First Family Band

“First Family Band” was scribbled across the back of the old photograph. I turned it around looking again at the faded image. Five smiling faces all dressed in church attire lined up shoulder to shoulder. Behind them loomed a tall, rusty tractor. I looked closer and made out the blurred image of a bird sitting on the tractor seat right where a person ought to have been. It was large. A bird of prey probably. One man wore no shoes although his slacks were pressed and his shirt tucked in. The woman standing on the end held a long pole upright with a French flag flapping at it's top.

I searched carefully through the shoe-box, flipping through all the other photographs. I could find no more of the “First Family Band.” However, I did find one with the shoe-less man in it. He was sitting on the beach, a still ocean behind him. He smiled into the camera with his hands on the side of his face, fingers sticking out of his ears in a child like “nanny, nanny, boo-boo” pose. I chuckled. Who was this man? I wondered if the photographer might have been someone in the band picture. I hoped it had been the flag woman.

I looked around me at the contents of a house spread out across a lawn. A life I knew nothing of, but was given free reign to rifle through. Behind an old sofa I spotted the tip of what looked like a French flag. I hurried over. I had to tug and pull to get the flag out from under a large suitcase. It was still attached to the pole. The same one in the picture. I held it upright and stared as it flapped in the breeze, finally free from the rubble.

A few feet away sat a stuffed bird. I leaned the flag against the sofa and bent down to examine it. It was an owl. I was sure I had found another artifact from the photo, but when I looked closer I could see that the bird in the picture was real. It had it's wings lifted as if it were about to take flight.

I was distracted by voices coming toward me.

“Look lady, I've already told you, none of it is free. If you want something you'll have to buy it,” said the young man that was running the sale.

“I told you, I don't have any money, but he'd want me to have it. I know it,” replied a frail, but determined feminine voice.

I looked at the woman and looked again at the picture. It was her. I was sure of it. The lady holding the flag. She spotted me and suddenly stopped. Her eyes traveled up to the flag blowing in the wind and she smiled.

“Oh look,” she said. “He saved it. All these years and he saved it.”