Our Sepia Saturday prompt image this week featured a photo of a group of Mennonite women ironing, dated 1951. Here I have a single woman and while it doesn’t look like she’s ironing, she’s doing something in the kitchen area, and there’s laundry hanging on a line, so it works for me! Plus, it’s probably dated about to the same year. The back is unlabeled, so I don’t know who the woman in the photo is. It’s likely that Leon Kitko, my grandfather, took the photo, but by 1951, his mother’s hair was already mostly grey based on other photos, so I don’t think this was her. There are two boys’ shirts hanging on the line in the photo, so if it was taken later (1957 or so?), it means those may be the shirts for my father and uncle, but that’s definitely not the interior of the place they were living (I don’t recognize the wallpaper) and the woman doesn’t appear to be a match for my grandma. So, I’m stumped! Either way, it’s a neat photo, taken candidly, of daily life. The woman has a rather fancy sheer apron on, but there are some pretty dirty socks hanging on the rack by the wash tub. There’s something about the fact that this was photographed probably by my sneaky grandfather being silly against the fact that there’s a really neat scene captured here that I just love, and I’m glad I could share it with you this week even if we haven’t quite figured out the identity of the mystery woman.
I like the scene too.
Hopefully those socks aren’t dirty, just a dark color? If my husband took a picture like that of me – silly or not – I’d whack him one! 🙂
I just love photos like this-catching a person unaware-just going about her business.
Your background information about the cast of characters made this scene come to life for me. I really want to know what she’s doing!
Indeed a photo to behold and treasure!