Greenhorn lineup

My dad died five years ago last Wednesday and I had some kind of long, blathery post planned about that and I downloaded this photooo to [maybe] go with it. Fortunately, some much happier news pre-empted that post. Even though my original post wouldn’t have been anything approaching maudlin, you are happy about that.

These guys are the Veteran Greenhorns, apparently arranged in order of height. I actually know (or have known) all of these old coots except for the tall dude at the far right. And I mean tall. Grandroobly was six feet tall and this guy towers over him. Anyway. There’s Ott McNott, Pete Sherman, Lewiegee, Boult, Jim Sherman, Grandroobly (aka my dad), aaaannnndd… I’m sure the tall dude’s name is somewhere in my memory banks but my brain’s I/O is not quite dredging it out. Is it Johnson? Maybe The Commander will comment… At least three of these guys are still alive: Ott and the Sherman brothers. Lewiegee, Boult, and Grandroobly are dead. I don’t know about the tall dude.

These guys grew up together and, as high school students, they raised their own kind of hell. I don’t know exactly what that all is. What I know about it is that they enjoyed tromping around out in the woods. One of Grandroobly’s favorite stories to tell his granddaughters was about the time some of the VGs tried to drive somebody’s crappy old vee-hickle over to somewhere north of Newberry to go camping. Well. A wheel came off along the way and they eventually figured that out when they saw it bouncing along the road in front of them. As Grandroobly told it, one of the VG’s, namely Pete, was not there but he had heard the story so many times that he thought he was!

The VGs all scattered off to college and then WWII but somehow they stayed friends forever and I grew up with some of their children…

Yeah, these guys look sorta like Stormy Kromer. The plaid wool shirts and all. This was the late 1930s and this clothing was what you wore when you wanted to go out and play around in the yooperland woods [or whatever those guys were actually doing] back then. 70-some years later, the GG is emulating these guys with all of his Stormy Kromer gear. And my California beach urchin mentioned at xmas that there is somewhat of a trend amongst some of her male contemporaries to wear that kind of kind of gear. Is the Millennial generation emulating their grandparents? Far be it from me to know, I know *very* few boys from the Millennial generation…

Me? I love my new-age clothing. Some of it is wool and some of it is more hi-tech. And some of it is just, well, DKNY tights underneath JCPenny cotton/spandex leggings. Go figger. The point is that I can easily make myself warm, at least for walking or skiing or whatever, down to the single digits. But I do have to keep moving to stay warm. That is all.

4 Responses to “Greenhorn lineup”

  1. Margaret Says:

    Handsome group!! It’s almost 60 here today, but the nice day turned into rain, so nothing got done outside. I guess I’ll have to let go of that and just enjoy my break. 🙂

  2. Dr. Michigan Says:

    do the girls still go swimming in Lake Superior every morning up there?

  3. kayak woman Says:

    Not sure who Dr. Michigan is or if he/she is spam (seems pretty spammish) but I approved the comment anyway and the answer is “sometimes”.

  4. Paulette Says:

    LOVE this photo of these men. The footwear is amazing. I wonder who took the photograph.