Highland Park, Illinois, 1962
With my purse in hand and standing beside our car, I must have been ready to go shopping.
It reminds me of my maternal grandmother handing me “a few dollars,” as she would say, to buy something for myself. She did this well into my early adulthood. Momo always told me to buy one piece of clothing at a time, to slowly build a wardrobe. I have often thought she said this because she had not been able to do that when she was growing up.
Many miles were covered in that car. It was a two-tone, two-door 1958 Chevrolet Bel Air, and my parents had it for about four years.
This photograph was taken in Highland Park, Illinois, when I was three years old. I do not remember the moment the photo was taken, but I remember the surroundings clearly. We lived in an upstairs apartment in the house behind me.
It looks like my mother is sitting inside the car on the passenger side, which makes me think my father may have taken the photograph.
