Jarvis Rockwell and Norman Rockwell Holding Frogs on a Farm in Warwick, New York

English

Photographer Unknown
Jarvis Rockwell and Norman Rockwell Holding Frogs on a Farm in Warwick, New York, 1904
Digital reproduction

AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

Of all places, a place called Florida, New York. I don’t know where it was. It wasn’t very far out of New York. I think it was over on the Jersey side, but it was the farm country, and there was a family there named the Jessups. We’d go and stay all summer on this farm where they took boarders. And this was very, very exciting to my brother and I. It was never drudgery. The farm boy, I remember Harold Jessup, I remember his name still. He was the farmer’s son, and he hated the farm work. He hated milking cows and he hated bringing the horses, taking them down to the river for the night and so on, but my brother and I, this was wild adventure to us, and we just loved it all summer long.

And then my father would come out every weekend from the city, from his job, and then he would have two weeks off. We would go fishing and everything like that, and have a wonderful time. I remember, I as a kid had a fascination and had no fear whatsoever of snakes. They were harmless snakes. I mean, once in awhile, I’d get a fairly decent sized black snake, but garter snakes, all kinds of snakes. As far as I know, there were no poisonous snakes around there.

I had a big box under the bed. My brother, who was athletic and strong and fearless, he hated snakes. He was really afraid of them, and I remember one night, I was terribly upset because I had quite a nice collection of snakes, and I guess they were stirring around a bit under the bed, and he got up and threw the box out of the window, and busted the box and all my snakes got away.