What better than an old family photograph to build Christmastime remembrance and nostalgia? And, too, what better tiny piece of history for thinking back more deeply than the smiling faces reveal?
The photograph herewith is courtesy of a cousin not yet born when it was taken, nearly 70 years ago, in Radford, Virginia. Thank you, Wythe.
The people are peacefully assembled, we assume on Christmas morning. The three younger women are sisters, with their mother in the back corner. The sister holding the baby — my youngest brother — is my late mother and that of the smiling girl and the little boy to her left. The boy in the white collarless shirt is the son of the middle sister at back left, who not so many weeks ago celebrated her 100th birthday. She lost her husband (to her left) some years back. The serious youngest sister — only six years older than I — is in the middle.
My late father — behind me on the floor — and my grandfather (near the tree) were without doubt the strongest male influences in my life, my father for his stern, demanding nature and my grandfather for his southern, grandfatherly let’s learn how to hit a ball, catch a fish and make a joke approach with me.
Therein lie tales only faintly suggested by the photo. My father’s frugality and determination to avoid paying anyone for anything he could do himself — including the keeping-running of a 1948 Studebaker Champion convertible — were repeatedly reinforced legend within the family.
It’s impossible to know if the year of this photo was one of the several wherein our interminable, pre-Interstate drive from Baltimore was interrupted by an overheated engine or a speed trap just outside one Virginia burg or another.
And thus hard to tell if the smiles on the Rheinheimer children’s faces are glee over the morning or relief that we had indeed made it to where Santa would be delivering our Christmas.
The grandfather of course had the advantage of our being visitors, and could thus plan his time with us — with tools in the basement, finding worms in the yard, on the lake in a boat — for more enjoyment than could my father, who in those years worked full time, took classes at Johns Hopkins and kept 40 hives of bees, in addition to working on his cars and spending a great deal of time listening to very loud Bach and Beethoven while we were to remain silent.
The ore of the old photo: quick, easy memories on the surface and deeper ones in those faces looking out from so impossibly many years ago.
The story above first appeared in our November / December 2025 issue.
