Grandma and Grandpa's Wedding

Among the many pictures that Ellen sent is this wonderful portrait of Grandma and Grandpa on their wedding day -- July 15, 1940. I had never seen it before; in fact, it is the only picture from their wedding that I know of. It is a beautiful, touching picture of a young couple at the outset of their lifelong journey together.


The writings on the picture are Grandma's, but they originally were above (names) and below (date) the picture. I transferred them onto the picture while cleaning it up after scanning.

Proofsheet - G&G 06

The trickle of updates from the rolls of film that Ellen sent continues.


Some of these pictures appeared in the initial post when Ellen sent the rolls of film. Click for a larger image. Let us know in the comments if you would like GAP to post larger images of any of these.

Proofsheet - G&G 05

Another small update from a roll of film that Ellen sent.


Because only one of the pictures is interesting, here is a larger image of Grandma and Grandpa (click for a larger image.).


UPDATE

Shari writes in the comments:

This looks like the photo they had on display at their 50th Wedding Anniversary party. Remember those sheet cakes they had? And all the people who came to the farm? Grandpa and Grandma are (understatement of the year) troopers.

Thanks, Shari! I don't remember the sheet cakes -- until I found eggless cakes I didn't pay much attention to cakes -- but I would love to get more pictures (and stories?) about their anniversary. And, yes, they are quite the troopers!

Proofsheet - G&G 04

Today we have a very small update from the film that Ellen sent. There are only two negatives showing preparations for Christmas in Grandma and Grandpa's basement. Because these negatives did not match any of the others in the package, the rest of the roll either exists somewhere else or is lost.


Click for a larger image. Let us know in the comments if you would like GAP to post larger images of any of these.

UPDATE

Ellen posts some information about the pictures and a poem (!) in the comments.

For years, Grandpa and Grandma would fill a Christmas stocking for every child and grandchild in the family. It took a lot of effort and quite a bit of money and the basement would be off limits to family members for weeks. These two pictures were separate from other negatives because I think Grandma used them in her family newsletters. She also wrote a poem about the family Christmas stocking project.

Christmas on Grandpa's Farm

On Grandpa's farm there's a basement door
That's sealed up tight from top to floor
And a great big sign in black and white
Says, "DO NOT OPEN 'TILL CHIRISTMAS NIGHT!"

(My Daddy says, when he was a kid,
He'd crawl under the porch where the windows hid
And try to see through the webs and gloom
What was hiding in that secret room.)

On Christmas morn we'd wait in delight
While Grandpa turned on the Christmas lights,
Then we'd burst through the door and shout with glee
And "Whee-Whee" round the Christmas tree.

On the walls of the room were dozens of socks
One for each person - present or not.
Then we'd pour all the gifts out on the floor
There must be a zillion million or more!

Later that day we'd creep down the stairs
To see if there might be more gifts down there,
But the door to the secret room stood wide
And there wasn't a single thing inside

Thanks, Ellen! GAP can never have too many stories and poems!

Ellen wrote commented again to clarify that, "that poem was written by Grandma Stutz, not Ellen." Duly noted!

Rowan Squires Stutz

Yesterday, April Fools Day, a post went up at the Stutz Barn announcing that Rowan Squires Stutz joined Jeremy, Emlyn, and Big Sister Millie as the newest member of their family. Details are slim -- all we know is March 18, 2010, 7:42 a.m., 7 pounds 1 ounce, 20 inches -- since the JEM show blog is now available by invitation only. At least we get a picture!


We are pretty sure this is no April Fools joke; certainly Rowan's cuteness is no joke. The closest analogy we can think of -- let's be honest: this is a stretch even for us -- is the Tauntaun Sleeping Bag, which started off as an April Fools Joke (Huh?), but turned out to be real (Yeah!), but then turned out to be both very expensive (Yowza!) and very awesome to have (Woohoo!). Congratulations from GAP!

Proofsheet - G&G 03

As we slowly add more proofsheets to GAP, here is from a roll of film that Ellen sent.


