip, and I'm glad for that. I love the overalls, and the bandanas tied round the heads of both women.