This has always been one of my favorite photos. I love so many things about it! The car is fantastic. My cute Grandpa standing on the running board in his overalls is so adorable. My great-grandmother, Naomi, looks especially beautiful and a little bit fierce. Her hair is so awesome. Baby Janice, is just being a baby, totally uninterested. Great-grandpa Peterson looks so relaxed, dapper, and self-assured.
And yet, here they are, a young family, just beginning and about to endure the Great Depression with the rest of America. Rulon and Naomi would go on to have four more children during the decade of the 1930s. Rulon would make some brave and risky employment changes that would pay off and keep his family fed. Naomi would sell eggs and work hard to be frugal both in expenditures and in efforts to bring in a little money. They would weather the storm well.
But in the Spring/Summer of 1929, when Great-grandpa was working as a car salesman, and they were a young family of four, Rulon and Naomi had no idea what they were about to face together.
No one did.