SUMMERTIME ONCE

I may have posted this photo before but it's a favorite summertime memory. My maternal grandmother, who lived with us when I was growing up, owned a small house only habitable in warm weather in Belmar NJ when I was a kid so I got to spend a lot of summertime there. That's her in the middle in back in this picture I'm guessing from 1951. We called her Grandma Dempsey. To her right is my oldest sister, Joan, and our mother Irene. To her left is my oldest brother Tommy, who by then was becoming a Franciscan friar and took the name Campion. To his left is our sister Irene. I don't remember my father being very physical with me so I'm always moved by his grouching down and touching my brother Robert to his left, who was the troublemaker in the family at the time before he became a cop, and me, around nine and on my way to becoming the biggest troublemaker. Our brother Buddy, between Tommy and Robert in age, is not in the photo, nor our brother John who passed as an infant and was born between Irene and me. Some serious sun tans among us. All long gone now except for my sister Irene and me.