Our Army cat, Peaches, entertaining herself with a ball of yarn left from a sweater my wife made me for Christmas, 1972, which I still have because I would be damned to hell if it went before I do.

Peaches was named for a stripper who worked for the "Carolina Carnival," a miserable traveling enterprise that camped and set up business at the edge of our slightly less miserable trailer park. It would arrive just ahead of monthly pay weeks at nearby Ft. Bragg, where I was stationed, and would disappear when the soldiers' money was tapped out. The human Peaches also had red hair and was part of the trio, "Peaches, Dixie Lee and Tanya" who would entertain soldiers, flush with cash and eager to be patrons of dance (somewhere I still have their business card that Tanya handed me while I was stopped for a light in Fayetteville). The cat Peaches was "rescued" from under our trailer. That's what my wife told me but years later confessed that she snatched her from her mother who was "too poor to provide her a decent life." Among the multitude of creatures who have been given a "decent life" in our home, Peaches is notable for enjoying the decency longer than any other. She moved with us from North Carolina to Illinois to Virginia to two successive houses in New Jersey and then, in her seventeenth year and facing yet another move to Milwaukee, she bolted out of the house one night never to return. I hope the human Peaches managed to extricate herself from her situation and found a decent life of her own. Optimism abounds in the Vintage Photos Theme Park, with the exception of "sad photos" theme weeks..