Christmas Card

The Bowes family Christmas card, 1959. Clockwise from top left: Barbara (15), Becky (18), Richard, Patricia (19), Christine (6), Edna, and Bobby (3). This is the only time I can remember having a family photo Christmas card. It must have been a very extravagant thing to do at the time. The reason we were able to afford it was because an African American photographer had moved to our small Illinois town, and was having a tough go of it. A neighbor recommended him, from his church charity work. The price was right because, well, he was the wrong color. His family was living in a rental, a shack really, not near our house, for heaven's sake, but down the road, back in the trees. His son and I, both about 6, got a ride home from school from the neighbor occasionally. I actually told the boy once, "My mom says your dad's a good photographer, for a colored man." I thought I was paying him a compliment, couldn't understand why he looked so mad and was so anxious to get out of the car and away from me. I don't even know if that was something my mother had said, or something I just made up because I thought it would be a nice thing to say.
So, here we have the Bowes family in their cut-rate Christmas photo. Of course, Pat isn't really a blood relative. She was a neighbor of one of my father's brothers in Pennsylvania. One day while Pat was visiting our cousins, my sisters were also there, excitedly telling their cousins about moving to Chicago. Pat said she thought that was just about the best thing that could happen to a girl and my mother said, "Come with us then," or something to that effect. Pat's parents said, "One less mouth to feed," or something to that effect. She really wasn't their daughter, anyway; she was a foundling, just like you hear about, a baby left in a basket on the doorstep. They were a poor coal miner's family, but they took her in and raised her as their own- until she came with us to Illinois. She left Pennsylvania and never looked back. My mother also said, "Come with us then," to her mother-in-law and one of my dad's nephews, and they came, too. The farm was sold and we all moved to a little brick box of a house on a dusty highway in flat, wanna-be-suburban, ex-cornfield, Marcum, Illinois. Nine people moved into that three bedroom, one bathroom, less than a thousand square foot house. It was a new, modern development house, nothing like what you'd see in the farm towns of Pennsylvania. There were 5 model homes on the highway, and we were lucky enough to get one of them before the developer went broke and skipped town. My dad's nephew soon returned to Pennsylvania and went into the service, but everyone else stayed; we had arrived. Yessir, look at those Bowes people, they moved to Chicago and got their picture on a Christmas card. Well, aren't they somethin'.