Click for a larger image. Let us know in the comments if you would like GAP to post larger images of any of these.

Rippin'est, Roarin'est, Fightin'est Man the Frontier Ever Knew!

Fess Parker died today. He is not family, and his television fame as Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone predates me. In fact, I would not have noticed his passing had I not come across his name earlier in a family picture.

When I was scanning some of Grandpa's slides a few months ago I became curious about this picture of John and Susan playing in the snow (developed in April 1967). What was John holding?


I opened the largest scan I had, zoomed in (click to see the big picture), and made out the words "Fess Parker" and a picture of a frontiersman.


After some poking around on Wikipedia and eBay (thanks, interwebs!) I found a better picture of the lunchbox and some history about Fess Parker.


And now I'm curious. What other Fess Parker gear did John have? For that matter, what other childhood heroes were people fans of?

As I look at the family pictures, I sometimes wonder about the details in them and the stories they hold.

UPDATE

Susan writes in the comments "wow, now that's a blast from the past" and John adds:

That lunch box was one of my favorite treasures including the matching thermos inside. I would have been a complete man if only Mom and Dad (Grandpa and Grandma) would have bought me the coon skin hat. In addition to Daniel Boone, I had my eye on Flash Gordon, The Lone Ranger, Jungle Jim, Zorro, And of course Super Man. Oh the good old days....!

Thanks, Susan and John!

Shari also writes, "You guys must have been walking home from school. :)" Ah, the fond memories of walking home from school. I should do a post on this, because in my memories I did enjoy the walk home. Thanks, Shari!

Proofsheet - G&G 02

We are making our way through a couple of projects right now, so the postings have been (and will continue to be) quite sparse. Things are moving along, though! We did get a chance to add Merissa to our Facebook link list (Hi, Merissa!).

The following is another proofsheet of a roll of film that Ellen sent.


Click for a larger image. Let us know in the comments if you would like GAP to post larger images of any of these.

Proofsheet - G&G 01

The following is a proofsheet of a roll of film that Ellen recently sent.


Click for a larger image. Let us know in the comments if you would like GAP to post larger images of any of these.

Moss Mustache - Revisited

One of GAP's earliest posts had pictures from the 1970s and 1980s of family members wearing moss mustaches. On a recent trip I decided to revitalize the moss mustache craze of yesteryear, bringing it into the 21st century.

Then and Now - Olympics

Mr. GAP and family visited beautiful Vancouver last week to catch a women's hockey match at the Winter Olympic games!


Our trip took us through Seattle, but unfortunately we did not have a chance to call Lori. (Hi, Lori!) I guess we will have to go back!


Joe, my dad, told me that Grandma and Grandpa took the family to the Seattle World's Fair in 1962 when the Space Needle opened, but I have not yet seen any pictures from it. Does anyone have a story or two to share about the trip?

This was our family's second trip to the Olympics, the first being in 2002 to the Salt Lake Winter Olympics when Boyd was three months old.


He is on the far right in the top picture, which provides a nice then and now comparison.

At the Salt Lake games we attended the women's halfpipe competition in Park City with Karla and Brian Toomer, as well as with some friends -- very good friends (our children's godparents) -- from Montana.


We crashed at the farm with Grandma and Grandpa, who were enjoying some unseasonably warm weather. We could not have asked for better hosts!


We also attended a women's hockey match in Provo with Lucas. I should get a more recent picture of Lucas so we can do a then and now of him, too.


We vowed at the time that if the Olympics ever came back to our neck of the woods we would have to attend again. Since we were in Montana when the Vancouver games were announced, we told the boys their whole lives that we would take them to the 2010 games. Although we now live in Virginia, a promise is a promise, so we went.

Now, if the Olympics ever come back to our neck of the woods again....

A Soldier and His Horse

Ellen provides the following story and picture of Grandpa. Thanks, Ellen!

