I have to say that I really, REALLY love old courthouses.
Unfortunately, I lot of them have been knocked down and replaced by more modern structures.
Those I don't even bother photographing.
But when I see a nice courthouse dome or spire peaking above the trees in a town, I just have to make a detour and take a photo.
On our trip from Seattle to Minneapolis via US-12 we came across a couple of nice courthouses.
This is the Brown County, South Dakota courthouse in Aberdeen, SD. Built in 1904, it is a Renaissance Revival style building. I absolutely love that there are clocks on all four sides of the dome structure. I think the statue atop the dome is Justice, but am not positive. Forgot to bring my binoculars along!
At right is the Swift County, Minnesota courthouse in Benson, MN. It was built in 1898 to replace an earlier courthouse that proved too small to meet the growing county's needs. There are some old postcard images of this courthouse here.
Pity all county seats don't have such classic courthouses, isn't it?
I am the third of four children. My father was active military until I was 9, so was gone for long periods of time. As such, there are very few photos of me as a child.
I'm guessing that the photo to the right is me, but it just as well could be my younger brother. We can't decide, so I'll pretend it's me.
My Mother told the story of my birth so many times that I started to feel guilty. Dad was stationed at Vint Hill Farms Station, near Warrenton, VA (at the time, a top secret intelligence installation) and they were living in nearby Manassas as there were no available family accommodations on base. The brilliant VA doctors decided that I was going to be born before the end of June, and they insisted that Mom give birth at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C., about 50 miles away, due to possible Rh complications and the fact that my sister's birth was very quick. My older siblings were aged 39 and 17 months.
So.....the military "powers that be" made Mom stay in a guest house at Walter Reed for an entire month, waiting for my birth. All the while, she protested that I wasn't going to come until late July. My father would bring my older siblings to visit when he could, but that often turned out to be embarrassing for my mother, as (in her words) "They looked like little street urchins."
My birth itself was apparently uneventful. I was born on Friday, 23 July 1948. I have no idea what time of day or night, as there is no baby book or photo album for me.
