Lottie's Photos: Brothers and Their Gals, Brookdale, 1939

Ed and Lottie, Unknown friend, and Bert and Marge

Dad was always close to his brother Bert. They shared a bedroom as boys and were always helping each other with projects like fixing each other’s cars. Later in life they helped each other with projects at their homes. Bert poured the concrete driveway at Mom and Dad’s Elsie home and he hauled a load of manure in his pickup for Dad’s garden. They went hunting and fishing together with their father, and years later after they’d both married they continued to take hunting trips together. As young men they took their girls on dates together – dinner, dancing, movies, stock car races, and on July 14^th of 1938 they went to the Fleishhacker Zoo in San Francisco and then to see the ice follies.

This photo was taken on June 21st at Brookdale – the vacation home Grandpa Thornally owned near Santa Cruz. Mom and Dad invited Bert and Marge to spend the weekend there. I don’t know who the man in the middle is but it might be one of dad’s cousins. Mom wrote in her diary that she and Marge stayed up till 4 AM talking. Marge told her that Bert was just as passionate as Dad and that she and Bert were planning to go to Reno to get married in October.