This old photograph of a boat doesn't seem to have much to do with me today. But it actually has a fairly distant link.
The "Alice" was a stern wheeler that operated on the Mississippi river in the late 19th., until the middle of the last, century. Apparently it had eight staterooms for sleeping passengers. And of course a crew. It was around 180 feet long. Almost two-thirds of a football field.
Alice was my grandmother McCarthy, married to my grandfather Patrick. He owned the boat, up to the time he died in 1940. I never saw the Alice, or my grandfather. But I knew my grandmother well and even made a crayon portrait of her that she kept in a folder on top of the living room piano.
It was my first such endeavor, done at around age five. I had trouble with the nose and flesh tones. The adults didn't seem to notice it.