When I found this picture, I teared up.  This is the place I miss. It is where we spent our Christmas, and where my inlaws live.  Even though Chicago is my home, and California is where I grew up.  And even though I lived in NYC, when I see pictures of those places I have a hard time forming that gut connection with them.  Buckeye felt like home though.  We spent so much time in the car, since it is so isolated, and so much time looking at the small patches of cotton fields with modern migrant workers harvesting.  Never in 1000 years did I think I’d encounter this image, and it would bring the whole experience full circle. Suddenly I see all those strip malls as cotton fields, and I see new faces populating those fields, new people left at home. New migrants in old photographs.

Plus, it’s such a gorgeous photo.  I remember those moments with both of my boys.

vintageblackbeauty:

Near Buckeye, Maricopa County, Arizona. Migrant [African-American] cotton picker and her baby., 11/1940