Back to Jack

 
You can call me a liar for at least four pictures. I said I had only one other picture of my paternal grandfather, Jack O. Leary. But tonight I found four more, and none of them is the other one I think I have.

I've chosen two nice ones. OK, one is nice, and I like the other one because I don't remember it at all, and it gives me some history I did not know. Dad's family was rarely talked about when I was growing up.

This one I can date. The baby is my half brother, John, which makes this the summer of 1927. That is scary long ago. That is our barn in the background, looking quite new and spiffy. It was always gray and faded as I remember it. I played on that wagon in the carriage house portion of the barn when I was a child, where it had been parked and grown dusty with age.



Jack, John's grandfather, looks pretty much the same as he did in the picture I showed you two days ago. I think he aged well. I say that because he also looks about the same in the next picture, which was taken approximately ten years earlier.

That's my dad, Ray, on the left. I'd say he looks between 14 and 16, pinning the photo to 1918-1921. Frances Leary is in the middle. I think she was a dog fancier. Almost every picture I have of her has dogs in it. And Jack is on the right.



Here's the interesting thing. I don't think I ever saw this picture until after my dad died in 1976, which is why I forgot about it. Mom had copies of all the photos from that side of the family made, and John and I each got all the pictures, but we each got some originals and some copies.

And, it never registered with me that this has to be the house I never saw, the one on the same property as the house I grew up in.

I couldn't find the years of Jack's birth and death. I know I have them. Maybe I can at least start getting this information all in one place.

I really regret that rather than pass on oral history, of whatever sort it was, my parents chose to tell me very little, rather than tell me harsh or difficult things. I suspect that Jack was a tough taskmaster. Is it possible they adopted my dad just to have a male farmhand? I think so. I do remember my grandmother Leary (Frances). She was alive until I was four. Of course, I was a coddled only grandchild, but I know she and my mother had serious disagreements about how things were to be done in the house. After all, we were living in HER house.

Anyway, thanks for sharing another small piece of my history. Now I'm going to go put those pictures away before I lose them!

	See The Jack that Built the House
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