Thinking of Everyone as "Young"

It's not always easy to think of everyone as having been young once. Sometimes it's just hard to visualize certain people in their childhood or in their twenties. I used to sit and stare at Grampa (Dad's Father) and just wonder what he was like young. What was it like to be him? What did he think about? As years passed it got easier to imagine him younger, and I had no trouble imagining him acting young.

Actually seeing something is more amazing than ever being able to imagine it. These pictures really hit me a few months ago. Grampa is our age or a little younger in all of them. Even though he looks pretty much the same, it's funny to see him on a Jeep, shooting a gun and just being "cool". It's funny to see the quiet man that I know, doing something like target practice.

Pictures are cool --- they can capture a moment in time that can still be enjoyed sixty years later. Sometimes, in today's world, people just pass off "old folks" as old. Not really understanding problems of the "young" people, not having felt the same things or stuff like that. How unfair. I always love to look at old people and try to imagine them young.



These photos were taken on Grampa's Father's pineapple plantation, Margajitas. If you look on the gun picture, you can see a huge "cage" thing built over one of the trees in the background. Grampa built that over a guava tree and used it as an aviary for pet parakeets. He had another aviary at their town house with pet canaries. He had to let all of his birds go free when they left Cuba.

These are my three favorite pictures of the "snap shots" from Old Cuba.