LESSON GUITAR: Dad’s Photos #11

We’re here to welcome Monday with a look at Dad’s Photos, this time a summer time trip in 1938 to Salem Lake in Derby, VT. I must say the more I look at my father’s old photos, the more I’m baffled by his working life & overall schedule, but he was a young fellow then—24 years old—& was pretty much footloose & fancy-free I suspect. At any rate, he & his friends Dick Bragg (whose history I know a bit about) & Al (whom I know nothing of) went on a fishing trip. There is no question that fishing was my father’s great passion. He was an all-around outdoor sportsman in his younger years—fisherman, hunter, skier, skater, hiker—but fishing was always first, & he kept at it until his very last years, even when his other outdoor activities were a distant memory.

Derby is a town on the Canadian border, in the northeast part of Vermont (sometimes referred to as the “Northeast Kingdom”—it’s the most undeveloped part of the state, & has areas that verge on wilderness (at least the last time I was in that part of the world, which admittedly is long ago now). I suspect the photo labeled “A Border Town” in Dad’s Photos #9 may well have been Derby or one of the nearby unincorporated villages. The “C.C.C.” abbreviation in the “Forest Shelter” caption below refers to “Civilian Conservation Corps.” This corps was established during the Depression to create work by building state parks & similar projects; my father worked with the C.C.C. in Townsend, VT. My opinion: it’s too damned bad that the “conservatives” can’t see how this type of workforce could do a whole lot of good nowadays—infrastructure anyone? I’ll tell you this: my father didn’t get anything even remotely approaching a sense of “entitlement” from his C.C.C. days, but it did keep him & other working class men going during some tough times, & in the process did good for the public at large.

But off the soapbox. Hope you enjoy these photos.