A boy and his dog for Sepia Saturday this week. It was SUPER easy to match to the prompt photo this week since we have dozens and dozens (possibly hundreds) of photos of family pets from the Kitko side of the family. Pictured here is my grandpa Leon Kitko and Tippy the dog. The photo is dated 1946, so this means Leon was 13. Location is in the yard of the family home in Beccaria, Pennsylvania – on the far left is the church we see in a number of other photos. I’m not quite sure why the back of the photo is labelled twice – perhaps the pencil was starting to fade and was re-done in ink later. On the label, Leon is called, “Buddy,” which was his childhood nickname. In fact, it was such a commonly used nickname that, as the story goes, when he went to his first day of school, the teacher called his full name during roll call and he didn’t respond. Being a small town, the teacher knew who he was already, so she asked him why he wasn’t responding. He replied, “My name is Buddy, not Leon.”
Over the years the family had a number of pets, but there are quite a few photos of Tippy through the years which is nice to see. Our pets have such short lives in comparison to ours, and it’s nice to see that they held a prominent enough spot in the lives of my ancestors to make it into saved photos.
Very funny that he corrected the teacher about his name. Sometimes the writing on the back is just as interesting as the photo. Maybe somebody wrote in pencil and then thought it should be in ink for posterity.
Cute little dog. My first parakeet was named Tipi – short for “Tipi-Tin” – the title of a song my Mom used to sing around the house.
This is a nice photo and a cute story too.
None of our photos of pets from my childhood have survived so I’m envious of seeing Buddy and Tippy like this.
Photos with the name of a pet are priceless. Your grandpa’s story made me laugh.