For Love of a Car

     In a recent post in "Vita Brevis" from the New England Historical and Genealogical Society, Scott C. Steward wrote about the cars, horses and other forms of transportation (an Ostrich!) in his family photos.  This got me to thinking that there are many vehicles in my family photos and I thought it would be fun to share them.

     The earliest is my 2nd Great Grandfather, Frank Stefani, with his laundry delivery wagon in Issaquah, Washington, around 1913. He eventually did own a car. His daughter-in-law, Peechie Stefani, told me the story that not long after he acquired it, he was driving downhill and wanted

 to slow down and started yelling, "Whoa! Whoa!", forgetting about the brake!

     Thirty-three years later, in about 1946, his son, Clement, posed with a freshly killed buck on the hood of his car! Clement's son, Johnny, age 6, posed with him. A proud moment! The back of the photo says that "he had three pound on each horn", perhaps prong was meant, at any rate, a big buck!

In my father's family photo collection there are several photos of cars. The earliest is obviously in the Twenties, I'm guessing about 1928. It shows my grandparents, Walter and Bessie and their children, Wally, Betty and Jack, on the right side of the photo. I'm not entirely sure who the three women on the left are but I'm guessing that they are Bessie's three sisters, Edna, Mabel and Alma

Hudson.  Another photo around the same time seems to show the same car.

A decade or more later, Jack posed with a then more up to date car. His first car, perhaps?

And here is John by his car in the 1960s.

Even my mother posed for a photo by the car with her daughters around 1955. As I

recall the car was a Nash Rambler. Her second husband, Mac McDonald loved cars and here he is with his car around 1943.

Not to be outdone, the Negley family has an impressive photo of Dennis' grandfather, James C. Negley, MD, in front of his auto in McMinnville, Oregon in 1949.

And Dennis and his brother, Pat, on top of the family car in McMinnville, also in 1949.

Here are the brothers almost 40 years later in front of our truck in Modesto about 1982.

Finally, a fitting end, a photo to challenge Mr. Steward's photo of the girls riding an ostrich, here is Dennis' mother, Eloise Negley, riding a camel on her trip to Egypt in July 1977.

Cars and family are intertwined and you can trace the history of one through the other.