Kodachrome
Memories
A couple months ago when
my wife and I returned home from running some errands, we met our son
waiting for us at our back door. He told us that my step-sister
Kathy had dropped off some boxes on the front porch sometime that
afternoon while he'd been sleeping and he'd brought them into the
house. There'd been a short note attached to them stating that she
had been cleaning out her mom's condo after her mom vacated it and
that the boxes contained some of my father's things from the old days
that her mom no longer wanted. And that she would call and explain
more later. When we got to the living room we saw three good-sized
boxes stacked up on the floor. The note my son had referred to was
on the topmost box written in my sister's precise handwriting and
generally said what my son had mentioned.
A little family history:
My mother passed away in
1972 and dad remarried in '76. The new couple bought a house and
consolidated their families and their possessions. My dad passed
away in 1991 at the age of 70 and, not long after that event, his
widow, my step-mother, moved into a condominium. A lot of their
belongings from their combined household which were bulky and
wouldn't fit into the smaller living space she was moving into were
given to the children of each spouse. I ended up receiving a dining
room suite and a 12-piece setting of Noritake china, both of which
had been my birth mother's and had been in the house I grew up in. A
lot of the smaller things that belonged to my step-mother and my dad
had ended up going with her to the condo.
This remained the
situation until recently, when my step-mother's Alzheimer's became
too bad to allow her to live by herself. Kathy explored some
options and finally decided to move her into an assisted living
facility near where she resides and where she would be more easily
looked after by the staff of the facility and by herself.
This move again whittled
down the possessions of my step-mother, and my brother and I again
became recipients of some more of dad's “stuff”
I carried the boxes
upstairs, set them down and stood there staring at them. Some
more of dad's stuff, I thought. Man oh man. He's been gone
22 years and this stuff is bringing him right back. After a few
minutes woolgathering and thinking deep thoughts about the old days,
I sighed and took an inventory of the contents. There were a lot of
photographic slides which I would need to investigate at some time,
some glassware with our last name's initial, “F”, etched onto
them, a couple of photo albums which would also bear some future
investigation and a lot of dad's correspondence with many of his Army
friends. He'd gotten back in touch with them in his later years and
had gone to a number of WWII reunions to see them. And, apparently,
saved ALL the correspondence with them relating to those reunions.
There were also some firearm cleaning supplies from his hunting days.
Among the boxes was also the American flag which had been draped
over his coffin back in '91 and which was presented to his widow, my
step-mother, upon his death.
I plan to do one of two
things with the flag: to get a presentation case for it and put it in
a place of honor in my house or else donate it to a local cemetery
where it would be flown for a period of time as tribute to my dad and
to the servicemen interred there. I still haven't made my mind up
about that.
Most of the balance of the
items were cameras and lenses he'd used over his lifetime. One was
an old friend; a Mercury half-slide camera that dated back to the
mid-to-late 1940's. He'd used that camera when I was very young and
took lots and lots of pictures of his three sons, my brothers and I,
as we were growing up along with various and sundry other subjects.
He particularly liked taking pictures of parades and of Christmas
celebrations. Many, many of them. I have all of his slides from
those days.
As a side note, there is
an interesting story about that particular Mercury camera.
Back in the late '40's
when dad was a newlywed and I was an infant, he used to walk to work.
And while on this walk, he used to pass by a camera shop. And in
the front window of the camera shop sat a brand-new Mercury 35mm
camera. It had a price on it that was beyond dad's ability to pay at
that time in his life. So he would just stop for a moment and wish.
The next day on his way to work he noticed that the shiny new camera
in the front window was still there, but on that day the price had
been reduced! There was also a notice that the price on that camera
would be reduced a little bit each day until it was bought. The
kicker was... this was ONLY for that particular camera. When it was
gone, it was gone.
So dad would do his walk
each day and each day watch the price on the camera, HIS camera as he
began to think of it, go down and down and down. He absolutely KNEW
that it would be gone LONG before he could afford it. So each day
was a torture to him until he arrived at the shop and saw the camera
was still there and the price was again lower. Then his torment
would begin again.
I imagine the agonies he
went through, checking his monetary position, thinking about his
expenses, wanting the camera more and more each day as he passed it
by. I imagine the discussions he would have had with my mom. I
think about how he would have weighed his options, his dollars, his
needs.
One day, apparently, the
camera finally reached a price which he felt he could afford. He had
to have been terrified that the camera would be sold that day, so he
rushed in and bought it. I'm sure he was tickled to death with the
camera and I know he shot roll after roll of film through it for the
next 20 years or so. I have about a million of those slides to prove
it!
When I enlisted into the
Air Force in 1965, he presented me with that camera to take with me
and I used it for the first year or so of my enlistment. The camera
was manually operated and I had to set the exposure time and the
aperture every shot I took. I learned a lot about photography having
to do this. Eventually I bought a new SLR for myself and relegated
the Mercury to storage.
Back in the boxes I also
found the latest camera he had used. My younger brother was in the
Navy in the early '70's and knew dad was “in the market” for a
new camera at that time. He decided to surprise him with one and
ended up buying a new Asahi Pentax SLR camera while he was in Japan,
pretty high-end for the time period. Dad was delighted with the gift
and used that camera for the rest of his life. As a matter of fact,
there was still a roll of exposed Kodachrome film in the camera when
I got it recently. I had it developed, but it was all black. So the
last 20 exposures that dad shot will have to remain a mystery.
He had also bought several
lenses for that camera and they were there in the box also.
So what was I to do with
this unexpected delivery, this bounty from years past?
I phoned my brother in
California and found out that he wasn't really interested in any of
the keepsakes and I could do with them as I wished. The cameras were
both film cameras and I no longer shot film, only digital, so I
really didn't want them for myself. So I decided to sell the camera
gear on Ebay.
The old Mercury sold first
to a buyer in the U.S., perhaps in Pennsylvania? I don't really
remember. The newer Pentax went to a gentleman in Bangkok, Thailand
as did one of the extra lenses. Another lens sold just the other day
to a buyer in Torrance, California. The last lens dad owned, a big
telephoto, is still out there for sale.
I advertized the cameras
truthfully, describing their good points and their flaws. The folks
buying them knew what they were getting. I also described, just a
little, the man who had owned them before. How meticulous he was
with his tools and how well he cared for his property and his
belongings. I also mentioned in passing how much he enjoyed using
these devices and how much pleasure the photos he took gave him and
his family.
I thought about the new
owners of dad's cameras and lenses and I thought about how they had
been sent, literally, both close to home and halfway around the
world. I hoped that the new owners would cherish these cameras and
take care of them like dad used to. Or, if they were going into the
stock of a reseller, that the eventual new owners that would buy them
would do likewise.
I wish I could tell them
all the story of dad's ownership of them, how he loved photography
and how he loved those cameras.
I like to think that a
little of dad might still be attached to those cameras, hanging
around somewhere, and that maybe his hand might reach down from some
cloud in the heavens to help the new owners make good photos with
them again, to steady their hands and to point out what would make a
good picture. Maybe even of some parade or some Christmas
celebration!
I think he'd like doing
that.
