
The two circa 1967 flower children happen to be our son Karl (as he used to say, “bare topping”) and his lifelong friend John (the one with the T-shirt). I guess I’ll have to tell these guys, now in their 40s, that one of their childhood Kodak moments is on “Candid Internet”.
For years this shot (which would delight any mother’s heart) was accessible only when blown up on a screen (or white sheet) from a slide projector. But recently my husband scanned a plethora of slides from our children’s tender years into his computer.
From there the slides-turned-prints went on a memory stick, and now they are also on my computer. A whole new era of family photos has been unleashed–as I’m printing these out on glossy photo paper in preparation for sticking them into albums. Making prints is fun, especially when you live where there are 5 or 6 months of winter.
We have stacks of photo albums starting with those containing early family snapshots taken with an ancient Brownie camera. The Brownie snaps sufficed until the 1960s when suddenly slides were the thing.
Now the slide gap has been spanned, as explained above. After slides, came the years from 1972 through 2006 when I went through 2 Minolta automatic 35mm cameras, and took enough snapshots to paper the walls and ceilings of a 500 room castle. (I love hyperbole, don’t you?)
Our early photo albums were primitive and drab: simply photos glued in military precision on black paper–not acid-free. We’d never heard of “acid free” in those days.
The last 6 albums, created since 2000, are unique Creative Memory productions. I use whatever I can get my hands on: wrapping paper, Dover Publications’ books of William Morris patterns and Scottish tartans, English country-patterned fabric, lace, yarn, faded pages from old cookbooks blotchy with stuck-on cookie ingredients, wallpaper cutouts from leftover rolls of Victorian rose prints, concert and graduation programs, news clippings, etc. as background for not only the photos but theatre stubs, invitations to wedding and baby showers, greeting cards, assorted Victorian scrap, stickers of “raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens” plus old-fashioned dogs dressed up like lords and ladies, personal bits of art, poems and quotes from favorite authors, and plenty more.
Each page is a world in itself: a great adventure of color and pizzazz, a let-it-all-hang-out experiment in aesthetic funk. Items are collaged every which way. No more boring military precision.
Needless to say, the albums are a joy to make. But I’ll never catch up. Although all of our family members are represented in the albums–even the great-grandchildren–only a teeny amount of existing photos have made it from boxes to books. Snapshots not only overflow from cartons on shelves and in closets, but multitudes are also packed in a huge cedar chest.
Sometimes I view the boxes and feel just a wee bit overwhelmed. No matter how diligently I work on albums (and I do enjoy making them) there are always thousands of photos patiently waiting. Of course I don’t need to use them all. Who needs 5 pages of donkeys in Custer State Park? I can focus on the donkey pictures which include grandchildren.
Most of the time I happily plug away whenever the spirit moves me to spend a day scrapping over albums and building pages for posterity. I’m thankful that we have a huge family. I hope someone will continue assembling the memories after I’m gone!
Meanwhile, the point is not to get finished but rather to enjoy the process. The only finished work on earth is what Jesus did! 🙂
Margaret L. Been–All Rights Reserved
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