Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Old Photos :O)

My father never took photos while we were growing up. He took "slides." They were much cheaper to have developed than photographs, and we spent many evenings having friends over to watch slides. My father would pull out the slide projector and put up the white screen to show them on. Does anyone even do that anymore? I imagine digital photos could be made into slides for slide presentations. The slides were put into round, plastic carousals and then put into the projector.



My parents moved from Michigan to Kentucky after my sister and I left home. They lived there for about seven years. A huge flood hit in the spring of 1977 (it could have been 1978), and they lost everything they owned. That included all of the slides. The physical memories of our childhood were totally destroyed.

Since my mother died in June, and my father is in a nursing home, I was at their former apartment yesterday trying to get things packed up for moving. I found 3 CD's of pictures where someone had tried to preserve a few of my father's slides. Most of the pictures on the CD's are so destroyed they are barely recognizable, but a few are good enough to bring back some fun memories.  I thought I'd share two so you can see what I looked like way back then. Man. I sure don't look like that now!


The tall, dark-haired, skinny guy on the left is me. My father is the man on the far right, and my mother is crouching down. That slide must have been taken around 1967.


This picture was taken around 1976 at one of my cousin's wedding. Yep, I was sporting a mustache at the time.

I actually have one more I can show you. It sure made me laugh. I don't have any idea what year it was taken. Probably around 1964. None of the families we knew had much money, but everyone did buy an up-ground swimming pool. That's how we spent our summers. This is a picture of my best friend at the time, Dennis, my sister and only sibling Renee, and me.


 What a difference 40 + years make. I wouldn't be caught dead in a bathing suit now!

5 comments:

Christine said...

I loved to see these slides. My mom recently turned 70 and I did an album as a gift with the slides my father did when we all were kids. My brother had already digitized them, but they were in bad shape. So I restored them as better as I could and put together the album.

M said...

My dad and grandparents were also big into slides. I have several carousels that my grandparents put together for me. One is of me as a baby. I was in the garden in a little sunsuit and I was trying to eat the flowers! There are others with slides of my mother growing up, etc. My dad had thousands of slides and there were hardly any organized. I ended up buying a slide projector on ebay and once in awhile I take it out and watch slides. I love seeing yours, especially the last one. The water damage made for a very cool and trippy looking background! Ok, I guess I will stop babbling now! ;)

Junibears said...

What a shame they were all lost in that flood. So many memories disappeared.
Lovely seeing these however. You sure look cute with that moustache!!

We didn't have slides when I was a kid. Far too expensive and 'posh'!!
All we had was an old Brownie box camera but I was left with a great array of pics.

Hope you're well Bill. Hugs xx

Seth said...

Seeing slides brings back memories to me. And I am happy for you that you have some of your own here. How funny that we now pay for Apps to create the effects that you have in this pics naturally!

The Gossamer Tearoom said...

Oh Dear Bill! Were you a child of a slide-devotee as well? My mother just loved showing slides too!!! I wonder how many hours I spent sitting cross-legged on the floor watching slides? Yup. Big white screen. Funny slide projector thingy, only ours was metal and always smelled kind of funny while it was on!! I looked at quite a few of them while I was cleaning out my parents things from this house and we just sold the screen and projector in one of our garages sale last year. I am so very sorry that your parents lost so much in the flood. What a devastating loss for them (and for you). Thank you for sharing the images you do have and thank you for reminding me of a fun part of my childhood as well.