Mae's Real Stories

Our mother loved to draw. She had majored in art during the three years she attended university, years before she married and had children. She always drew our pictures. Since I'm writing this in response to Elaine's stories for Theo, I have chosen the picture above, which shows Elaine as a baby.

My mother always had lots of art materials and projects for us to do, so I also loved to draw when I was a child. She also had a lot of special skills and imagination, which we attributed to her artistic skill. For example, Elaine remembered the wonderful pies she made. I also remember that she could divide a pie into any number of pieces she needed: 5, 10, 7. And they seemed to come out equal sizes. She called this her artistic eye. Our father always expressed his admiration for this ability.

Our mother loved to imagine the colors that were concealed in black and white photos. Later she applied her skill to television pictures. She would tell us what color things would have been, if the TV images had been in color. You see, for the first 10 years or more of TV broadcasting, only shades of grey appeared on TV -- that's what is meant by "black and white" TV. After a while, a few people bought color TVs, and more and more broadcasts were in color. Today, the only black and white broadcasts are of old films or TV shows that were never in color.

Here is an example of a black and white TV image that she would have "colored" -- it shows Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, the stars of one of our family favorite shows. (from http://www.fiftiesweb.com/)