Some girls play with dolls....

In 1976, I wonder what my 2nd grade teacher thought when, on the first day of school, we were asked to do a show and tell of "how I spent my summer" and I pulled out these Polaroid photos:
Above: Pants to "die" for. I'm dying (!) to figure out what I've got in my hand. At first I thought it was a board, but I think it is a thin flat box with a lighter "stripe" down the front. Joan's guess is chalk as she can see on the original photos that we had been chalking all these stones. Whatever it was, it must be relevant, or Dad wouldn't have had me pose with it displayed in my hand like that.
Above: North Troy, Vermont, near Jay Peak. Do I look like Estelle or what? Wes, Mom and Me, my cousin Debbie the realtor, my wonderful Aunt Becky and my grandmother. Becky got the genealogy bug too and was very often Dad's sidekick. I remember bombing around VT in the back of those old huge stationwagons with the windows down and she and Dad talking loud and long, analyzing the Gazeteer, sandwiches & jugs of water in the way back.
Below: with Martha & Cedric at my great-grandparents' grave in Glover. the "L" for Blanche's middle name is Louise, which is where I got my middle name. The "E" after Henry is Elijah, where my nephew gets his name.
Below: Also in Glover. Someone told me this looks like Léna. Poor Effie Aldrich, she was only 5 when she died... Surrounded by the old Bread & Puppet camping fields, all these Glover stones are in the same cemetery where Gram, Dad, and Dad's sister Debbie's mom Eleanor (Léna's middle name) are now, not to mention many others on both sides of my family.
Here's Gram in Corinth Center, Vt. I like that she's got a ski pole in her hand as a walking stick!
More of our Aldrich family. How bout me giving Dad the thumbs up! Wes has a tool of some sort in his hand - maybe just a pen and paper to take notes?
These photos were unearthed yesterday by my sister Joan, tucked away in a thin manila folder in the midst of my father's many genealogical files. No one really recalls seeing them before.

When you see all those different outfits on me, you realize that these are all different excursions. I really did spend a lot of time running around graveyards! Incredible intimate time with my father and his sister that I know most of my other siblings did not have at the same age. And in such a great setting - truly a wonderful playground.