How I Found My Family

Iris Walker, David Walker, Debbie Jones, Summer of 1958

This picture was taken during the height of my childhood love affair with with Franklin County, Illinois. For 3 weeks every or every other summer, my parents would take me "back home". Here I would spend hours playing with cousins and exploring the countryside as much as I could.
The children in the picture are my cousins, Iris and David Walker, and myself, out playing on the tree swing in the front yard on their farm west of West Frankfort. It was a long swing and a lot of fun. It looks like David had a cat that was escaping as the picture was taken. I also remember picking blackberries in the bushy area behind here as well as jumping over a large snake that was skittering by one day as we played.
These kinds of fun were totally foreign to a girl raised in the brand spanking new suburban bedroom community of La Mirada - just a few miles southeast of Los Angeles.