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Here, gathered in our beloved South Dakota, are a few members of our Williamson / Mattson Clan. Charles and Luella are to be blamed (be kind, they didn't know what they were doing). We're generally a happy bunch and somewhat intelligent (notwithstanding our tenuous grasp on reality). I'm also proud to say that most of us still have our teeth.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Tonight's Picture Palace Presentation. Before Dad and Dad's Early Years.

Hello Family,
Tonight's offer takes us back to the 1930's for the first picture and then a few other pictures of dad before he started school.

A family photo taken in 1932/33.

The people in this picture are Left to Right, William Jonathon Williamson - Dad's Grandfather.
Francis Plato Williamson, Mary Anne Good (Baby) Aunt Josie Williamson Good's daughter, Walt Williamson - Dad's Uncle and oldest boy born to William Jonathon Williamson. Francis and Walt were married.

This picture was taken at the family's Conaco Station in Sundance Wyoming. The station is on the old original highway through Sundance. It is long gone, replaced by a cleaners.

If you look closely at the gasoline pump you'll see a big long handle. At the top of the pump was a glass tank that held the gas. To fill a car you took the handle and pumped the gas out of the underground tank into the glass cylinder on top of the pump. The glass cylinder is marked by gallon and half gallon. You hand to decided how many gallons you wanted before you started pumping. Then you took the hose off the handle, put it in your tank and my gravity it ran back down the hose into the tank. Of course, you didn't pump your own gas, it was pumped for you by attendants in uniform. One pump was for regular gas and the other was for Ethyl (Premium gas with lead). The attendant also checked your oil and water and cleaned your windshield. If requested they'd check your tire's air.

Dad on a petrified tree stump. This picture was taken in 1942 on the Mauch Ranch in Sundance Wyoming. He's sitting on a pillow but you can tell it isn't that comfortable on dad's skinny butt.




These two pictures are of dad when he was 4 1/2 years old taken in 1940. He is standing on the steps outside the door into the kitchen. Grandma Elda is with him in one. That house was brand new. It was off Porman Road in Lead, South Dakota. It sat at the end of the road. That house was built by Ted Pascoe and Dad's Dad Charlie. It had a living room, kitchen, washroom, bathroom and one bedroom on the main level. Upstairs it had one bedroom (dad's) and storage space. They paid $18.00 per month rent. In the dead of winter the heat bill was $3.00 per month and the lights were $2.00 per month. Dad had a small deck outside of his upstairs bedroom. He used to jump from the porch onto the lawn. He also used to jump from the deck into the chicken coop. Dad watched when they'd cut the chicken's head off to have a chicken supper.

Dad had a cat named Fuzz. She had kittens. Dad remembers his father Charlie sitting on the porch chloroforming the kittens to kill them, putting them in a sack and throwing them into the lake the next time he when fishing. Such lovely memories........

They moved out of the house in 1947 when dad's parents divorced.

Simply,
Victor