The Woods Is Full Of ‘Em

Friday, January 09, 2026

Buck and Judy

My mother's cousin Buck Jones and his wife Judy and some of their kids and grands. They lived in Michigan when I was growing up and I remember our family having a lot of fun with their family. Now they live in Sarasota, Florida, so Mom and Dad were able to spend time with Buck and Judy in the winters after they retired.

Here are two memories I have of Buck and Judy from my childhood --

They invited us over to their house (about 15 miles away from ours). However, they neglected to tell us they had moved to a different house! I don't remember if their house was empty or if there was someone else living there. As I recall, we went all the way back home before we were able to call Buck and Judy to find out where they lived now. (Remember, this was long before the age of cell phones.)

A few years later, we did the same thing to them -- but we had not moved. We had our neighbors across the street come and sit on our porch and pretend they lived there now and didn't know where we had moved to. Meanwhile, we were across the street on their screened-in porch watching. I don't remember if we revealed ourselves before Buck and Judy left or not.

* * *

Buck and Judy had three children (their fourth was born after they moved to Florida, I think), and we had three children in our family. One evening when they had been at our house visiting and were getting ready to leave, they had already sent the kids out to the car, but the grown-ups were still standing near the front door talking. My mom had secretly told my brother John to sneak out to their car (a station wagon) and get in with Buck and Judy's kids and kind of hide in the back end of the car.

When they left, I don't know how far down the road they got before the kids couldn't keep the secret any more and burst out laughing, and the jig was up. I guess they turned around and brought John back home -- I really don't remember for sure. I just remember we all got a good laugh out of it. We always had a lot of laughs any time we were with Buck and Judy's family.

Thursday, January 08, 2026

Red and Wathada in Florida

After they retired, my parents bought a "park model" trailer in a retirement community in Avon Park, Florida. (I think before that they had an RV that they parked in a community at Bonnet Lake...? Not sure of the details of all that.)

I think these are pictures of Bonnet Lake (and their camper, maybe?)

Avon Park

These pictures were taken in the living room of their trailer at Avon Park.

They spent winters in Florida and summers in Michigan from the time they retired (1997) until Red's death (2011).

Wednesday, January 07, 2026

Old Faithful

I'm assuming this is Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park. My dad took the pictures.

(I used an app to make collages instead of posting 13 separate pictures.)

Here are some more Yellowstone pictures

Tuesday, January 06, 2026

Old Tucson

I don't have any idea when this trip to Old Tucson (Arizona) took place. Maybe some of my folks can tell me... The people in the pictures are my grandparents, Lester and Cleffie Burford.

Here's a little caveat -- The scanner that I used for these negatives worked really well, but the pictures came out with a blue-ish tint when I uploaded them to my computer. So I have used the photo apps on my computer to try to correct the color on most of them. I'm not very good at that. So that's my excuse for why the pictures, even if they are from the same roll of film, do not look consistent.

Monday, January 05, 2026

Where Do We Go From Here?

It seems like I've covered most all of the family history information and photos on this blog and in my books, so I'm at a sort of crossroads...

One thing I don't think I've mentioned before is that in addition the truckload (literally) of family photos and family history information I received from my mother back in 2017...

...there was also a box of negatives. You know, from way back when cameras used actual FILM. At some point, after I had put together a bunch of photo albums...

...I purchased a negative viewer device and started reviewing all those negatives. Some of them were duplicates of pictures I had in hard copy, but a lot of them were new to me. The device allowed me to not only view the negatives, but also to upload them to my computer. Turns out there were over 6000 of them!

Most of those negatives were not actually family history, as such. They are more recent photos. (Although "recent" to me, at age 71, is not the same as it is for younger folks.) Anyway, what I think I'm going to do now is to start posting those negatives, not in any particular historical order, but more like the way I discovered them as I pulled them out of the box -- random places and times. Maybe it will be fun and interesting for my readers. Maybe not. Let's just try it and see where it goes, shall we?