Photo of The Month – Jul 2005

A Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Picture contributors: Peggy Blanton Hadden & Phillip White

Before the prevalence of home air conditioning, Sunday afternoons were spent with family or friends out in the yard in the shade of a tree. Most yards in our world had no grass; they were bare, well-packed earth, swept clean by the Missus with a clump of broomstraw or the bushy end of a tree branch.

The location for our photo is Pick and Katie Biggerstaff’s yard and the date is October 8, 1944. They invited a crowd over (not all are shown in the photo) to hear the World Series. Pick ran a drop cord out the window, placed the radio out in the yard where everyone could hear it, made a #2 tin tub full of lemonade, and they all listened as the St. Louis Cardinals beat the St. Louis Browns 2-0. (The cards would wrap it up and win the series the next day.)

Standing are Jim Scruggs and Pick (both Yankees fans). Sitting, from left: Gene Wilson, young Buzzy Biggerstaff, P. D. Causby and Scott Goode. That’s Pick’s ’32 Chevrolet at right.

The photo was included in a scrapbook made by Juanita Crawford Blanton McNabb and sent to her brother Ralph (“Spud”) Crawford who was in service. The scrapbook was put in the hands of Phillip White by Juanita’s daughter Peggy some years ago.