Memories

I’m working on a labor of love at the moment. I’ve been doing it off and on for about five years now. I’ve been scanning every old family photo I can lay my hands on, and even had my dad’s slides – all 50 years worth! – shipped to me. I invested in a slide converter, and got to work sorting out the chaff from the wheat.

My goal is to make a cd or 2 (or 3?) for each family member so they can have a history of the family in digital record. Maybe my niece might like to see the genes that are in her makeup: good country folk with determination and hard work in their blood. People who lived through good times and bad. People who lived, loved and laughed, no matter what. Or maybe for the rest of us to look back in fondness and love to the people who shaped us and guided us as we grew up.

In my dad’s slides I found whole projector trays full of shots from Air Force base air shows and ceremonies. One particular set caught my attention: an old man receiving an award. Checking my dad’s notes, I discovered that this was the celebrated flying ace of WWI Eddie Rickenbacker! Now, after decades of languishing in my mom’s basement, he was finally seeing the light of day once more. I contacted the AF historian and asked if they were interested in receiving these slides. After assuring them that I really had no place for them, they agreed to take them, and seemed quite happy to have them. I received no other thank you, but I hope Eddie is not once more condemned to a dark box in some basement.

There was also a BUNCH of shots taken at the Columbus Zoo over a 40 year period. Even after taking out any shots of family and relatives, I was left with quite a few shots of the zoo in general. I thought maybe the zoo historian would be interested in these shots, as they show how much the zoo has changed. Again, on initial contact they were very happy to hear from me and eager to receive the slides. Again, no other thanks, but I’m not so concerned as I am for Eddie.

In the middle of converting the slides I thought family might be interested in, of which there are two 3” binders full of slide sheets that hold 20 slides each, my slide converter died. Thank goodness for Walgreens! The hard part is after they’ve been converted; I had to check each shot and see if I could rid them of the strange colors, tones, scratches and weird “artifacts” left behind after decades of storage in a basement. I developed “Mouser’s Wrist” and “Right-Click Thumb” after hours and hours and hours of performing cleanup on the digital shots. Some just weren’t salvageable, but I discovered that when they were changed to black & white, it was almost magical: you could see clearer detail. Like this shot of the back pasture. The main color is red, not black, yet converted to b&w, what a difference.

The "before" where only the cows should be red...

...and the "after". The spring is to the left, next to the tree in the back.

Grandpa and I would sit in the back yard, right about where this shot was taken, and pick off groundhogs across the “crick” and up at the spring with his old rifle. Darned things had a passion for my sweet corn, and I didn’t want to share! I got real good at picking off groundhogs.

In dredging up these slides, I’ve also dredged up memories that have long lain dormant. If not for these old shots, these memories might easily have gone to the grave with me. Like the shot of my grandpa sitting on the floor to accommodate my toddler height as I washed his face with a warm washcloth. He had so much patience with all three of his grandkids! I remember trying to be real careful and not rub too hard, or get soap in his eyes.

Me combing my grandpa's hair before washing his face.

I think all three of us kids grew up worshipping grandpa. If we got caught doing something wrong, he could lay the biggest guilt trip on us just by shaking his head and looking sad. That hurt us worse than if he’d picked up a paddle or belt and spanked us! Now, grandma? She’d make us go out and cut our own switch to be used in the punishment! So we learned darned quick not to misbehave at their farm.

I’m also adding scans of old photos I found when last I visited my mom. She had had open-heart surgery and was home recuperating, so what better bedside activity (to keep her in bed!) than to dredge up her own memories of people and places for the unmarked photos she had in a big box under the bed. I could hear the smile and love in her voice as she regaled me with stories about her own beloved grandparents and other relatives. There are two photos in particular of my great-grandparents that really speak to me.

Great-grandma back at the WVA farm.

Great-grandpa still in OH, and his bicycle.

On my own grandparents farm was a small house set apart from the farmhouse. It was only a two room house with a back porch that was constantly sagging, and an outbuilding and outhouse reached by a wooden walkway, and a dirt basement. Mom tells me this was built just so grandma’s parents could move in from their West Virginia farm in their old age. But. This only lasted for three months, as they weren’t used to electricity, running water in the kitchen, or the modern luxury of a telephone. They moved back to their WVA farm, much to my grandma’s chagrin.

