TBT –

#TBT: Faded Photographs and Memories

March 2, 2017 by Melodye Shore

I know very little about this candid snapshot. Someone scrawled my name on the back, so I’m assuming it’s me. But it’s one of those pictures that raises more questions than it answers.

There’s a date stamp on the white border, which suggests the film roll was commercially developed. I hadn’t yet celebrated my first birthday, so what was the occasion? And whose shadow is that, hovering protectively over mine? Lost in the moment…so me. Probably concentrating on some newfound treasure, but I don’t know that for sure.

It’s not a keeper, in the traditional sense. But to me, it’s priceless, because it’s one of a handful of pictures that survived my itinerant childhood. And even in its blurry state, it manages to tell a story. My story. Here, the muted daughter of a fire-and-brimstone, fundamentalist preacher, who eventually found her own voice. Born into a cult-ish family, she eventually came into her own.

In this grainy, black-and-white photograph, I see also the broader picture. People don’t live forever. Snapshots fade, and memories gets swept into the dustbin of history. So don’t let your stories languish in a junk drawer (on a cell phone, a hard drive…). They belong to the collective, where they can be savored and shared.

Throwback Thursday: Annie Elizabeth Harding, one of countless immigrants

November 19, 2015 by Melodye Shore

My great grandmother, Annie Elizabeth Aldrich, was born in Hertfordshire, England in 1859. In this snapshot , she’s about 45 years old and has long since moved to Nottingham. As mother to 11 living children (9 girls and 3 boys), it’s no surprise that she looks a bit weary. Even so, she was by all accounts a very happy woman who probably imagined herself living out her days among the people she knew and loved, in the homeland she cherished.

May (L) and Evelyn (RO were the youngest of Annie Elizabeth Harding’s 12 children.

But when World War I erupted, Nottingham was hit hard. Annie’s boys enlisted in the military, and my great-grandparents sought refuge on American soil. They were second class passengers on the USMS Philadelphia, which was chased by German submarines for countless, terrifying miles.

Her daughters found work at a local corset factory, and Annie — who, by then, was 56 years old–set about creating a new life for them on Pleasant Street in West Brookfield, Massachusetts.

She and her husband George worked hard, saved diligently, and eventually purchased a comfortable home on an old country road, across from a yeast-making factory and adjacent to the railroad tracks. Annie planted flowers on the hillside and was feted by her beloved children on the occasion of her 50th wedding anniversary.

Within a month, the Great Depression hit. They made do and did with less, so as to lend financial support to those in need.

Annie Elizabeth and George Harding, on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary in 1929.

Just five years later, my great-grandfather passed away. Annie was 75 years old. A widow now, she once again rolled up her sleeves. She endured floods and other hardships, but as it was with her pet canaries, she never lost her song. Local historians told me that hobos etched friendly symbols in the dirt roads that led from the rail cars to her house. “Hot meals offered here,” they said. “Everyone’s invited.” How utterly Annie, to share what little she had!

When I met the current owners of her humble abode, they offered me a gift.

Pulled from the crumbling remains of the original foundation, this brick reminds me of my personal roots. Too, it grounds me in the truth of things, within and beyond the current narratives we’re hearing. That is to say, that we are a nation of immigrants, settled by great-grandmothers who sacrificed much in the name of safety and freedom, and who were welcomed equally at Ellis Island.

Throwback Thursday: My Brother Roger (1943-2015)

October 29, 2015 by Melodye Shore

We didn’t stay in any one place for long, nor did we ever sit for family portraits. And while revival organizers sometimes took candid snapshots of my father’s fiery sermons and the like, most of those got pitched overboard to make room for an ever-expanding family. So by the time my siblings and I reached adulthood, only a handful of personal photographs remained.

Some wayward pictures were eventually returned by my father’s associates. Some found their way ‘home’ when I reached out to estranged family members. My sister Sheryll, who shares my interest in personal genealogy, tracked down quite a few photographs on her own. Secrets oftentimes stay buried, but we encouraged more than a few hoarders to share their private stash. And as it turned out, I retrieved a good number of images by climbing into my “Nancy Drew” roadster and following my father’s tire ruts down the Sawdust Trail.

