As usual, the youngest of the three Green children, the one who lives in the parents’ home, is pouring through old pictures, uncovering ones that, if I had ever seen, are lost to my memory.
An astonishingly large number of the photos in her possession was taken in the backyard of 13 Maple Street, Binghamton, NY, the home of my maternal grandmother, Gertrude Williams, and her sister, Adenia Yates. My mom grew up there, and my sisters and I went there every lunchtime during the school year.
The house was tiny, the backyard puny. Yet there are several pictures of well over a dozen people in that postage stamp yard.
This is my mom-to-be, Gertrude Elizabeth Williams, who later went by Trudy because she hated her first name. My father-in-waiting, Leslie Harold Green, and Trudy met at that house, when he brought flowers to 13 Maple Street, in Binghamton’s more northerly First Ward, instead of 13 Maple Avenue, on the city’s South Side.
I’m just guessing they’re not married yet, because they look SO young. And happy.
And Les has this smug look that I’m told his future mother-in-law simply did not like. I think Trudy found it appealing after being under the thumb of her mother and aunt, and for much of her life, by her grandmother and uncle.