Family

My cousin Karen posted this picture on her Facebook page this morning.  From left to right (front row) are my Aunt Rowena, my father David, and my Aunt Judy.  In the back row are my grandparents, Ruth Kuster Vaca and John Soloman Vaca.

I never got to meet my grandfather - he died at age 43, just a little over  decade after this picture was taken, probably sometime in 1939.

There's something about these roughly posed photos of the past that make them so much more valuable than your typical studio portrait.  You see a picture like this, and you think about all the stories behind it.  What was going through all of their minds?  What were this young family's hopes and dreams?  And exactly why does my dad have that sly look on his face?