When I saw the old photograph of the chief and officers of the Salisbury Police Department in the “Yesterday” section of the Salisbury Post, I immediately looked for a cousin, Perry Daniel, and there he was.

I remember Perry, Meredith, Raymond and Virginia, the children of my Aunt Daisy Horah Daniel (“Horah” pronounced in Salisbury fashion — “who raw” — just like the street). I may have left out someone, but those listed are what memory has left me. Meredith, according to my brother Joe, is the only one who has not moved into the past tense.

I have a particularly pleasant, very youthful memory of the Daniels which always sticks in my mind. This was an occasion of us having dinner with them. I can’t recall if it was something special, or nothing of more importance than Sunday dinner (special in itself).

There was great food and great conversation, often led by Aunt Daisy. She had a big heart with matching voice (it could even be said “a big, booming voice with big, booming heart”). A young child can sometimes be put off by an adult with a projecting voice, but not me; I knew Aunt Daisy’s big voice only “gave voice” to her big heart.

That day, I brought along my “Four-and-twenty-blackbirds-baked-in-a pie-hand-cranked-music box” for familial show and tell. (A native German might dispense with the hyphens altogether, giving birth to a “nine-pound, fifteen-ounce word.”)

While just off the Daniel dining room, showing some other kids my “metal bird pie,” I could hear everyone’s “at table” conversation being punctuated with Aunt Daisy’s words and laughter.

I remember seeing cousin Perry’s Salisbury Police Department officer’s jacket and hat hanging up on a coat stand. I always associate those items with him; and it was “that” hat and “that” jacket which I saw greatly multiplied in the Post’s picture the other day. Nowadays, police are more often seen wearing the kind of cap seen in grandstands at a baseball game (players sporting it, too).

The first time I ever saw grown men cry, really cry, was in the late 1960s at Aunt Daisy’s funeral. My father had passed away in 1966, but the shock was too great to bring my tears, possibly being channeled into an extended, slight undercurrent of melancholy since. (But I think I have always been so.)

As Aunt Daisy’s children exited with her casket, all cried, but the sobs of the sons I found particularly heart-rending, and that sound will always be a part of me in this world. Just as their mother’s laugh was resonant with joy, so was their crying resonant with sadness. To me, these men gave true definition to the saying, “Only real men cry!”

In 1966, when my father’s funeral procession made its way past the Square from Summersett’s, the officer stationed at the little “booth” took off his hat and placed it over his heart in respect. As best I can remember, it wasn’t Perry on duty that day, just another good man.

The stationing of “police officer-in-booth” on Salisbury’s Square has been a thing of the past for some time. There’s no chance now for the extending of hat-held, heart-covered courtesy to those dead who happen to be “crossing the bar” of Innes and Main.

While in high school at East, my mother and I sometimes visited Virginia and her brother Raymond. We always had an enjoyable time there, even if Raymond did seem just a little bit eccentric (but then, there are “The Williamses”).

With the passing of time (age), many of the mind’s different experiences are unconsciously placed into “cubbyholes,” the dissimilar into many, the similar into one. Those filed together seem to gel into a “portrait” over time.

Such is the case with the long-term collected, connected set of images presented here.