Keener Observation

With a hundred thousand photographs at my disposal, I could probably spend a lot of time analyzing each one of them and picking the details out for close examination. But, then, the gentle reader would get bored (as if you aren't already!) and lose interest.

So, I'll just do a couple more. But I should point out that I don't get 'bored'. There's always something to do or to think about or to plan. Are you telling me that bored people just blank out and have nothing to think about? Huh? So, if you get 'bored', your brain ceases to perform and you dissolve into a kind of mindless blob? Oh, come on!

I can go off on limitless tangents at the drop of a hat. For example, I was driving back from my brother's house a few weeks ago and while getting gas, I noticed an empty can in the trash. It was an empty can of Budwiser and Clamato. Together. In one can. That someone drank! Clamato is clam juice and tomato juice which is bad enough by itself, but all three together? Holy crap! I looked around for the hidden camera, but there was nothing in sight!

I was busy for hours thinking about this. Someone manufactured this mess and someone else drank it! After a while, I had convinced myself that I had hallucinated and that nothing such existed in this dimension.

But I checked... and it does! Furthermore, there is a Bud Light version! Apparently it is for those discerning consumers who are concerned with their caloric intake. After all, one wouldn't wish to feel overly full after downing a six pack of beer, clam juice, tomato juice, salt and lime! It's my guess they added the salt and lime to try to cover up the actual taste of the $#!+ they just choked out of that can. They probably had to hold a gun on the can to keep it from retching while they inflicted that hash of debris into it's unsuspecting gullet. Can abuse!

But how could anyone be bored while there are things like this to think about?

So, let's look at some photographs. Here's a photograph of my grandfather Roman Pawlak. He's about 50 years old here in 1930. Roman was a farmer all his life in Silver Lake, Minnesota and later Somerset, Wisconsin and he had diary cows right up to when he died at age 85.

There's something about how he's looking at us that makes me think this may have been a mug shot. He's got that hat at such a rakish angle and that's not so much a smile as a smirk. If Silver Lake had a bar, they probably knew him there, maybe they called his name out when he walked in: ROMAN! 'Oh, good, Roman's here, now we'll have a good time.'

He was the third of twelve children born to John Pawlak and Branislawa Lewandowski. The children were known in the area as the dirty dozen. I haven't found out why, yet, and I get a little chill when I think about it. I'm sure it was completely harmless. !!!

He married Wanda Marie Pokornoski, daughter of John Pokornoski (sometimes spelled Pokornowski) and Pelagia Kautz. Here's Wanda, fourth from the left on the top row in 1902 when she was fifteen.

I feel compelled to name the rest of the family, I think it's because the girls are all wearing the same blouse. I'd love to hear that story!

Top Row: Rose 20, Elizabeth 18, Helen 17, Wanda 15, Tekla 13.

Bottom Row: Joseph 8, John 46, Natalie 3, Katarzyna Peizynski 74 - mother of Pelagia, Pelagia 5, Pelagia Kautz 38, Anton 11.

This was an amazingly regular production of children 20, 18, 17, 15, 13, 11, 8, 5 and 3. And when they were done, they decided to take a photograph and I'm so glad they did, because here they all are! And I have proof that my grandmother was very pretty and doesn't look a bit bored. Mom, Dad, Grandma and ten children... no boring allowed.