February 1, 2013
Memories Captured....

One of my sisters recently drug out and dusted off a boxful of family photos taken in the seventies when life was, well should I say, a little different than it is today. We all enjoyed plenty of guffaws and tear-invoking chuckles over the strangers in those pictures-was that really the way we looked? The many responses to seeing the pictures brought on further bouts of raucous laughter.

Yet still, seeing us all those years ago, along with our parents and aunts and uncles and cousins, reinforced what a blissful (at least most of the time) childhood we all were enjoyed. Yes, I'll say it: life was a bit simpler back then. Not a one of us sported an attention-absorbing electronic device. We were dressed well but not bedecked in designer or expensive brand-name clothing. The fun we were sharing was good old-fashioned silliness. And yes, we were happy.

Leading the pack of this frivolity seemed always to be my father. The dad we saw pictured in those photos from 30-some years ago was roughly the age that my siblings and I are today and that set me to pondering about how we view life ourselves at this juncture. About how we work - and more importantly, about how we play. Dad obviously taught us the importance of play time in our lives.

Yet another photo depicts my mom and dad, along with two of the four siblings, working on a construction project at our home. We were working together. We did things together as a family quite often. Birthdays were always celebrated in fine fashion with a cake and candles to blow out. 

Special events such as Mother's and Father's Day were honorably observed. Christmas always included the family gathered around the tree; at Easter time we were always pictured in our very best attire out under the budding trees or in front of mom's tulip patch.  Often Dad would set the timer on the camera and bolt into the frame at the last minute and I'm so glad for that. 

But always those special family events were commemorated with a photograph. And thank goodness, is all I can say. Everybody had a camera in my family. My sister used a Brownie. Made by Eastman Kodak, it was a little square box. My first one was a Kodak point and shoot that I bought at a rummage sale, and I took scads of memorable pictures with that. It gobbled up film, and in order to see the photos, I had to mail them away to a photo-finishing lab somewhere in Wisconsin. 

Waiting for the pictures to be returned a week or so later was always so hard.  It was worth the wait though.  Those photographs are all we have now of those yesterdays.

I also had a mini "spy camera", that fit in the palm of your hand that was given to me by a Daily Globe newspaper photographer when I was a youngster. The camera was no longer in working order at the time, or I didn't have film for it, consequently I never took any pictures with the little gem.

My dad tinkered with several very early Polaroid cameras and I remember being fascinated by the process of creating "instant" photos with those. The biggest thing, I remember, was the magic of watching the images evolve before my eyes. Those early Polaroids were not quite as slick as the Instamatic cameras that came later because one had to deal with swabbing some sort of finishing chemical onto the photo I recollect, and the prints were then pasted onto a rigid photo paper. Those pictures were tiny and as time went on, they grew darker and eventually faded into oblivion.

To me that was so exciting....yet who would have predicted 40 years later the evolution of the digital camera? And that just about everyone would have "smart" phone with picture-taking capabilities. And that you could take hundreds of thousands of photographs at no cost whatsoever.

I have owned several cameras through the years - a few point and shoot models were followed by a nice Canon 35mm that shot countless photos of sporting events, birthdays, holidays and other significant events. That wonderful camera, which has been replaced by a Nikon digital, now sits in its box, collecting dust just like those old family photographs. 

I take it out now and then just to remember and reminisce just because I feel you've got to spend some time looking back now and then. Try it and you might just see that you will find a clearer path to what lies ahead.