In the Days of My (Extreme) Youth

I hope you all had a chance to visit with your friends and family for Christmas.  The Barat family had a nice get-together in Wilmington.  While I was there, my mother, who just recently moved out of her condo and moved in with my youngest sister's family, gave me a bag full of things that she had "uncovered" (or, more accurately, recovered) as she was gathering together and selling off stuff that she had accumulated over the years.  Most of it belonged to my Dad, including one of his old slide rules -- not one of the wimpy little plastic ones that became common during the sunset years of the device, but a real hefty one -- and the spiked belt he used as a Jesuit novitiate.  Mom's major contribution to the stash, meanwhile, was an old "Baby Album."  If you're old enough, your parents may have kept one for you, detailing facts about your birth, early years, childhood milestones, and so forth.  I imagine that they have long since passed out of favor, replaced by higher-tech memory-makers.  In any event, I took some of the items in the album and digitized them.

They didn't fool around back in 1962 when it came to identifying babies' genders by color!

The first "official" picture ever taken of me, on the day of my baptism, November 1, 1962.  I seem to recall that I had that rabbit toy for quite a while as a kid.

Pictures from my first Christmas.  At the time, we were living just across the Hudson from Manhattan in North Bergen, NJ.  My parents had been married for 1 1/2 years and my Dad was working for Mobil Oil Company.

Christmas 1963, the last one for which I was an only child.  My sister Jenny was on the way and would arrive in three months.

I'll post some more mementos when I have time.