Kodachrome Memories

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.