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You can see it in the Memoir section of this website, and clicking on the book cover will take you to the Amazon sales page, if you’d like to order. Or click on this title: The Girl Who Talked Too Much.

Meanwhile, here are five little girls in 1945, enjoying watermelon in the backyard; from left, Kippy, Linda, our cousin Mary, me, and Lee. Afterward, Mother could just line us up and hose us off, if we got too sticky.

The Girl Who Talked Too Much is now live on Amazon and can be ordered on the memoir page in paperback or ebook. Somewhere up there, Kippy is as excited as I am!

Below, she’s wearing a favorite shirt that Mother painted the state of Florida on. You can see most of the word “Florida” if you try really hard.

Kippy holds a drawing she made of the fireplace she sits in front of in our mother’s house in Central Florida. It was made during Christmas time; witness the decorated tree to the right and the stockings.

A few days ago, I posted a photo of a coach full of merrymakers going to a football game in 1898. My grandfather was aboard. But I saw the flag with its RMC (Rush Medical College) was backwards, and I thought I’d neglected to flip it horizontally in PhotoShop.

I could do nothing about it for a few days; I couldn’t access that program because its scratch discs were full, and I had to get Bill, my superhero, to help me. He finally had time to get to it yesterday, and this morning I went to the photo and flipped it.

Lo and behold, when I did, the flag was corrected, but I could see a panel on the lower right side of the coach, ornately lettered with the name of the manufacturer….(It says “Blakeslee’s Columbian Coach Co., Western Avenue and Madison Street”)….and the flip had put THAT inside out. So I was right all along, and it’s not my fault that

a) the guy was holding the flag the wrong way, and

b) the letters on the flag were readable from both sides.

Odd that it doesn’t state the city where it was made! Rush Medical College is still in existence as part of Rush University, and it’s in Chicago, which apparently went without saying….I mean, what other city was there, right?

By the early Spring of 1945, Kippy was almost three years old, and could walk on her own. Behind schedule, maybe, but she got there. Her mental limitations had been diagnosed. Mother resolved to teach her everything she could learn, and enlisted the help of her siblings. Read her story in The Girl Who Talked Too Much, available soon on Amazon.

This was as good a restoration as I could make, I’m afraid. Grandpa in his uniform, ready to deploy to Puerto Rico, where he served as a medic in the Spanish American War. He hadn’t finished his medical degree yet, but volunteered to serve. It was a short war, only about a year long.

1944: We were visiting grandparents near Taunton, Massachusetts. I think this was Uncle Aldie’s car, but I don’t remember what kind it was. I got to “drive,” Linda was stuck in the back with Kippy, and two cousins were along for the “ride.”

1898: I restored this photo of a crowd of students on their way to a football game. My grandfather is on top, 7th from left, in profile looking left. At the time, he was an undergraduate at Reed Medical College, I believe. Notice the RMC on the banner, seen from the back. Actually, I should have flipped the photo, but my PhotoShop quit working before I could! If I can get it to work properly, I’ll repost!

1901: My grandfather, Dr. B.V. Caffee, was called to treat Patty Brady’s cut knee at her home in New York City, by the policeman who stands behind her. Dr Caffee was an intern at Brooklyn Hospital at the time. He was able to stitch the wound on site, I learned from the Ambulance slip that he kept. He was an amateur photographer and had set up his camera on a tripod to catch the scene.

I inherited many of his negatives and prints, and was able to restore the scene using PhotoShop. This one was in an album. His story is included in my new book, The Girl Who Talked Too Much.