Lonnie Anderson is a famous guy, at least in Albuquerque. Every year he makes a giant valentine, like the 30-foot-tall flowers pictured above. Anderson made them out of cardboard boxes and gave them to his wife, Anne Bolger-Witherspoon. He writes:
All of this started when I was a kid and we were visiting my grandmother at the diner where she worked as a waitress. She was older than the other girls who worked there and on Valentines day all the younger girls had roses and candy, but my grandmother had nothing. My grandfather didn’t believe in presents. He never gave my grandmother one gift, not even a card. Fifty years of marriage and seven kids she raised. I looked up at my mother and told her my wife would never feel the way my grandmother felt on that Valentines Day.
The more we looked at this picture, the more we saw — the Virgin of Guadalupe on the wall, said Rachel. The Christmas lights, said Will. Me, I’m in it for the desert brown and the old truck. Whatever it is about this picture, we love it.
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