Thursday, October 4, 2018

Lynnfield Moody's Albums and Scrapbooks

My uncle Lynnfield Moody was a World War II veteran, but he never left the United States. He and his second wife Ruth lived a long and happy life together in Sacramento and Eureka, California.

Lynnfield Moody
When you are a child in a big family gathering like a family reunion the adults often ignore you, because they are so happy to see their brothers and sisters. I often fell asleep as they were talking, but the one voice that came through as I was dozing off was Lynnfield's. My cousin Kenny says that Lynnfield would give him a nickel or a quarter to "get lost," so the adults could talk. Kenny is six years younger than me. I guess Kenny didn't fall asleep so easily when Lynnfield was talking and was probably trying to interrupt and get attention.

Lynnfield had all kinds of stories, but I don't remember any of them. I just remember him talking and talking and me falling asleep.

One year, when I was very, very young,  he showed movies of his and Ruth's travels. They traveled all over and took many, many pictures. The movies were silent and Lynnfield droned on and on and on, so I fell asleep. Even though I fell asleep, I liked it.

But a few years later at another family reunion I heard him make a kind of snide remark while talking about their travels, saying something like, "I have pictures of that..... if anyone's interested."

I don't know if I was the only one who fell asleep when Lynn was telling about his travels, but he talked about them less and less as the family reunions continued over the years, and I missed it. I missed his stories, his movies, and his photographs, and his excitement and enthusiasm.

When my sister Jacque gave me a box of Lynn's albums and scrapbooks and photos a few years ago, after  he died (1994... whoah... that's a long time ago) I wanted to somehow share all those photos.

Lynnfield with his mobile home on one of his trips
There are lots of pictures of people I do not know in them and probably lots of stories I didn't hear, or slept through, but I decided I will give it a try. It worked with Edna's pictures (his sister).... I got a box of hers also, and in the column on the right of this page you can see the stories about those pictures that I wrote. (Scroll down, it keeps going and going.) Some people even contacted me about those pictures, and somewhere around 25,000 people have seen them.

Like Edna, Lynnfield and Ruth didn't have any children..... Well ... Lynn had a daughter from a previous marriage, but no one knows anything about her, even if she grew up or died as a child.

Maybe this blog about Lynnfield and Ruth's pictures can have some kind of similar results ........... Maybe even Lynnfield's daughter or grand children may find it.