Wednesday, July 09, 2008

FROM THE ELISSON ARCHIVE

The Mistress of Sarcasm and She Who Must Be Obeyed have spent the last three days in a frenzy of Basement-Organizing Activity.

This is no lightweight job. We’ve lived here in the latest incarnation of Chez Elisson for hard on to ten years...and the basement is the Final Frontier, the last repository of Random Accumulated Crap. Getting it in some semblance of order is no job for the faint of heart.

In three days, there has been an astonishing amount of progress as the Mistress and SWMBO have relentlessly attacked the Mountains of Miscellany. You can now walk around down there without tripping over twenty thousand separate obstacles.

Once we Garage-Sale some of the more useful detritus and have Mr. Trash-Man haul off the remainder, we’ll have a reasonable amount of space down there.

We’ve found all kinds of interesting things that haven’t seen the light of day in years. Old laboratory glassware. Darkroom equipment. Hundreds of Sunday newspaper comics sections. Magazines from the 1980’s. Anybody remember Cuisine?

And we’ve found Old Photographs.


Grandmomma d’Elisson 1931


Here’s one of Anna, the Grandmomma d’Elisson, flanked by her two children. On the left is nine-year-old Uncle Phil; on the right is the Momma d’Elisson, who is all of three years old in this photograph taken sometime in mid-1931.

Anna was unusual for the time. A strawberry blonde, she drove a car...and she was an athlete, playing both golf and tennis. Back then, none of these were typical Motherly Activities...at least, not amongst Our Crowd.

She could lob a mean oath, too. A useful talent in Sheepshead Bay, back in the day. Or now.

I sure miss her. She was, as they might say, a pistol.

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