So when I was in Florida I took a bunch of photos of pictures in my grandmother's old old photo book, including of her own grandfather Ginther whom she totally and utterly adored and speaks of with unending affection. Gus Ginther (1863 - 1955) was a painter -- not only of big beautiful still lifes and so on but of movie posters and circus posters, the old-timey kind that were painted by hand, and I sure so wish I could get my paws on some of those but they is lost to time -- and he lived with his wife OLA and children in a gorgeous sweeping Victorian house in MOBERLY, MISSOURI, a state away from the Illinois town his parents came to from some other town in Saxony, Germany.... and, according to my grandmother, he wore a diamond stick pin in his tie and loved circuses and carnivals and Christmas and would bring home hot tamales from the street vendor outside for his grandkids, much to his wife's disapproval. And I guess he was very involved in the town and a big deal in Moberly and "larger than life" and everyone everyone loved him.

Check out his amazing house:



And look how dapper he was:



And look at this newspaper clipping from the year before he died, in 1954.



Admit that is awesome. Touring the continent at age 91!

And as I was looking through these albums and listening to my grandmother's stories, I turned around to see that I was being SPIED ON by this evil creature the whole time.



It was all very suspicious.