Duttinger History

I found this photo going through my boxes for Bethany's birthday.  It's been fun the past few months to post old photos on people's birthdays, after getting inspired for Tammy's birthday (though no one gets the treatment like SHE DID :).  And some of my cousins and I have been inspired to post TBT of the family.  That's my Dad, his brother Kenny who passed away six months after him and my Uncle Dave, who currently looks enough like my Dad did to be startling.  The back of the photo says Dorsey Road.  I got this in a bag years ago from my Grandma, who doles family stuff out on the sly, acting like each grandkid is the MOST important (which I get...she has well over 20!), but she sensed I am a guardian of the photographic past, and gave me some rare ones, including of Grandpa who died when I was little.
Dad and Kenny always looked and even sounded so similar...look how they are standing the same!!  They were 1 and 2, a year and two weeks apart.  (Kenny had the same birthday as Adam) and Davey was number 6.  Dave was always kind of the outcast with the six boys... mostly because he didn't party, got a steady job and didn't gamble.  He has a nice home in suburbia and retired after many years from GM.  The rest of the guys, including my Dad until his mid-30s, drifted from job to job, drinking and/or doing drugs, but mostly besides Uncle Marty, who is number 8, drinking.  Both Uncle Kenny and Uncle Billy passed from obviously drinking related diseases.  Or at least all the drinking didn't help.  But I also don't think it's a coincidence that the three brothers who served in Viet Nam all died young.

Uncle Dave is the only brother left interested in family much.  My Uncle Terry has always been the drifter, the one to blow off family the most.  He was in Las Vegas for years, though he's back.  I've sent them all Christmas cards for years, the only kid to do it, but I've lost track of his address.  He had curly hair and a Camaro always growing up.  And a diamond earring.  And Uncle Marty, the baby, is still in the drug rabbit hole.

Looking at this photo, is seems so far removed from me.  My kids will see this photo and feel like it's ancient history of people they have no clue about.  I talk about Dad with Adam especially, but there's no memory of him.  For a couple of years, he called the house in Granby Grandpa's house, a removed memory of some type.  But not now.

I sure wish I inherited Dad's skinny genes, but we girls are all built like his sister, my Aunt Peggy.   Well, kind of.  Carolyn really is.... it's like twin bodies.  I'm a combo of my Mom's small frame and the Polish chunk.  Aunt Elaine had the chest, too, but had a chest reduction.  She, like most of her brothers, liked to party, her more than anyone I think, but Aunt Peggy also did the suburbia thing.  Her husband, my Uncle Carl, is stable and normal and I think that kept her on track.  She was always beautiful growing up, like her daughter, the blond Cousin Kerry.  A hairdresser and a little, um, blonde.  When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time with that family.

I see this photo and it makes me miss my Dad of course, but because it was before I knew him, it's less painful.  It's more interesting to think about him as a kid whose truck driver Dad drank too much and his frazzled Mom was burnt out from 8 kids in 12 years.  I would be, too!

But you can see also see the Dad I knew in this photo.  The nice jeans he always enjoyed.  Even if he could afford two pairs versus a wardrobe, he wanted good jeans no matter how poor.  He wasn't into expensive stuff or material stuff, but he needed his jeans to be good.  And the open smile.  And the hair.  Until the end, Dad was vain about his mane.  He loved his coif.  Him and Carolyn used to argue about the Aqua Net in high school. That's a great memory.  And he wasn't a shorts guy.  He was paranoid about his skinny legs and liked his jeans, though he wore cut offs around our house, of course.

I spent the majority of my life NOT with the Duttinger family, having moved here, but whenever I get going I realize how much they impacted my life in the first 8 years and even after, in a more removed way.  Extended family shapes us in ways I never realized fully, because I wasn't raised with them and was intentionally removed from them to escape their influence.  And I will admit, there is plenty of drinking going on with a good half of my cousins.  Most of them are functioning and just the one went to state prison for robbing a convenience store and DWI, but they all love to party on some level.  And I'm not completely innocent on that front....