"Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them."

The picture below has been in the front window of a nearby photography studio ever since I've lived here. I love and adore it and always stop for a look.

There they are, a family in the early 1900s, standing in front of a massive Old Growth cedar tree. A note on the photograph states that the tree's circumference is 70 feet. That's a lotta tree!

I am fascinated by their faces. I like to imagine that this was a special outing. They seem to be dressed in their Sunday Best. Having one's picture taken was no doubt a very solemn experience. (I have equally as somber pictures of my Grandmother taken in roughly the same time frame). It may give the (perhaps mistaken) impression that their lives were rather joyless. Maybe being constrained by the amount of clothing they had to wear didn't make for a carefree expression either.

I wonder how old they are? By guessing at the ages of the kids, I judge the adults to be perhaps somewhere in their thirties, unless they married late in their twenties which was not usually the norm in those days. Compared to us, I'm sure they had it tough. I wonder how I'd fare as a pioneer woman? Not well, I suspect.

In trying to learn more about this picture, I found Seattle's Museum Of History And Industry. What a wonderful collection of photographs of days gone by. I wonder if future generations will find our relics as interesting?