I’m starting a new series today I call “Story Tellers.” The premise of this series came from a comment Tom’s daughter, Kristine, made one time several years ago when visiting with us in our home.
We were showing her something and telling the story behind it. She turned to us and said, rather in awe, “It’s neat. Everything in your house has a story.”
It’s true.
Some people decorate their homes in the very latest styles, always perfect to the last little accoutrement, but also all purchased from stores and always changed about by the next latest and greatest fads.
Some people don’t really decorate at all.
We “decorate” around things we love and cherish, each in it’s own way. I have several “collections” of things I’ve found and that have been given to me as gifts by friends and family who know me – know us – and know what we like. I can tell you where nearly each piece came from, when and how I came to have it as mine. How Tom came to have his. How we came to have our things together.
The individual pieces and collections have changed some over the years as we have changed. We are now here in our “Home Complete,” as the tab at the top of this page states (although it is still a work in progress, with me not having put all the pictures in of our “finished” home). We have less room than we did before, so we had to carefully choose where each of our favorite story things would go to show them at best advantage. Some are stored away, but beloved still.
Today’s story I call “Texas Angel” and you shall see why – and understand the name in a moment.
It is a photogram I created when I was taking a photography class one summer in college (you have to remember I was a “non-traditional” student at 37). A photogram is an image produced without a camera by placing an object on photosensitive paper and exposing it to light. I did mine in a dark room.
We were working in black and white only, learning how to handle long rolls of film, cut the film, develop it, then create our own photographic images in the dark room. I absolutely loved every second of that course and spent long hours in the dark room all summer (also burning up boxes and boxes of good quality, expensive photographic paper).
We then had to mount our creations on 11″ x 14″ black boards for grades all along, with a 3 picture w/copy (words) piece on a 16″ x 20″ for our final.* (I made an “A” for the course.)
Here’s one of my photograms I have hanging in our home. It is in our living room and I call it “Texas Angel.” Look closely at it and you will see the profile of an angel in the bottom right corner reaching out and holding up a stalk of cotton, with one open cotton boll “puff” on the left and one closed boll at the top. They are all three actually cotton bolls, of course, but I immediately saw the angel and having grown up on a cotton farm where God is always in control of the crop in the end, I had to call it “Texas Angel.”
I gave one to my mom and dad that was similar. (Each photogram – and photograph, for that matter – is going to be different, of course, because of all of the variables, even with the same setup.)
What say ye? Can you “see” what I saw as a “Texas Angel?” I hope so, because it has great meaning to me after all these years (I did it in the summer of 1984).
That’s my story for today, with a little background first. Most of my stories won’t be nearly this long, I promise. I hope to share them with you for a while, about once a week, until either you get tired of them or I get tired of telling them! I sure have enough material here in our home to tell you these stories for a long time to come.
Many blessings to each of you today!! Dee
*Note: After all the photography classes in the entire journalism department had completed their courses, the professors and all students judged the works and mine was chosen the very best work against not only advanced classes, but the color works, as well. I was very excited about that award!! One of my all time favorite awards!
I used it, again, in a final I did in a graduate course, in which I made an “A,” also! I still have my work, but it is rather in dismal shape and in a closet. But I cannot bear to part with it. I’ll show it to you when you come over, hear?!
What an interesting story! I can certainly see the angel and appreciate the correlation between cotton crops and God being in control. I am looking forward to hearing your other stories. “Treasures” have stories connected while everything else is just a “possession” or “thing”!
I can see the angel as well. Keep the stories coming.
Those Texas Angels created snow in the fall also. Traveling south from my hometown, Crowell, to Abilene we’d pass through the red,orange, brilliant breaks of the Wichita and Brazos Rivers into Knox City. On through O’Brien, Rochester, Rule and into Stamford the roadsides would be white from the cotton that had blown out of the trucks and wagons filled with cotton. Then, as we passed by the gins, the wagons would be waiting in white yards for unloading to be ginned into bales.
Ah, the hustle and bustle to get the cotton out of the fields before a rain. Now, I understand, cotton has been developed to stay on the short stalks without dropping should the ground be wet. Ah, the prayers of the wheat farmers wanting a rain (at the same time!) so their newly planted fields would sprout or for it to quit raining so they could plant the wheat. Rearrange those prayers for spring when you wanted to harvest the wheat in dry fiends and get rain on your planted cotton. CRAZYMAKING!
I’m not one to be very nostalgic about the good le days of farm life. I am grateful that my ancestors made a decent living on a half section of land – days long gone. Their hard labor helped me get a college education.
Loved the story. I have many things collected over the years that have stories of their own. It is fun to remember finding these treasures and bringing them home to display. I live in a cotton growing valley in CA and can relate to the cotton variables the farmers face every year. Loved your photogram. The angel is very evident.
That is a neat story. My daughter got an art project book for Christmas one year, and it had a few sheets of photosensitive paper in it. She enjoyed picking out the objects to put on it. I wanted some, too!
Very nice Dee; both the story and the picture. You will be pleased to know that I see a bit of the state of TX in the open cotton boll “puff”.
that is so cool!
I saw the angel too! Your story made me think of my leaf. It is framed also, tho not nearly so beautifully. As I was walking my daughter to school many years ago, a gust of air brought a shower of fall leaves. As I was raising my right hand with it more closed than open this leaf that I think is maple fell into it from above. It was so odd the way it happened I laughed and thought “Oh, a gift from God. Thank you God.” Then I really looked at it and was astonished that it reminded me of the best gift God ever gave, his son. The uppermost part reminded me of Christ’s head, the points of the leaf being the thorns on his crown. The next part of the leaf looked like his outstretched arms as he hung on the cross. The next part was complete on one side but the other side was broken, which also reminded me of Jesus’ side. Finally, the stem represented his legs and feet as they were nailed to the cross. I mounted the leaf on a piece of paper so it wouldn’t crumble with age. Along side it I added the above story so it might have meaning to others as well.