Ghosts of Xmas Past -- 1967 and 1968 at our house

This was Christmas Day 1967 at our house. I know it had to be 1967 because we only lived in this house 2 years, and I have another set of pictures of Xmas in this house from the following year...

This was "the year of the drums"

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This is why I'm still not convinced that the set of pictures from Christmas at the Burfords' house in Watervliet were taken in 1967. I believe they were taken in 1966 -- although everyone else in the family seems to think otherwise. Because look at John's hair in the pictures from our house in 1967 and the pictures at Burford's...

His hair would have had to have grown awfully fast from that morning at our house until that afternoon at the Burfords'....

Not trying to be contentious or anything -- but since I have the pictures to look at and compare side by side, I am convinced that the big family Christmas at Burfords took place in 1966 -- when John would have been 2 years old -- and not in 1967, when he would have been three. 

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We lived in this house in Hartford during my 8th and 9th grade years in school. It was an interesting story. One of my dad's friends (well, kind of a shirttail relative of ours), Jim Colman, was a lawyer. He was handling a case in probate that involved a couple who had been killed in an automobile accident. The house belonged to them. They had two teenaged children who had gone to live with relatives after their parents died. They were to inherit the house, but could not legally take possession of it until the oldest child turned 18 years old. He was 16 at the time his parents died. So Jim was looking for someone who would live in the house and maintain it until then. Renters are usually more likely to damage a house than to maintain it, but Jim knew my dad. (My parents always rented houses after they had so much trouble selling the house in Bangor -- they were still paying the mortgage on it, in addition to paying rent where we lived.) My parents always maintained, and usually improved, every house they ever lived in. Jim Colman told my dad about this house and asked if we would be willing to live in the house for two years -- rent free -- until the owners' children could move into it. So that's what we did.