Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Family Photographs - Post 10: Gramps and Mom on an Elephant

I'm posting old family photographs from my collection on Wednesdays, but they won't be wordless posts like others do - I simply cannot have a wordless post.


Here is one of the most precious (to me) images from my Seaver family collection:


The man in front on top of the elephant is my grandfather, Lyle Lawrence Carringer (1891-1976). I think that the child on his right and on the same side of the elephant is my mother, Betty Virginia (Carringer) Seaver (1919-2002), but I'm not 100% sure. I don't know who the other persons are. I also don't know what the elephant's name was.

This photograph was taken in about 1923, probably at the San Diego Zoological Society grounds in Balboa Park. This photograph was in the Carringer family photograph collection handed down from my grandparents.

The world-renowned San Diego Zoo has been a fixture in the lives of my grandparents, parents, my own family, and my daughter's families since it opened in 1916. The Zoo was only about two miles to the west of the Carringer family home on 30th Street in San Diego, and we could often hear animal sounds (lion roars, monkey screams, bird squawks, etc) at the house when the wind was from the west (which is the prevailing wind direction in San Diego), especially on the second story of the building where I grew up.

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