The Old Photo in the Attic

Every time I returned to my boyhood home in Kokomo to visit Mom and Dad I would eventually find myself in the attic rummaging to see what treasure had previously escaped me, or been added.

It was a “cold attic”, meaning the temperature approximated the outside - cold in winter and like a sauna in summer. Insulation showed between rafters, so it was important to watch ones step. A few areas had been covered with boards, and that is where most of the stuff had been stored.

Many of the items were stimulants to memories of things gone by, like the box packed years ago with the first curtains to hang in our bedroom in 1950. They were of leafless trees, black skeletal trunks against a white background, cold and stark - an accurate interpretation of an Indiana winter.

There was the stand-alone floor model ash tray, an “art deco” model with a gaudy red body trimmed in flashy chrome. Don and I had given it to Mom for Christmas in about 1951.The top surface, a circular flying saucer shape with space on the outer edge to set drinks, sat on a conical pedestal with a chrome base. In the center, under a chrome plated handle, were chrome plated grooves for holding cigarettes around the edges of a chrome platted trap-door with a chrome plated button. Push the button, and the door opened to drop ashes and butts into a tray hidden below. For a lot of years it was an out-of-date piece of junk in the attic. Today it would be a sought-after collector item.

I made yet another trip to the attic in about 1992. Back in a corner, hidden behind some boxes, sat a large framed picture turned against the wall. I pulled it out to see a photo of a man sitting with his arm resting on a pedestal and a woman standing beside him. They were staring out toward me, but focused a bit to one side. He wore a beard, striped pants, black coat and vest; she stood in a floor length print dress that had an odd repeating design that suggested zodiac symbols. I guessed the photo to have been taken more than a hundred years before, possibly in about 1880.

My first thought was that it had been something Dad bought at one of the auctions he frequented, and it had been put in the attic and forgotten. He died in 1985 and Mom probably didn’t ventured up there any more. I took it down and showed it to her. She said it was a photo that our cousin, Jake, had brought back to Kokomo years ago. Jake died the year after Dad and the few personal items he left were up there in the attic, most of them in a old trunk.

"Jake" Jacobs, c. 1930, Connersville, IN

Jake had always been close to his Aunt Della (Jacobs) Frank, my grandmother. I think he was the only child of a fragmented family of grandma's older brother, and she "adopted" him. She came to live with Mom and Dad before I was born, and he followed her to Kokomo shortly after the war. Born William Thomas Jacobs in 1903, he was twenty years younger than grandma, and the same age as her oldest son. He grew up near them in Catawba, Kentucky.

He and his wife, Babe, stayed in Kokomo for a year or two and moved to Toledo, Ohio. They were eventually divorced and Jake showed back up in Kokomo in 1951. He got a job at the Stellite factory shortly after arriving, worked there till retirement and lived in Kokomo the rest of his life.

Jake was a eccentric character who stood only five feet tall, wore bib over-alls most of his life and expressed himself in a flow of colorful language, much of it with a blue tint. He rented a single room for many years just eight blocks west of us on Sycamore Street, and frequently stopped by the house. I never saw much of him after Grandma suffered a stroke. That was in 1958, right after my high school graduation, and ten years before she died. Mom said she’d see him from time to time after that. I don’t remember the last time I was with Jake, but he was fairly old and wrinkled.

The old photo Jake brought back from Kentucky was of my Great grandparents, Charles and Julia Jacobs, It measured about 16 by 24 inches. The bottom had some water damage, but the rest was okay. I took it out of the frame and packed it back to Alaska where a photo shop produced a useable image. I salvaged something for posterity, and it was also a great find because I had just become interested in genealogy. The photo is the only one I have of direct ancestors who died before I was born.