Snapshot & memories: Family outfits of 1972

This four-generations photo was taken on Sept. 16, 1972, which makes me — the short blond dude on the right — 21 months old. I look very much in need of a nap, which is usually the case these days, too.

It's that era's typical line-the-family-up-on-the-lawn Kodak snapshot. The location is the house on Oak Crest Lane in Wallingford, at which I would come to reside about 13 years later. Mowing that lawn became my job. The septic vent (far left) was a little lower in the ground by the mid-1980s, so we put a bucket over it to keep from inadvertently running it over with the mower.

From left are:

• My great-grandfather, Howard Horsey Adams (1892-1985), who is enjoying an adult beverage
• My great-grandmother, Greta Miriam Chandler Adams (1894-1988)
• My grandmother, Helen Chandler Adams Ingham (1919-2003)
• My mom, Mary Margaret Ingham Otto (1948-2017)

It's humbling when you consider that the combined lifetimes of the folks in this photo span everything from the Spanish-American War to World War I to the 1918 influenza pandemic to the Great Depression to the creation and dissolution of the Soviet Union to World War II and straight on through to the moon landing, personal computers, iPhones, the first Black U.S. president, the Trump era and COVID-19. This group has seen a combined (counts on one hand) two Philadelphia Phillies world championships.