Childhood Photos

This page is filled with photos from John B. Southard, Jr and Elizabeth "Betty" Ann Southard Stokes' childhood. You will also find an index to the thirty plus (40+) pages in our PHOTO GENEALOGY. All you have to do is CLICK on a link in our index to learn more about a branch of our family. This is a work in progress. As more information is discovered, it will be added to our blog. There are also some surprises. Some photos will magically take you to an important piece of world, national or family history.

"Santa Claus"

by Leigh Hanes

"Now, this is the thing I'd like to know:

How Santa Claus can step in snow

With a world of toys upon his back

And leave not the slightest hint of a track.

How one so big and round and fat

Can slip through a hole that would choke a rat

And smoke so thick it can hide the trees,

And never even cough, or sneeze!"

The fact is son, nobody knows

What Santa looks like or where he goes,

For Santa Claus is a sprite that lives

In the heart that loves, in the heart that gives

He may be here and he may be there;

You are likely to find him anywhere.

But really, folk are so very blind

They can't see sprites in the heart or mind.

They can't see the spirit that gives and loves,

So we picture a thing in coat and gloves

Like a jolly old man who is round and fat,

And we love the thing, and we look at that;

But the Santa himself we never see . . .

The Santa in you, the Santa in me.

(This was cut from the Hopkinsville New Era

by Bess Hopson Wolfe

She put it in a small dime store frame and wrote:

"To Johnny & Betty Southard

Lots & lots of love from your devoted Grandmother"

December 12, 1955)

Wisdom from favorite childhood stories:

from Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster, 1912

The world is full of happiness, and plenty to go round, if you are only willing to take the kind that comes your way. The whole secret is in being pliable.

from Willie Without by Margaret Moore, 1951

The world's much smaller than you think. Made up of two kinds of people - simple and complicated . . . . The simple ones are contented. The complicated ones aren't.

from The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli, 1949

He had found out that the harder it was to do something, the more comfortable he felt after he had done it.

from Further Tales of Mr. Pengachoosa by Caroline Rush, 1967

People nearly always know the right answers, they just like someone else to tell them.

from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, 1865

Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.

from A Gathering of Days by Joan W. Blos, 1979

Once I might have wished for that: never to grow old. But now I know that to stay young always is also not to change. And that is what life's all about - changes going on every minute, and you never know when something begins where it's going to take you.

from Dobry by Monica Shannon, 1934

Very new things and very old things are much alike. Everything is a circle. Both ends meet. There is nothing much older or more wrinkled-looking than a baby just born.

from Dominic by William Steig, 1972

Life was suddenly too sad. And yet it was beautiful. The beauty was dimmed when the sadness welled up. And the beauty would be there again when the sadness went. So the beauty and the sadness belonged together somehow.

from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1911

At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done - then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.

from The Chatterlings by Michael Lipman, 1928

A prudent person avoids unpleasant things; but a wise man overcomes them.



A good read for Middletown's history:
"Middletown's Days & Deeds", by Edith Wood, c: 1946