What a familiar picture this was to me as a child, Sherd and Laura Goff and all ten children who survived into adulthood.

      But it wasn’t until my grandmother, Leora (the dark-haired oldest daughter in the back row) died and left her handwritten memoirs that I learned the story behind the picture. Her memories even lured my sister and me to pay a visit to the county-seat town of Audubon.

      “We always had a big celebration of the 4th of July,” Leora wrote. “Nearly every town or burg had something doing. We used to get up at daybreak, get our work done—farm chores, and get ready to go to town by a team with a wagon or buggy. We would be in time to see the big parade and stay ’til the fireworks, generally, and then do farm chores when we got home. We were all tired but glad to have a big day.

      “The 4th of July when I was 16 years old,” that would have been in 1907, “we eight older ones, Merl, Wayne, Georgia, Jennings, Rolla, Ruby, Willis, and I took the team and wagon with the feed for the horses, and our father and mother and the two youngest, Perry and Clarence, went in a one-horse buggy and had our basket dinner with them.” . . . 

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“While we were eating our dinner,” wrote Leora at least seventy years later, “the folks thought of having a family picture taken while we were all together. Pa was the only one of the men or boys who had a tie on, and Rolla wanted to go barefoot as he claimed his shoes hurt his feet. I expect they did as he went barefoot most always. So we went to the picture studio for the picture and Rolla’s bare feet showed in the picture. It was the only family picture we ever had taken of us all.”

      Her mother Laura was pregnant then with Virgil Cleon, who would only live one year. In the picture, Laura is wearing her wedding ring on her middle finger, just as she did as an elderly woman.

      Sports contests began at 1:30—races (even one for fat men of at least 210 pounds), shot put, tug of war, sack race, pole vault, wheel barrow race, a drill team, and a baseball game between Audubon and Dedham on the grounds near the electric light plant. (Audubon won 7-1.) There were cash prizes but no Goffs were named among the winners.

      Although the sun was hot and the mercury ran up to 95 degrees in the government thermometer, there was a delightful breeze in that hilltop park, which is still a lovely park today.

      Well into her eighties or early nineties, Leora Goff Wilson remembered, “The day ended with a rain shower in the late p.m. There were no paved roads so we came home in the mud. Ruby wore white shoes [they don’t look white in the photo] and she got them muddy, but all seemed happy anyway.”

      Is there any wonder that this old photograph, taken Independence Day 1907, is one of my earthly treasures? And the story behind it made for a very pleasant day trip to the county seat town of Audubon, Iowa, including visiting their famous Albert the Bull and the Plow in the Oak.

The entire story was published in The Des Moines Register, July 4, 1997.

It was first aired on Our American Stories, July 2, 2021. (Produced by Montie Montgomery, who has produced most of the stories I’ve recorded for them. He’s even asked me to do another one!)

If you’ve read  Leora’s Early Years: Guthrie County Roots, you know this story. The Goff family lived in Audubon County only six years, about the time Leora graduated from 8th grade, but so many favorite stories came from those years–riding to town for piano lessons on a horse, attending sewing school, seeing Halley’s Comet. 

The story is also in The Immigrant and the Outlaw: A Collection of Stories from America’s Heartland.

(Our American Stories’ founder and host, Lee Habeeb, graciously wrote a Foreword for both of these books–and I think he had fun writing them.) 

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8th Grade Graduation photo of Leora Frances Goff, Audubon County, Iowa, 1907. Age 15.