Belonging

Belonging

Waiting in the Town Hall to pay my water bill, I’d let it sit on the counter till the last day as usual. I was perusing the old pictures on the wall to pass the time. I was not a native of Trenton, though I always felt like one, and had lived here for forty years. However, to “natives” forty years doesn’t really count... My family came from nearby Weatherford.

The pictures were fascinating. I could see some of the buildings I knew, the way they were in the old days, other buildings, gone now, yet I knew exactly what had replaced them. So exciting to see how the town had grown and changed. I loved it. The people dressed in old dress up clothes or work clothes depending on the pictures, some actually resembling people I knew.

There was one picture of a woman in particular who looked so familiar. She was standing on the steps of the town hall, the very steps I had just walked up. Her hair looked light brown, though hard to tell for sure in a black and white photo, and there was something about her face that just looked so familiar. She was dressed in the clothes of the age, she would have been, at the most, twenty in the picture, as old as a great grandmother to me.

As I stood there, a clerk walked by so I asked if there was any information on who the pictures were of. She said she thought they had stickers on the back, that I could take it down and check, if I liked.

And there it was, “Miss Darla Evans, on the way in to get a marriage license. Photo taken by her fiancé, John Edwards.” My Great Grandparents.