When Roger passed away this month, I felt a hollowness in the places where his voice once reverberated. So precious–then and in hindsight–the times we shared in communion, recounting the highlights of our individual and shared stories. Such treasures, the memories and pictures we’ve managed to archive, for ourselves and future generations. This doesn’t seem to me the appropriate place to write my brother’s obituary, but I’ve assembled a small number of images that bear witness to his life.

To my brothers and sisters, a love offering. That’s already printed on the dedication page of my memoir–in my mind’s eye, at least. Same with the pictures of Roger that you see here.

Roger Suva was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1943.

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Roger’s standing next to the family dog, facing my father, who has my oldest sister Coral on his lap. A candid (?) snapshot, taken in front of my father’s revival tent in Johnson City, Tennessee.

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My brother Roger’s upper elementary school picture, taken the year I was born.

A front-porch respite from the cramped back seat of our family car, the summer before his senior year in high school.

Roger the Bookworm, shortly after college graduation (Wheaton Bible College, in Illinois).

A Christmas hug from his older daughter, Esther.

Hanging out on the front porch with Heather, his younger daughter (Anaheim, California).

1986 04 Jake and Darlene, Disneyland, Desert_20140413_0004

An outdoor enthusiast with an irrepressible wanderlust, Roger’s pictured here in Joshua Tree, watching for Halley’s Comet.

A vegetarian before it was fashionable, Roger espoused strong opinions about many things.

We shared a complicated story, and a tangled family tree. Here, Roger’s (re)introducing me to Cliff, whom I’d met on a couple of other occasions but hadn’t yet realized was my brother.

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The VW bus that Roger called home for several years before he died.

Throwback Thursday: Rusty Trucks at the End of the Road

October 23, 2015 by Melodye Shore

Two ice cream trucks, at rakish angles.

“Turkey in the Straw,” long since silenced.

Once upon a more simple time, they rumbled through quiet neighborhoods in rural Massachusetts, flanked on all sides by kids of all ages.

Legs churned, arms waved. Dimes glinted in the afternoon sunshine.

“Snow Cones, Push-up Pops, Creamsicles…come and get yours!”

A single row of barbed wire runs along the outside edges of the pasture where these utilitarian vehicles came to rest. They are nested, now, in tangles of ivy.

Hard to believe that the rust-covered metal was once a glossy white. The wiper blades are arthritic; the headlights, bleary.

Shredded tires are stashed on the floor, and the windows are smeared with nature’s residue.

Tired sentries, standing guard over the happy moments they once delivered:

Sweet frozen treats on hot summer days, tucked behind decorated metal awnings.

Their time has clearly come and gone.

And yet…

At the end of an old gravel road, within the loose confines of a pasture, someone’s mowed the grass around these time machines.

Their engines are long gone, and their beauty has long since faded. But maybe, just maybe– if we squint our eyes, just a little, and tilt our heads just so–nostalgia will carry us back to those blue-sky moments of our childhood.

Throwback Thursday: Paradise found

August 13, 2015 by Melodye Shore

I have arrived. I am home. –Thích Nhất Hạnh

It seems like just yesterday that the moving trucks rolled into our new driveway, but we’ve lived in this place for a little over a year, now! We’re slowly transforming our garden into a drought-friendly place; and little by little, we’re personalizing each room and emptying the boxes.

Birds of Paradise

It’s easy to get swept up in the day-to-day minutiae, to the point that we forget to celebrate just how far we’ve traveled. Conversely, when we focus too much on the future, we eventually lose sight of the joys available to us in the here and now.

No doubt you’ve already guessed that by ‘we,’ I mean ‘me.’

Mindful as I am (or try to be), I still live on planet earth. No one’s immune to its gravitational pulls. But when the songbirds perform their morning serenades; when our kitties nap together in the afternoon sunshine; when ocean breezes drift into our backyard, and palm trees sway in the surrounding hillsides…well, now! Color me grateful, same as the day we first called this place home.

#AugustBreak2015 Photography Challenge, Day 13. The prompt for today is last year.

