My father, Leo A. Gariety was born on November 23, 1903. If he were alive today he would be 106 years old. Here's my father in his "baby dress" for his first professional photo. This was probably taken at English Studios in Sidney, Ohio around his first birthday.
This is a photo I took of my father five years before he died. He was visiting Jack and I in Sierra Vista, Arizona in December of 1974. That's my niece Tracy Thobe (now Share) sitting in his lap.
Now take a look at this container. This was my father's lunch pail when he started first grade not speaking a work of English at the old Willodale One Room School in Darke County Ohio in 1909. My grandparents were French and spoke only French at home. So when my father went off to first grade he had to not only learn how to read and write English but speak it too. Much like today's recent immigrants to the United States. Only thing back then there was not an English as Second Language Teacher. There was just one teacher for around 50 students in grades one thru eight. What a task for both the teacher and the students!
I have always been fascinated by this little lunch pail that is now at least 100 years old. For one thing it is so small. It used to bother me to think that my father must not have had much of a lunch each day he went to school. Today I measured the size of this lunch pail. It has a circumference of five inches. Imagine that.
It has a height of just four inches. This lunch pail could barely hold a thin sandwich plus an apple. No room for a drink. I imagine the students all ran to the school well and used the same tin cup to get a drink of water to wash down their lunch.
My father, Leo A. Gariety was born on November 23, 1903. If he were alive today he would be 106 years old. Here's my father in his "baby dress" for his first professional photo. This was probably taken at English Studios in Sidney, Ohio around his first birthday.
This is a photo I took of my father five years before he died. He was visiting Jack and I in Sierra Vista, Arizona in December of 1974. That's my niece Tracy Thobe (now Share) sitting in his lap.
Now take a look at this container. This was my father's lunch pail when he started first grade not speaking a work of English at the old Willodale One Room School in Darke County Ohio in 1909. My grandparents were French and spoke only French at home. So when my father went off to first grade he had to not only learn how to read and write English but speak it too. Much like today's recent immigrants to the United States. Only thing back then there was not an English as Second Language Teacher. There was just one teacher for around 50 students in grades one thru eight. What a task for both the teacher and the students!
I have always been fascinated by this little lunch pail that is now at least 100 years old. For one thing it is so small. It used to bother me to think that my father must not have had much of a lunch each day he went to school. Today I measured the size of this lunch pail. It has a circumference of five inches. Imagine that.
It has a height of just four inches. This lunch pail could barely hold a thin sandwich plus an apple. No room for a drink. I imagine the students all ran to the school well and used the same tin cup to get a drink of water to wash down their lunch.
Joann: The clothes they put on boys back then always makes me smile.
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