Just when we despair of finding any more precious old photos from our Sprick family elders' early days on their farm in West Albany Township, Minnesota, more show up. We found these tucked into the corners of Aunt Anna Sprick Smith's old scrapbooks. Very little information was on their backs, so we hope that Joe, Florence and Kate will let us know if they have more information we might add.
Young farmer Edward Sprick paused from the hard work of shocking oats in the late 1930s or early 1940s. He had not yet been to war, which would be perhaps the defining experience of his life, but times were hard enough on the farm during the Great Depression. Shocking oats, a late-summer task, involved gathering and bundling them; you can see the shocks behind Ed. According to Uncle Joe, shockers wore their shirts outside their pants to keep thistles away from their skin.
Ed and Joe in the field. The farm, with its L-shaped farmhouse, now belongs to the Clark family. When it was sold at a foreclosure auction in the hardscrabble early 1940s, the family used the money to buy the house at 201 N. Washington St. in Lake City.
Alverna rode the family's beloved horse, Babe. Babe later was sold in the farm foreclosure auction.
This splendid Sprick pet,
Skippy, stayed shaggy and warm in the days before people got haircuts for their pets. Uncle Joe writes that Skippy was "a valuable cocker spaniel once owned by the Clark family where Annette worked. Apparently no one took care of it so they shipped it to us in a fancy crate. Skippy didn't last long on the farm, but the crate did as I used it for a long time."
Kate and Anna in July 1941.
Anna and Kate by some very awesome hollyhocks.
Kate, the littlest of the Sprick clan, went sledding.
Amid the azaleas at Callaway Gardens.
One of the many lakes at Callaway Gardens.
Callaway Gardens' azaleas were at their peak.
These stunning flowers are cultivated, but the park is also full of native saffron and salmon azaleas. (Texas also has many azaleas, some of them in bloom right now in cousin Sandy Turner's Nacogdoches yard.)
At the Botanical Garden in Atlanta, huge hydrangea puffballs hung on arbors everywhere.
The Botanical Garden also has an awesome conservatory with a large area devoted to orchids.
Foxgloves were out almost everywhere we went.
Deb and I amid the flowers.
On rainy Tuesday, we were the only tourists walking in Atlanta's huge, brick-walled historic Oakland Cemetery, and got a terrific history orientation from the caretaker. The cemetery has a large section devoted to the Confederate dead, both known and unknown. Funny how history works -- your scrapblog editor, a Yankee to the core, is also the great-great-great granddaughter of a Confederate soldier killed in the Civil War.
Atlanta's Oakland Cemetery holds the bones of many prominent Georgians, and many more of common folks. It's an old cemetery, and segregates Jewish and African-American graves, something the caretaker said he's not proud of, but which reflects the history of the time. Here's one of the cemetery's more prominent inhabitants -- pioneering golfer Bobby Jones, whose grave is salted with golfballs admirers have left in tribute.
"Gone With the Wind" author Margaret Mitchell's grave.
Deb is a gourmet cook, and made several excellent, healthy dinners. This one was so pretty I took a picture.
