Buchanan, Virginia - Johnson Family Residence - circa 1936

To the best of my knowledge, this photo was taken by a member of my family, probably Aunt Laura, around 1936. That is my grandfather in the middle with his hat on his knee. My mother is the blond-headed girl on the left, half in and half out of the frame. It would be another ten years before she would marry and I would come along.

The remarkable thing about this photo is that it is so utterly familiar to me even though it was taken years before I was born. It almost seems like I was there on the day this picture was taken.

In later years, I visited my grandparents' house many times. I remember the porch, the rooms behind the two doors, the kitchen on the other side of the house, all with a vividness completely out of proportion to the amount of time I actually spent there. I remember sleeping in the attic room behind the dormer windows above the porch, and the rain on the tin roof.

Sometimes a photograph seems to combine with our own experience, our own sense of a place, to create phantom memories. Looking at this picture, I somehow remember that Sunday afternoon on the porch with my family. I can almost hear Aunt Laura say "take off your hat, Daddy, so I can take your picture."

My grandparents died in 1963 and the place was sold. A few years later, the house burned down. The last time I drove by, a house trailer was sitting in just about the same place as the porch was in this photograph.