My father died in 1974 and my mother left this world in 1999 at the age of 80. My sister Martha died in 2004 (Mom had a novena going to St. Martha when Pop was getting the shit shot out of him In Italy after combat in North Africa and Sicily).

I was left bags of stuff and mountains of photos and a bunch of letters that I had written home to my mother when I served in the Marine Corps (my mother saved them all and always wrote back). I started to go through some of the bags looking for some photos of naked women I caught with my Kodak Instamatic in Mexico, Japan, and Hong Kong but I'm thinking Mom screamed and threw them all out when I sent them home. I have bags of old photos that I haven't gone through yet and soon I will jot down the names of the people that I know for future generations as many of the photographs date back to the 1930s. I see my parents and my grandparents and some cousins and some aunts and uncles and they all have something in common - they're all dead but I should write something down on the back of the photographs so that in years to come, somebody can say, "That's old Uncle Shithead Larry and he's dead!"

Anyway, these are kids from 1948. My late sister Martha is pushing three and I'm just learning how to crap my nappies while screaming for milk.