While going through some of Grandpa Stutz’s papers, I found this picture and asked him what it was. He said that when he was in the army during WWII, he was stationed in the town of Garmish-Parkenkerchen at the time that the war ended. While he was there, he found this horse that was starving in an abandoned stable. He saved it and nursed it back to life. This is a picture of Grandpa riding the horse. He said he gave the horse to another soldier when he came home.

GAP has posted other stories about horses, but this is the first we've heard about Grandpa and his horse in the war. Does anyone know its name? In fact, does anyone have other stories about Grandpa and Grandma from the war years (where he was, what he was doing, what Grandma was doing, etc.)?

Pumpkin Patch Pictures

"Ask, and ye shall receive." GAP asked, and we certainly have received! Ellen sent a story, Andrew sent two patriarchal blessings, and Craig also sent a story. In addition, Ellen sent a box of slides, negatives, and pictures that are currently being digitized. Finally, there is more stuff from Ellen in the email inbox that we need to go through, too! Thank you everyone for the family history information for GAP to post!

Can we keep this train rolling? GAP could still use plenty of help, and we're open to publishing pretty much anything family related. Old stuff, new stuff, whatever stuff is just fine. Send to stutz at montana dot com and GAP will take care of the publishing logistics. Or, if you want to be involved on an on-going basis, drop a line and ask to be an author!

Today, we have some pumpkin patch pictures from the Stutz farm taken in what looks like the late 1990s, though I do not know the specific year. They include Ellen's family and Grandma and Grandpa and are from the recent batch of materials Ellen sent. We recognize almost everyone, but we'll make this an interactive posting. Drop the names, year, and any stories in the comments and we'll update the post with new information.






The pictures have not yet been edited to remove the bars on the side that are part of the scanning process. By way of comparison, though, these pictures, when clicked, are 1/25th the size of the images that we send out on disc each year. You can look forward to these pictures (and more!) on the disc that goes out this Christmas.

UPDATE

Ellen writes in the comments:

I remember when we took these pictures. It was on a sunday afternoon in October and we came to Provo in our sunday clothes. Picture #3 is of Melissa, Sarah and Emily Landeen with Grandma. Picture #5 is of David and JR Landeen. The first two pictures look like Kenni Lynn Wilcox's children. Notice the giant Pumpkin. It made a wonderful jack-o-lantern.

More Stuff to Scan! Thanks, Ellen!

Ellen sent box full of slides, negatives, and pictures for me to scan and add to the collection. There is a lot, and it is quite diverse, so I will tackle it after the project I am currently working on. I have mentioned that I love getting surprise packages with family history to digitize, right?

At the very top of Ellen's box were some 35mm negatives, and I dug around for one to post as a teaser of things to come. Here are Grandma and Grandpa in the early 1990s.


Thanks, Ellen!

What Would You Do? Overlapping Rolls of Film

These pictures show various scenes from the farm, some sand dunes, and a trip Ellen took to the Grand Canyon and southern Utah. The Grand Canyon being the theme du jour, it is a good time to post this odd assortment of pictures. All are from Grandpa's slides and were developed in July 1970.

Sometimes putting pictures in the proper order is like solving a puzzle. If you do not enjoy puzzles, just enjoy the pictures, write any names or stories you know about the pictures into the comments, and skip the rest of the text.

These pictures were all developed at the same time and had no additional information about the development printed on the slide frames to set them apart. To further complicate things, they arrived from different collections at different times. This post is my attempt to put them back in order and reconstruct the original rolls of film with the slides in the proper order.

Each roll of film lacks most of the slides, so the collection is incomplete. The slides were all numbered, and they all contained some information written on the slide mount that I incorporated into the file name for each image. You can see this information by clicking on the image and saving it to your computer (the default file name will show the information) or by looking on the right side of the URL for each clicked picture. This is cumbersome, so I provide what I think is the pertinent information at various places within the slides.

