There are so few shots indoors at 104 Ellis. The ones on this page are the only ones in the album. It makes me wonder if these must be in the collection of slides. The basement train set, ostensibly my brother's, was one of many hobbies that my father would decide he would be (or was) an expert in, and rather than just enjoying it we would all have to have a university degree in this. The photo studio was another such thing. Remarkably, it never occurred to either of my parents to garden; in fact I cannot remember a single backyard garden anywhere in my entire childhood. I don't think this was something that people did back then.

Like the photo studio, when the train set was up, everyone who came over would be paraded down to the basement so my father could hold forth (there is no other way to describe it) about model trains and train sets. I believe that these were actually fairly valuable trains, or that they have become so. They were "HO" scale-- a very small scale, and apparently quite unusual. I have one of the engines, but I believe we had at least two, possibly three, and of course several cars including a caboose. I wonder if my brother or my father has these. If my father has them, I suppose they will end up in the possession of his step-grandchildren along with many of the items that I associate with my childhood.