A Fathers Day gift from my late father

I was in our attic rooting around for a plumbing part we were sure was up there. It's a very large and disorganized attic stuffed full of decades of stuff. On the far side of the camping gear (we haven't camped in 20 years) under the eaves I spotted a plastic bin. When I opened the bin, there it was--a photo album filled with neatly placed tiny black-and-white photos of a 1928 summer in Germany.

I had no idea I had the album, I don't know when I was entrusted with it, but here were photos of my father at the age of 13, posing in front of various German landmarks with a group of other boys, all dressed in suits with white shirts, but no ties. I knew my father had dropped out of school at the age of 13 to work in the family business and to hike across Germany, but I didn't know the details of that adventure. Here were the fuzzy photos of a group of long-ago boys posing in Bonn, on Oelberg, in front of the Heisterbach Abbey ruins, at Rolandsbogen. The depression hadn't happened yet, the second world war as still far away, and a group of boys was enjoying the summer.