This was supposed to have been a post for the 4th Edition of Smile for the Camera at Shades of the Departed, but I missed the deadline. (Somewhere along the line, about three weeks ago, perhaps, I slid behind schedule and have been running to catch up! We’ll see what that means for the Games!). In any event, I decided to go ahead with this post.

My favorite photograph? I don’t know. Certainly this is my most precious photograph. It is the only known surviving photograph of my grandfather, William Edward Gines (1898-1956). He appears to be about in his twenties, which would mean it was taken soon after he migrated to Kansas City, Missouri, from Shreveport, Louisiana, where he was born.

A happy, easy-going man, he worked as a porter at a fancy Kansas City hotel most of his life; the exception being the war years when he worked in a factory. He raised seven children through Depression and war; all but one of them went to college.

It is odd that there should be only one surviving photograph of a twentieth century urban dweller; but so it is, unless somebody I don’t know of has another photo of “Easy Eddie” Gines.