November 24, 2018:
Mom and pop in their rocking chair years, literally rocking in their literal rocking chairs.
He's gone stocky: burgeoning belly beneath ubiquitous overalls. The Farm Patriarch without a farm.
She's thin but plain, hair pinned back and died, summer dress, the regulation Southern Old Lady uniform you can probably still see today. Age, children and farming have muted her beauty, probably in that order, until the smooth clear skin of her honeymoon picture is now mottled and slack. Yet she's still lovely, and the intelligence beneath her wire-rims outshines the day.
It's a peculiar picture. Shot from distance, as if the horizontality of the porch itself were the subject. Perhaps that's a new addition to the house, I dunno.
It's December, 1955. The young woman forced into exile by that man is now eighteen. She's been locked in closets for years, beaten, raped. In all her life she'll never have a porch like that, although, I think, more than anything else that was her chief ambition.