The slides were named using GAP's fancy pants file naming system, with one exception and one caveat. The exception is that at the beginning of each slide is a two digit number that I added for purposes of this post to group the pictures in the correct order (per the printed slide frame number) and by roll (I grouped them into four rolls, each roll's numbering beginning at a multiple of 10). Thus, the earliest frame of the first roll has 01, the second earliest from of the first roll has 02, the earliest frame of the second roll has 10, the second earliest from of the second roll has 11, etc. The caveat is that several of the file names have a Roman numeral (I or II) after the "JUL 70", which was an unsuccessful attempt by me to distinguish the rolls when scanning and naming the images; ignore this number, it means nothing now.

The pictures in this post are not in the order that they are on the DVD I sent out. If anyone is still reading this -- which I doubt -- and is interested in solving the puzzle -- which I really doubt -- you may want to pull the images for July 1970 off the DVD and sort them out yourself. If nothing else, you may get a sense of what GAP goes through when trying to recompile family history from little bits and pieces.

The rules I followed when arranging these are:

1. The order has to be logical;
2. The slide frame numbers within each roll have to increase from one frame to the next, since this is the order the pictures were taken; and
   
3. The content of the pictures has to make sense in the context of the picture groupings.
   

Numbers 1 and 3 are explained below. Number 2 you can take for granted ... or you can look at the slide numbers in the file name to check my work.

OK, here is my grouping and reasons.

Roll 1 - These pictures are a different size and shape than the others and had increasing frame numbers with no overlap, so I grouped these together as one roll of film. I put them first because the weather looks colder and, thus, earlier in the year than in the other rolls of film. Can you name the people and the place?







Roll 2 - These pictures start on the farm and conclude at the Grand Canyon. I reason that there was a roll of film with farm pictures in the camera that was taken to the Grand Canyon. I grouped these pictures together because they had increasing frame numbers with no overlap. I could not group the farm pictures with the later pictures from Zion's or Bryce Canyon because the frame number would have overlapped. What is going on in the farm pictures?







Roll 3 - These pictures start at Cedar Breaks, continue into Zion's, and conclude at Bryce Canyon. I reason that the roll of film was changed between the previous Grand Canyon picture and the following Cedar Breaks picture because the frame numbers reset between the two and the picture content naturally breaks between them. What were Ellen and friends doing on this trip?










Roll 4 - These pictures contain only Bryce Canyon. I reason that the roll of film was changed at Bryce Canyon because the frame numbers reset. I placed this roll after the previous one because Bryce Canyon pictures conclude the previous roll and begin this one.




Thus, I reasoned that the chronological order of the pictures is as follows:

1. Sand dunes (probably on a different camera than the rest)
2. Farm
3. Grand Canyon
4. Cedar Breaks
5. Zion's
6. Bryce Canyon

Other explanations could be that there were more than four rolls of film developed in July 1970 or that there were multiple trips to the same locations, making the obvious grouping of pictures the wrong one. Perhaps someone knows the answer and can clarify this? If clarified, I will update the image file names in the collection of slides to reflect the proper chronological order.

What would you do?

I am guessing that, if anything, what you are doing is smiling slightly, shaking your head in a sad sort of way, and clicking over to something more interesting. At least, that's what I will do after I read this!

UPDATE

Woohoo! Ellen writes in the comments that I got the order of the pictures correct.

Yes, Rob, you have organized these pictures correctly. I took a trip with my girlfriends, Mary Tucker, Ellen Millett and Patty Millett, to Grand Canyon, Cedar Breaks, Zion's and Bryce Canyon one summer about 1970 or so. I probably borrowed Grandpa's camera because all those pictures are of my trip. It was really fun. Thanks for the memories.

Thanks, Ellen! Your help filling in the details of these pictures is always appreciated. Plus, I can now stop fiddling with trying to get the pictures in the correct order. I will relabel the file names to ensure that these are organized correctly, and I will include the updated names the next time I send out a DVD. This is a good example of why it is useful to replace previous versions of the pictures with new ones; sometimes identifying information is updated!

The pictures in Roll 1 above are now the subject of Mystery Picture 100108.