Weston family Thanksgiving?  Easter?  1980?  ’81? ~
 
At my paternal grandparents’ farmhouse.  Pat and Crystal Tippetts Weston's.  This is similar to every holiday meal I’ve had there.  My mother ran the kitchen, though it was Crystal’s.  That caused tension.  I can’t remember a photo with both of them together, let alone side by side.  Mom had a B.A. in home economics at Iowa State.  She knew what she was doing in the kitchen.  Grandma was hit or miss.  In the division of chores Mom usually roasted the animal and always made the gravy.  My family said that mom could make gravy from a shop rag.
 
You can see the expectation and festivity in the air.  Wine was available but I can’t remember anyone getting buzzed.  The family were good story tellers and each had some sort of creative passion.  Granddad’s was cattle.  He was as proud as any Maasai of his cows.  Grandma was a reader.  She had a subscription to every housewife magazine, the Reader’s Digest, Fate Magazine and ran a county satellite library out of the porch for the neighbors.  One summer granddad took me aside to show me some wild grapes he’d found, but told me not to tell grandma because she’d want to make jelly.  A few days later grandma took me to those same grapes and told me not to tell granddad because he’d want to waste them on wine.
 
The sole sour note - other than granddad's wine - to our family’s celebrations was the grandparents’ constant bickering.  Once my mother tried to get granddad’s attention.  Grandma said, “Don’t bother.  He can’t hear you.  He’s got his hearing aids out.”  Granddad said, “I can hear you.  I’m ignoring you.”
 
Maybe you can see the easy affability among us.  Cousins enjoyed cousins, or learned to live with them until they enjoyed them - right Kenny?  The aunts and uncles frequently shared the same interests as the cousins.  In summer we divided into fair teams and tossed horseshoes.  The smallest of the kids played on the swingset.  The eldest competed for who could jump down the farthest in the haymow.  It was a rite of passage to be able to play cribbage with the adults.   The story of the five and six year old cousins climbing the grain elevator to the top of the corn crib is a classic.
 
There are a few photos here of last-minute food preparation, people awaiting food, and people getting food.  I learned early that there are no good photographs of people eating.  These photos remind me of how common the family feasts were and how far I am from them now.  Fewer than half of the people depicted are alive today.  Close and far.

There are also photos of Kay Amert, the woman who ran the type lab for the University of Iowa School of Journalism back in the 1970s and '80s.  She ran a tight, clean ship and seemed to survive on cigarettes and coffee.

You can see the photographs referenced in this essay in the Photo by Number gallery 00024.