WinnNotes

Today is my 62nd birthday. It's been a wonderful day so far. I was treated to a massage in the morning and an afternoon lunch with my wife and kids. I know, slide shows can be boring, so just click away somewhere else if you choose. I'll never know the difference. Above is a baby picture of me. I'm not sure how old I was. The original picture was colorized, that tells me something about the time, but I think I was somewhere in the twoish range. Wasn't I just a cutie?

Here's an early birthday picture with only 1 candle, but I'm sure that I was more than a one-year-old when it was taken.

This was my mom's all time favorite picture of me. The apocryphal story goes. She had birthed one daughter, her first, and two sons, and she wanted to round off the family (with one lately born) with another daughter. I was born at home and when she was coming out of the ether, she asked the doctor "is it a boy or a girl?" The doctor replied, "It's a boy!" To which she replied, "Throw him out the window." So the story goes that she wanted a girl so bad that she let my hair grow and grow until finally one day my dad, a barber, put me in his chair, not too long after this picture was taken, and cut off all those curly locks. I often wonder what it would be like to have all that hair now.

My dad was always a General Motors car owner. I don't think he ever owned any other brand. I'm not sure of the year of this Chevy (I think that's what is across the front of the car) but when I find out I will know about when the picture was taken because dad traded cars every two years like clock work.

Who is she? I have no idea. But, my wife Donna still wants to know.

My family loved vacations. Every summer as long as I can remember back into my childhood, my dad and mom would take a trip somewhere. On this ocassion we visited Excelsior Springs, MO. Dad loved to take hot baths. We took a few trips to Hot Springs, AR but this year it was Excelsior Springs. Outside of town was the home that Jesse James was killed in. We went to visit and met Frank James' son who still lived on the old homestead. The picture is of me sitting on the tombstone, or what was left of it, of Jesse James. Folks had chiseled away most of it as a free souvenir.

I must have had a shot to be Elvis growing up in the South, but alas, I didn't take it.

All these years later, and still only one candle?