Great-grandma at the "new" stove. She never got used

to running water in the kitchen.

I have photographic proof that I actually met some of my great-grandparents, even if I have no memory of it. Unfortunately, I never met THIS g-grandma, my maternal grandmother's mother. She was the favorite of my mom's, and their memories will live on in passing down my Mom’s stories and memories. And in looking at these photos and slides, more stories come to light, more memories appear as if by magic from far corners of memory. There are all sorts of photos in that old box, and yet more in albums just recently discovered. Black and white shots, a few colored, shots of people we knew and people we have no clue about.

I’ve discovered the old saying about the oldest child having the most pictures taken, while the youngest child will be lucky to find one of just himself, or even one period. As with all things, the first is a novelty, and it goes downhill from there. Luckily, my family was a camera-toting family, and ALL of us kids appear in many of the photos!

As a kid I was usually annoyed, sometimes highly, with allthe picture taking by my mom and grandma. Constantly having to stop, pose and smile in the middle of an activity was rather irksome to a teen and pre-teen. Oh, and checking to make sure the sun was in your eyes to get the best shot. What fun. Yet now as I sort through and arrange all these paper-to-digital memories, I am happy. Memories captured by grandma’s old Brownie camera or the Polaroid, snapped by relatives both known and unknown and by virtual strangers bring back the feeling of carefree summers on the farm, visits to relatives in WVA.

That’s the main purpose of this blog, actually. To tell others about our family, to let them know about a time and people long gone, just as we ourselves will be to later generations.

Goodbye, Uncle Walt

My grandparents had an old black and white Zenith back in the 60’s and 70’s. One of the first to have a remote control, which was top of the line back then. The remote, affectionately called “the clicker”, had 3 buttons; one for on and off, one for channel up, and the last for channel down. We got 3 stations on bad days, and 4 on good ones. They were ABC (channel 4), NBC (channel 6), and CBS (channel 10). Oh, and PBS, which was 32 or 34 if you had the UHF antenna pointed in the right direction and the sun was shining.

There were just a few rules that were sacrosanct when it came to the old black & white Zenith: Sunday morning before church we watched the televangelists, and if church got out early Sunday night we could catch most of Disney! Saturday evening was wrestling, and the weekday evening news was ALWAYS CBS with Walter Cronkite. No ifs-ands-or-buts about it. If our chores were done early we could watch Flippo, which was usually great. Or the Banana Splits. But the news was Walter Cronkite, as no one else would suffice.

This carried over to my parents. I believe they tended to watch Walter as well. He made us feel … comfortable, I guess…when his face was on the screen, giving us the good as well as the bad. He didn’t use big words, or act like he had to talk down to the general public. He didn’t “purtify” or make flowery speech. He gave it to us straight, whether it was man landing on the moon, or the assassination of a president. He reacted to the news as well, showing us that he was human, a man of the people, so to say.

I don’t think he ever made a misstep in his job or his life. He was the first reporter to be called an “anchor”, and in that he was aptly named. He anchored entire families to the television to hang on his every word. Nowadays entire families are split up: one is the in living room, actually watching the television, while another is in the bedroom getting their news online. Maybe a child is at the library, skimming over the MSN headlines, or in their own bedroom, watching their own television, away from the rest of the family…wherever they might be.

He popped up once in a while after his retirement, and every time I heard his name or saw his picture, I’d flash back to those times spent on my grandparent’s farm. Grandpa worked for the Electric company for his full time job, then came home to his modest 15 acre farm and took care of a couple of cows, a pony or two, the chickens, and a few other odds and ends critters he had running around in the pasture. Maybe some weeding or tilling the vegetable patch. Then in to wash up and relax in the living room with Walter while the women (grandma and mom) got supper ready. Me being a tomboy, I usually found something better to do, or else I’d sneak into the living room with grandpa and we’d watch the news together.

Walter was so a part of my childhood that it almost feels like I’ve lost a family member. Maybe a kindly uncle, or someone along that line. I, for one, will miss him. And that’s the way it was.