Like Mother, Like Son

Continuing down the road of retrospection, I scanned this image of my mother when she was six years old. She and her family had just moved to California from the Dust Bowl stricken state of Oklahoma. Yes, my mother was an Okie, and she and her brothers got a good deal of grief about it from school bullies. Okies were seen as less than desirable in those days, to put it mildly.

I once mentioned some of my early childhood photos reminded me of a Dust Bowl refugee. Here's the proof below. Except for the houses in the background and the new wagon, it could be back in the 1930s.
Which brings up an interesting observation: The images of kids from the 1920s through the 1950s don't seem to show that much change in appearance, at least in my mind. But I feel that the changes between what I looked like and what Christie looked like are quite a bit different; and I suspect it's not an isolated instance. The amount of personal wealth in middle-class America changed dramatically in those two decades. The change in the subsequent two or three decades - from Christie's childhood to Evie's - is just as remarkable, too. The advent of computers, ipods and iphones had radically changed what childhood is like. Expectations of what is a "normal" childhood nowadays makes me feel positively quaint and antidiluvian when peering at photos of my own past.

Who would've thought the world would change so much; and how much more different will it be when Evie has kids? It really is a brave, new world.