Here are the rules to my game:
1. I don't know the people in this picture.
2. I make up a story about them.
3. You leave a comment with your version of the story.
Cousin Jenette didn't know that when her mother (Aunt Pearl) offered to make her a new skirt for the Forest Floor Fall Dance, it would be part of a matching set. She also didn't understand that the skirts were always to be worn together to create an overall "effect" as Aunt Pearl put it. Still, Jenette tried to smile in the pictures and hoped with all her heart that some handsome boy would notice her in her truly fabulous skirt - and not her mom standing next to her.
7 comments:
I'm just trying to remember this family story so will get back to you after I check my journal. Must go visiting teaching now , have yet to read the lesson. More later......
I know exactly who is in this picture and so there is no use speculating.
This is an actual picture of Maria Von Trapp and her daughter Rosemarie at the Austrian talent show. Just after this photo was taken she along with her husband Georg and children (Rosmarie, Eleanore, and Johannes) escaped from the evil clutches of the Nazi regime by fleeing through the alps.
This photo clearly illustrates that Maria was a skilled and creative seamstress.
Although Pearl had considered making a matching set of dresses for Jenette and herself, her inability to match patterns, a form of dyslexia, impeded her sewing skills.
Once she had cut apart the drapes - in first the living room and then the dining room -only then did Pearl realize that her match was not made in heaven.
Therefore, when ever and where ever Jenette found herself "wearing the unmatchable match" with Pearl in the picture, she also found herself being pushed out of the picture by Pearl's considerably greater heft.
This was the beginning of what later sadly became known in the family as "the shoving match..."
There's some truth in regards to the family stories told thus far but let me tell you the real story.
Jenette's chistened name was Jenette Sue Blackburn and that is not her mother but actually her cousin Martha Pearl Doyle. Their mother's were sister's, born and raised in Osage, Iowa.
Of course the two sister's married Osage farmers and both had daughters. Although Martha Pearl was older that Jenette Sue they were close friends and were both very activie in the local 4-H club. Despite being separated by 2 years they did everything together. This picture was taken of them at the Forest Fall Dance just before entering their skirts in the Iowa State Fair. They were known far and wide for their sense of trendsetting style, usually dressing in almost identical outfits.
This all came to an abrupt end though at the Iowa State Fair where Jenette Sue won First place for her dramatic skirt while her cousin Martha Pearl got only a second place ribbon.
To this day Martha Pearl will not wear anything with patterns or ruffles. Jennete Sue now lives in Atlanta after an unsuccessful career in helping people with dyslexia.
While the Queen Vee has most of the story, she doesn't know the legacy...
The progeny of Pearl and Jenette decided it was time to continue the tradition of creating fantastic designs for various and sundry holiday events. Fast forward 50 years to the Christmas Gala where Pearl and Jenette's neice's Sambo and Sharbe decided to continue in their aunts' footsteps, hopefully correcting the mistakes of the past. You see, they also had a "sense of trendsetting style." Or so they thought.
However, they also fell victim to their aunts' folly. Matchy-matchy only goes so far - as does the overuse of backdrops and kitch. They were both quickly dismissed from the Christmas Gala for bad taste, bad hair, and generally scaring the children by stealing the presents from Kris Kringle.
For photographic proof, you'll have to visit my blog - I couldn't post a photo on a comment. :-)
(Any resemblence to actual persons in purely coincidental.)
OK Queenie, I'll buckle under the pressure. I wanted to comment, but after reading the others, how could I come up with anything funnier? (Sharlene- LOVE the pic of the 2 plaid coeds. Are those the Wilkinson Center stairs?)
Pearl, ever the bargain shopper, was thrilled when she found the bolts of 2 for 1 fabric. She had been waiting for the perfect opportunity to teach her daughter Jenette, a haughty girl, a lesson in humility. The spring dance was in just two weeks, but Jenette was not allowed to go because she had been caught necking with her boyfriend in the back seat of his MG convertible.
Pearl had had it up to her eyeballs with Jenette's moping and swearing that she had "the most old-fashioned mother in the world." Well, Pearl would show her...
The day before the dance, Pearl announced that she would allow Jenette to go to the dance under two conditions. Jenette, desperate not to miss the biggest social event of the season, squeezed her mother, declaring, "you're the best mother ever!" The conditions were that Pearl got to choose Jenette's clothes and date.
Jenette's face fell, but only for a moment, when she realized she could always unbutton a few buttons at the top of her blouse and roll her skirt up a few inches. And whoever the date was to be, she could always ditch the poor louse once she got to the dance.
Little did she know that Pearl would be her date.
As Jenette forced herself to smile for the camera amid the sneers of her classmates, she promised herself that she would never again cross her mother.
All the "Fantasy Family" biographers clearly told the stories that needed to be told. Thank goodness Sue came in at the end otherwise we wouldn't have a complete history.
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