I got the attached tattered photo from family archives the other day and would not have thought much about it until the finer details of the occasion were brought forth.
Some background information would be good at this juncture- My grandpa , Joe (3rd right) was born approximately in 1907 and died in 1953 at the age of 45. He had seven wives and tens of children. Majority of his kids (my uncles and aunts) were born on the mid to late 1940's and a few in the first three years of 1950's decade.
By way of a career, he was a court clerk and may have quicky learnt his bosses' ways because he owned a bicycle, a few buses (with his three friends) and a stone house complete with a "bathtub". The bathbub was my first source of fascination with grandpa Joe- it was actually a three-feet partitioning of his bathroom which two of my grandmas had to fill with warm water for his bath every morning. Another wife would push his bike to the road ( a few kilometres away), while yet another would be carrying his work shoes, coat and a three-legged stool. My grandfather and his butler (for lack of a word to describe his foreman) would follow behind and on reaching the road, proceed to dress by the roadside and depart for work on his bike. The same party would form a reception committee to met him whenever he came back from his posting.
He was such a colourful character, but he was not destined to live to his old age. He was survived by at least five of his wives, who helped us paint a mental potrait of Grandpa Joe over the years. Only one grandma survives today.
Back to the picture (guesstimated to have been taken around 1935), the occasion was the birthday for his firstborn daughter and child (centre, front row) accompanied by his first and then only wife Grandma Isabel (3rd left and holding a baby) and a bunch of his friends, agemates and villagemates. Who would have thought that our ancestors would have thought much of a birthday!
Taking such a photo was definitely a herculian task. To start with, the studio was probably in a local town some 50 kilometres away. There was no tarmac and for their dressing to remain so clean and in place, some effort must have been put into it. Notice the polka dotted ties and kerchiefs. Mind you this was over 70 years ago.
I hope to find more of these photos next time I go to the village and gather more anecdotes on the lives they led. Would you believe that I have in my possesion Grandpa Joe's Driving Licence from 1953!
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
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