#TBT: My Writing Notebook (Looking Back and Moving Forward)

August 6, 2015 by Melodye Shore

For who will testify, who will accurately describe our lives if we do not do it ourselves?
–Faye Moskowitz, And the Bridge is Love

My friend Emjae created this mock book cover for me a few years back, as a loving gesture and gentle prod. “Keep writing,” she told me. “You have a story to tell, a song to sing.” I tucked one copy into an antique church bulletin display box, and slipped another into the clear front pocket of my writing notebook. I’ve spilled many ~~tears~~ drafts onto the page, emptied and replenished several notebooks since. Lucky me, I’m represented now by two, top-notch agents at D4EO Literary Agency, and CAN I GET A WITNESS? is under consideration by several editors. I’m so looking forward to that magical day, when the contents of my writing notebook become a published book, graced with a reinterpreted cover image!

Day 6 of Susannah Conway’s #AugustBreak2015 photography challenge. In case you haven’t yet guessed, the word of the day is notebook. In this overlaid image, my father’s revival tent serves as backdrop. I’m standing in the foreground, facing my future.

#TBT: One of my earliest literary influences

July 23, 2015 by Melodye Shore

I learned phonics from my mother, on a cross-country trip from California to Baltimore. I devoured the messages on billboards, and then graduated to books like this one.

I have vivid memories of those magical moments, can easily recall the shivers that ran up my spine when block letters first translated themselves into sounds and syllables, and then sentences that leaped off the pages.

I developed an insatiable appetite for books, and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge.

Perspectives shift. New discoveries challenge old beliefs, and textbooks are rewritten. But at the tender age of three-going-on-four, I believed everything I read.

When I enrolled kindergarten that fall, my world expanded by the number of books I was able to check out from the library at any one time. Two, same as the animals on Noah’s Ark. But when the bookmobile rumbled down our street one day, the entire universe was delivered to my doorstep.

The librarian pulled books from shelves I wouldn’t otherwise have considered. We flipped through the pages together and talked about their contents. Teacher to student, friend to friend. Thanks to her gentle guidance, I learned to ask the deeper questions and challenge the pat answers.

And that, my friends, is what eventually led me to write my own story, Can I Get a Witness?

#TBT My Father’s Pentecostal Revival Tent–built of canvas, faith and grit

July 16, 2015 by Melodye Shore

My father’s tent revival meeting in Key West, Florida (Anyone recognize the street signs?)

A lesser star in the evangelical orbit, my father didn’t usually have a crew on hand to help set up his tent revival meetings, so we did everything for ourselves. It involved a lot of grunt work, with no guarantees that the crowds would come.

My father painted new signs for each location, hand-lettered without a template. While we cleared debris and smoothed the dirt, he sandpapered the scuffed edges of our portable platform. Pitching the tent was an engineering feat, in and of itself. It also required a lot of strength. My older brothers helped my father position and anchor the tent posts, and then stretch the canvas over top. Sometimes the canvas tore, whether from age or an over-energetic tug. One of the girls, myself included, would stitch the frayed edges together, using a curved needle and stiff thread. On our luckiest days, local church folks would volunteer their time and effort. Working in tandem, they’d help hang speakers from tent posts, string the interior and exterior lights, and sound-check the microphones. (Electricity was typically siphoned from a nearby church or charitable business). We then planted the folding chairs in tidy rows, scattered sawdust on the earthen floor, and plunked a hymnal on every seat.

Drivers slowed, gawked, and rolled on past. Sometimes they’d honk. Other times, they’d jeer. Passers-by would stop to watch our dusty, sweaty routine, would whisper among themselves as we worked. I remember my father’s fervent prayers over dinner, remember him asking God to deliver those spectators to our evening service.

#TBT: Pentecostal Revival Tent in Johnson City, Tennessee

June 4, 2015 by Melodye Shore

In this faded photograph, my father’s kneeling in front of a (heated!) revival tent, with his preaching Bible spread across an open palm. My father said his hands were anointed by God, as evidenced by the fact that when he pressed that open palm on worshippers’ foreheads, their eyes rolled back and their bodies went stiff as corpses. He called that being “slain in the Spirit.”

#TBT: Where are the 144,000?

May 28, 2015 by Melodye Shore

Revival Poster in a storefront theatre, 1955

This photograph pre-dates me, but not by much. Over time, the lettering has faded to the point where some of it’s illegible, but here’s what my father’s Pentecostal revival poster says:

COMING! Nation’s Leading Miracle Evangelists

Liberation Night! Demonology: What is demon power

Where are the 144,000? Predictions of Coming Events

I can’t identify the evangelist on the left, but my father’s on the right. Can you make out the line at the very bottom?