Once upon a time, long, long ago, the four of us gathered for a Christmas self-portrait.

That’s me on the left, with the chubby face, holding some book. My brother was in his hippie phase. I think this photo was taken some time around 1970, possibly a little earlier. I was clean shaven, a condition that has been pretty rare in the last 50 years. I would have been around 20. Henry would have been around 23. My father would have been around 53, and my mother around 47.

I found another Christmas photo from a little earlier.

This is Henry. Since I am not in the photo, I assume I had either not made my debut, or was too young to participate in the present opening. Since I was born in 1950, that makes this photo around 70 years old.

I was curious about the Radio Flyer, so I looked it up. You can still buy that very model today for $124.99.

That would have been $10 or $11 in 1950. Based on my mother’s budget from those days, that would have been a substantial expense for them. And that was not the only present under the tree.

It’s too late to thank them now.

I am still looking through old photographs from my father’s side of the family. I found several with images of my great-great-grandmother through the years. Here she is early on with five of her sons.

They are identified as Mary Frances Kelly Paris, Lonnie, Oscar, Grady, Smiley, Abb, and the father, Edward Malen Paris. Grady was my father’s father. I am not sure which he was in this photo; possibly the one in the center with the wide, white collar.

I don’t see any resemblance to my father or to the photos of his father at a later age, but I think I can see a resemblance between one of the brothers in the back and some of my cousins.

Here’s a little closer look at Mary Frances.

She looked so young and petite, and not especially worn out after giving birth to five children. Here she is a few years later with six.

Still kicking it, and wearing her hair a little longer. She’s not looking at the camera here. I wonder why. Is that a hint of a smile?

Here she is sometime in the 1950’s, I think, with some of her grown children. These would be my father’s uncles. My father’s father had died years before this photo was taken.

Mary Frances is showing her age, which is to be expected. After all, this must have been at least 40 years after the earlier shots. The photo is labeled Abb, Smiley, Mrs. E.M. Paris, Curry, Oscar, and Lonnie. Abb never married. My father helped take care of him in his later years. According to my father, he was a riverboat gambler. I don’t know whether there was such a thing in those days, but that’s what he said.

That’s still Great-great-grandmother.

The dark areas on the front of her dress are artifacts of the print.

Here is an interesting photo that’s labeled “Barbecue 1905”. She’s in there, near the middle.

Barbecues were somewhat more formal in those days.

Here is a closer look.

I wonder what she was looking at.

The thing I find somewhat surprising is that she seems to be with Pancho Villa. I think it might have been possible, since, as far as I can tell, Villa was not otherwise occupied during that period.

OK, maybe it wasn’t Pancho Villa.

I think it was. I think my great-great grandmother had a secret life, and she didn’t tell anyone, except maybe my father. I think that’s why my father has such an odd expression on his face in so many of the older photos of him.

Way back in the distant past my parents went square dancing almost every Saturday night at the Rome Civic Center, a modest 1930’s rock building.

The box in the top photo is designed specifically for records, and it holds many hours worth of square dancing music.

One side of each record was music without calls, and the other side was the same music with calls.

Their dance club was the Western Promenaders. That club still meets, but in their own “barn” that we pass on the way to our veterinarian’s office. Actually, they meet in the third building on that site, the previous two having been damaged or destroyed, first by snow, then by fire.

Smithsonian Magazine calls square dancing a uniquely American form, influenced by various European styles of dance, but also by native American and African dances. A number of the calls derive from French, apparently because of anti-British sentiment immediately after the Revolutionary War.

I remember hearing callers say “allemand left” or “allemand right”, and thinking that it meant “all men”, but according to Merriam-Webster, allemande is “a 17th and 18th century court dance developed in France from a German folk dance,” among other things. Wikipedia says “do-si-do” is a corruption of the French dos-à-dos, which means back-to-back.

I vaguely remember watching my parents dance, but my brother and I spent most of the time running around inside and out with the other kids who had been brought by their parents. Neither group paid much attention to the other. The kids were too engrossed in their running and screaming, and the parents were way too busy trying to follow the dance calls. I don’t know whether there was a set of dance calls that repeated or if it was completely free-form, but when the caller said “allemande left” everyone had to “allemande left” or there would be a pileup on the floor.

The Western Promenaders were formed in 1956 and moved out of the Civic Center in 1960. I do not think my parents ever danced at the current location, so everything I remember had to have happened between those two dates. That means my parents no longer square danced after around 1960.

I have no idea how my parents ended up with the record box full of square dance music. There is a sticker on each record with the names of a couple who lived in a town about 20 miles south of Rome, but they died years ago. I could offer the records to the current Western Promenaders, but I doubt anyone in the club has a record player. I might consider playing a record or two, but we don’t have a record player either. I think at this point, their only value is as a curiosity.