Friday, December 01, 2006

More from the cedar chest

First I have another picture of Albert Boardman Earle (great grandfather) standing beside his car. This is a much better view of the car.

Next I have the earliest known sample of my writing. From this you can tell that my future as a novelist is very promising. It is my first published piece.

Here is the cover of the book. Actually it is an anthology of stories written by all the students in Miss Crater's Country School, located at 3526 Meadowside Road, Baltimore, Maryland. (The telephone number was Gwynn 532. Yes, that's all of it!)

I was all of 5 years old in June of 1951 when this book was published. My contribution is found on page 9. I'm sure it was typed by my teacher.

In case you can't make that out, here is the text:

Fishing

One time we went for our vacation up in Maine. We went in our car half the way, and in a big boat the rest of the way. We took the car on the boat.

We went fishing in the ocean. We went fishing from the pier, and some days we went fishing in a boat.

Betty came up with us and she went fishing, too. We caught Pollock, and I caught more than she did.

Johnny Earle

Finally for today, I have a picture of a happy couple taken by the U.S. Navy on the occasion of him graduating from flight school (getting his wings).

Ain't they cute??

8 comments:

Peter said...

Yeah they sure are cute!!!!

Early 1930s Ford or Chevy would be my guess on the car BTW.

Badabing said...

hey Duke, I didn't know you were from B'more...that's not too far from where I live.

kenju said...

I would say one of you is very cute and one of you is handsome - but I won't say which is which.....LOL

Anonymous said...

Another nice post. And another salute to the man in uniform.

Christina said...

I love the story. You were quite a writer even at age 5! I can see you were very proud of yourself for catching more fish than your sister.

Nice pic, too. Who is that handsome guy?

Nankin said...

Loved your post. It's always amazing what memories are stirred up by old pictures.

Yeah, you really were a cute kid.

Candace said...

Get that story copyrighted!
Wonderful pics, wonderful memories. Thanks for sharing these with us, John. (I'm letting Mommy use my Blogger account today.)

kenju said...

I thought of you yesterday in TJ Maxx. They had a wooden cut-out of the word
"Cherish".