a trip through a different time

Since my Gemini butterfly-brain isn’t capable of focusing on one project for more than, oh, fifteen minutes or so, now I’m on a photo scanning jag from a different era. I decided jumping around from era to era is better than getting tired of the whole thing and dropping it, though. Since I’ll never get all my photos scanned unless I live to be 210, I may as well focus on my favorites and just skip hither and yon with my usual blithe madness.

Of course, my photos are pretty much as disorganized as the rest of my life, so I’ve spent all sorts of time tonight
trying to find particular pictures. My oldest album is from 1974ish, when I got my first camera:

It was just like this, except mine was tan. I ordered it off the back of a bag of catfood for $13. I don’t know why Little Friskies was hawking Kodak cameras, but I sure did get my $13 worth out of it. I used it for at least ten years. Sadly, most of my pictures are all faded now. Another reason to get them scanned.  Anyhow, a lot of pictures were missing out of that album. Some turned out to be in a box in the spare room, where I’d left them after making copies for my younger niece when she graduated from high school. Along with those, there were about ten thousand other random unsorted photos. So I’ve done a lot of photo-looking tonight.

But, whatever. Instead of being my parents and aunts and uncles as kids, tonight my focus is my own childhood. Which has considerable overlap with Cousin E’s childhood, so her fans will like this too.

This is a good bridge photo – it’s from the late 60s and includes my aunt Mabel. Who hasn’t changed too much from the 40s and 50s photos.

We were at Grandfather Mountain, according to the back of the picture. My brother looks quite unhappy. Note my groovy catseye glasses. I despised those glasses. I was constantly breaking them, and I’d take them off at school and walk around blind.

Around the same time. My brother appears to be much happier. We were at my grandmother’s house.

Cousin E in her own groovy catseye glasses, Cousin J on the left and Cousin MJ in the middle. They both ended up with glasses too, but not as early as some of us did.

This was at Jekyll Island, in Georgia. We went there every year for a church retreat sort of thing. That’s my brother, taking a picture of the motel as I’m taking a picture of him. 1974. The Wanderer Motel.

My mother taking a picture of my brother, as I took a picture of her. I’m sensing a theme here. I remember we were amused at how it looks like she’s lighting a cigarette.

The Aquarama! Or, as I wrote on the back, the Acquarama. Spelling has never been one of my talents. I’d love to know if the Aquarama is still there. Or if they still call it the Aquarama. It had a huge pool inside. I think that’s why it was called the Aquarama. It was also aqua.

For years we had church services in this tent. It was so much fun – you can’t tell here, but it was right by the ocean. And when it rained, the tent would flood – since it was in a parkinglot, water would just race through. Which was, of course, really fun for the kids. I remember having to grab up everything we had on the ground to save it from the water during sudden storms. Eventually they built a convention center and we quit using the tent, and things just were never the same. That’s our old GTO down at the bottom left.

This was around 1975, I think. It was my grandfather’s birthday. That’s me in the back, holding one of my older cousin’s kids. The guy beside me is my notorious cousin Mike, who told me many tall tales like how the linen closet was full of ghosts and my mother had eyes under the hair on the back of her head. And, apparently, that our aunt Elizabeth died of hairballs when she was a toddler.

This was in 1975. That’s Cousin E’s sister, Cousin J, who is my age, and my best friend Steve. I think what I really wanted to do was write an entry about Steve. Yesterday was his birthday. He would have been 47. He died of AIDS right before his 30th birthday. I don’t ever seem to be able to write about him, though. We went to the same Bizarro Cultish Church, and were best friends from the time we were ten until we were in high school. He was also my off and on boyfriend for quite a few years. We were fourteen or so when this picture was taken, and that’s about when I started feeling morose over the fact that in a few years we’d probably go to separate collages and never see each other. Then when we were seniors in high school he caused quite a stir by moving in with an older man. He didn’t go to college – he and Dan moved to Atlanta, and I went to college. We did keep in touch, although now I wish we’d kept in better touch. When I married Husband #1 we lived in Atlanta for a little while, and Steve and I got together a few times. Baker B got to meet him too, when we were visiting his sister in Atlanta years ago. We had dinner with Steve and Dan. I think that was the last time I saw him, although we talked on the phone occasionally. All these years later I still think of things I need to tell Steve.

Anyhow. I’m always thinking I should write a whole entry about Steve, because he was a major major person in my life. And somehow I never do.

This was 1976 or 77. His mother sent me this picture after he died – his father took it of us one day when school let out early for snow. Ummm…. yes, snow. There’s snow on the ground! Note the clear sky. I think it was supposed to snow, or maybe started snowing, and they let school out, then it cleared up too late to un-let-school out. Steve’s father picked us up and took us up to Beaucatcher Mountain, where the interstate was about to plow through the mountain. You can see Asheville in the background.

When I first saw the picture, I thought, who is that other guy?? Then realized, DUH, it’s my brother. It doesn’t look like him at all, oddly. And Stick-Girl there thought she was hugely fat at the time. Oh, and take a look at those cool bell-bottoms! I used to wear them into McDonalds barefoot, and they couldn’t tell because they were so long you couldn’t see my feet. Good times, good times!

<br />This was around 1975 – a church trip to Carl Sandburg’s home. Not that you can tell that’s where we were. Me, Steve, my brother there in the front, and three of our other friends. Our weird church was very small, and this was about it for kids our age that I liked. Except for Phil, Steve’s best friend who also went to our weird church. I’m not sure where Phil was, but it seems like his father used to not let him do a lot of church-related stuff.

There’s Phil! At the Botanical Gardens, in Asheville. Also around 1975.

And since this has gone on for quite some time and I really need to get off the computer now, I’ll end with a picture I found while digging through the gazillon random photos in the back room.  I initially wasn’t going to include it because it’s not that old. Why, it was just taken a couple of years ago, I thought! Then I looked at the back and saw it was taken in 1986. I guess the fact that the little girl in the front has a child of her own now should have clued me in, but it sure doesn’t seem like it was that long ago.

This was at Cousin E’s house, in Maryland. That’s her on the far left, Cousin J, their father who passed away in February, Cousin MJ, Cousin E’s spouse, his daughter/her stepdaughter, me, Cousin E, J and MJ’s mom, and her other stepdaughter. I’m still finding it hard to believe this was 21 years ago, since none of us look THAT different. Well, other than the little girl who I haven’t seen in probably 15 years, and her sister who I haven’t seen in at least that long, but I’d imagine has changed a little since she has a kid too now.

We had the camera on a tripod with a timer, and I love Uncle Frank’s expression there. Like he’s expecting that timer to go off like it’s supposed to, right this minute.

And that’s more than enough for now.