What’s on my walls? Well, I’m glad you asked.

When I welcome you into my home, you immediately see three large photographs on the entry wall.

The first photograph is of my step-daughter, who passed away in 2019. She and I had gone to Garden of the Gods Recreation Area in Herod, Illinois. We’d planned the trip, but the weather didn’t cooperate. We were rained on almost the entire afternoon. When we got to the most scenic overlook, she walked to the edge of the rock. I called her name and as she turned around, I took this photo of her. She would hate that I display a photo of her with her hair less than perfect.😊

The next picture is an original framed photograph of my great-grandparents (on my mother’s side), Theodore and Wilhelmina (Boenker) Heitgerd taken by St. Charles photographer, Rudolph Goebel, on their wedding day, October 9, 1898. Goebel was a noted St. Charles photographer from 1856 to 1914.

The last large photograph is a black and white photo of a lone bugler, standing in the blowing snow, on a frigid January 1993 morning. As we laid my older brother to rest, he played the haunting “Taps”. My brother had been a Major in the Air National Guard and died of cancer at the age of forty.

When you walk straight ahead into my dining room, you will see on the wall another photograph that is very dear to me. It is a photograph of my aunt, my dad’s older sister, and me standing in front of the closed “Black Oak Grocery” in the little town of Black Oak, Craighead County, Arkansas, where they both grew up. The 2026 population of Black Oak is 259 people.

(Sorry about the glare! Now you know why my brother, who owned the frame shop, always advocated for non-glare museum glass.)

A quilted wall hanging welcomes you into my sewing room. It is an appliqued portion of a 1910 Plat Map from Township 46N Range 4E, showing the property and owners of the land surrounding and near my grandfather’s farm. The little heart button in the center of the map denotes my grandfather’s farm. The 85-acre farm was in their family for almost one hundred years until my grandmother sold the remaining sixty acres in 1978.

I have many more photographs throughout my house, and each one means something to me. Most are of my family, but some are scenic photographs that I have taken over the years.

Oh, and these are just my dogs.