It's been something of a mystery to me why that's the case. But I realized as I was starting to compose this entry that my grandparents' bedroom in the Pennsylvania farmhouse where they retired was practically a museum of middle-class metropolitan life between the wars. I suppose a lot of people hold on to the time when they were in their twenties, which happened to be the Twenties for my grandparents. Come to think of it, my office here at home is something of a museum of the 1990s.
Anyway, the reason that I thought of this photo during the exam today is that my grandparents settled in Harlem upon their arrival in the States. Although they soon moved to Queens, I'm almost certain that this photograph was taken when they were still living in upper Manhattan. And that got me thinking about another family photograph I scanned, in which my grandparents are dressed quite fashionably: