Yes, I admit it. I am half yankee. Honestly, since I grew up north of the lake, some folks might consider me all yankee. My dad is one of those people who came to Louisiana and never left. He’s been in Louisiana longer than he lived in New York, so we let him say he’s a southerner now. He’s always been one naturally, but now he has the credentials too. If you like synchronicity, you’ll be pleased to know that my grandfather grew up on Louisiana Avenue in Brooklyn.

I spent a recent weekend with my grandmother in New York. She has been an avid photographer her entire life. Purely amateur with a point and shoot (on film for far longer than most of us and on a digital camera for years), she has amassed literally thousands of photos from her nine decades and several decades before she was born.

She recently moved to a condo from her home of 69 years. It was a call-in-the-troops situation after a full year of trying to carefully sort and pack a home with the stuff of four generations. In the moving fray, the photos were dispersed and misplaced.

“I can’t find my pictures,” she kept repeating to my dad and me. “I think they threw them away.”

We were part of that “they” and I knew for sure they did no such thing! We spent the weekend looking in all of the still unopened boxes and finding most of the photos. We spent 10+ hours on Saturday looking at photos from 1900-2020. She gave us any we wanted, seemingly fearing they will all be thrown out after she’s gone (NO because I will take them). I saw many photos of her I’d never seen and heard stories I’d never heard.

Aunt Janet

She told us about skipping school (John Adams High School in Queens) and playing in Central Park with her friends. One day they met two young guys who followed them around. She seemed ok with that, but another creepy man also started following them. They recruited the first guys, who wound up in the photos cementing her memories, to scare off the creepy guy. The guys had slicked back hair and cigarettes rolled up in their t-shirt sleeves.

Many of her friends she maintained throughout her life. One in particular, my dad’s godmother who we all knew as Aunt Janet, was in those photos from playing hooky in Central Park and many many others throughout the years. Nana and Aunt Janet married friends and bought homes blocks from each other made by the same builder, so they were identical. They each had four children, three girls and one boy. They remained friends even after Aunt Janet moved to Georgia in retirement, and she always showed up, even at her grand-goddaughter’s wedding.

Aunt Janet died a few years ago of pancreatic cancer shortly after we celebrated her 90th birthday. We love to tell stories of Aunt Janet, who was a sculptor and had an art studio before her retirement. Nana misses her lifelong friend dearly. They were more like sisters and Nana always calls her the sister she never had. They had plans for when they were 95.

Carl

Nana has always had a pen pal. Her name was Doreen, and we have a ton of photos of the many trips Doreen made from England to New York and vice versa. Even some photos of the trip Doreen made to Louisiana to celebrate Mardi Gras. Doreen is also the reason I have a pen pal in England.

But before Doreen, Nana had a pen pal named Carl who she wrote to while he was in Okinawa during World War II. He sent her many photos of himself with his letters, and she has saved them for almost 80 years. I wonder what photos she sent him…

Fancy Ladies

My grandmother’s side of the family is the closest “old New York” ancestors that I have, particularly my grandmother’s mother’s side of the family. But she did not have an easy life. She was born in 1896 in Taberg, New York. Her parents divorced when she was very young, and she was shuffled between relatives. Nana told me that she sometimes lived with her grandparents, sometimes with an aunt. She knew Leo, my great-grandfather, as a child, but they didn’t marry until later and were 36 when Nana was born. “My parents were always the oldest of all my friends,” Nana told me.

My great-grandmother was prim and proper, traits perhaps passed down from her old New York family. She was a talented seamstress. She could copy designs she saw window shopping in Manhattan. My grandmother was always exceptionally well-dressed with tailored clothing as a result. She pointed to every photo of her as a young woman and explained how her mother made the clothing — coats of wool and dresses of silk. Her mother required her to call her Mother, also, not mommy or mom. She still has a beautiful dress her mother made hanging in her closet in her new condo.

Leo/a

I get my name from her father; he was Leo. I was the first great-grandchild. Nana was an only child, as was her mother who died when she was only 68 years old (when Nana was 32 and my dad was nine). Her father lived to 96, and he knew seven of his great-grandchildren. He was a sailor in the Navy in World War I, among the first car mechanics, and a patent-holding inventor. Once on a visit to Louisiana, he asked how far Baton Rouge was. He casually explained that he had passed through once on the way to Texas as part of a civilian militia that chased Pancho Villa.

My name is from her father, but my looks are all Nana. I’ve been told my entire life that I look just like my grandmother. It is never more apparent than looking at photos of Nana when she was younger. So it’s weird to hear her tell me stories about her high school graduation photo, and how much she hates it.

“My mother told me my smile was too wide, so I didn’t smile,” she shared. “I always hated that photo.”

I, too, hate photos of myself where I’m not smiling. I also have a wide smile. In fact, the same wide smile. But I’ve only ever been told my smile is beautiful.

I’m planning another weekend with Nana to look through more photos as soon as possible. My half Yankee side needs nourishing too.