Before the modern era

Way before DVD’s, Americans rented and bought 16mm films to watch and enjoy with family and friends.  The equipment was expensive, and while Eastman Kodak did its best to bring home movies to the mass market, you probably had to be a rich techno-nut to want and afford the camera and the equipment.  A 16mm camera cost two thirds as much as a new car!  Kodak introduced 16mm color photography in 1935.  In 1936, according to my mother, her father was taking color movies.  He was not rich, but he was a techno-nut, and I’ll bet he repaired a few clocks for jewelry houses, where clocks and cameras were also sold, in trade for his first outfit.

My Grandpa Rolf, who I never knew, left a couple of miles of 16mm film behind.  When I was a child the family movies were often brought out and were the conclusion to a fine day of visiting and eating.  We children looked forward to seeing the big reel of family movies that Uncle Hank had spliced together.  These started in the early 1930’s and went through the mid ‘50’s, with Uncle Hank’s 16mm home movies. 

Grandpa Rolf about 1936

Twenty years ago I had the movies transferred to video tape, and passed out copies to relatives.

When I was little the 1936 Great Trip West was booed down if anyone suggested loading it into the projector.  I watched the video tape once.  An hour or two of nothing but scenery to California and back.  When I sold one of the souvenir Apache baskets on EBay, the one and only tape of the Great Trip West went into the shipping box as a bonus.

In an absolute stroke of genius I had Aunt Flo watch the family movie tape with us and tell us what we were watching.  The recorded conversation was dubbed over the VHS.  Before she would come watch the tapes with us Aunt Flo made sure she wouldn’t have to watch the Great Trip West.

Aunt Flo in the late '40's

The tapes I passed out languished, as far as I know.  Jan and I watched ours once, including the great trip to you know where, and then they collected dust on a closet shelf.  Gathering around a TV to see their parents as kids wasn’t the wonder to a newer generation.  Or, perhaps the bigger than life movie screen in Uncle Hank’s family room was the magic ingredient. 

Joanne in 1944

Recently I had the tapes transferred to DVD.  It’s a two or three hour watch, and I must agree that people who were adults eighty years ago still aren’t fascinating.  But much of what was filmed still interests me.  My grandfather had people walk up and down the street as he filmed them.  His parade starts out as a small group of youngsters and grows as adults apparently come off their porches and join the line going up the street, across and down.  Adult subjects had to be set in motion.  Children were filmed at what they do best.  Most amazing of all, my parents and grandparents did not come with white hair.

Watching the DVD again and taking off some screen shots has given me a whole new project.  I must learn how to make video clips.  My brother Walt bounced himself up and down in the arms of whoever held him.  You have to see it to believe it.

Walt, bouncing Grandma Rolf, 1946

I'm working on the video!

If they could have stayed a little longer

   

For several years Jan and I each had some additional local responsibility.  She was a member of the zoning commission and I was the fire board clerk.  Same Tuesday evening each, once a month.  This was back in the days before Tom retired, and he often wasn’t home before Jan and I went off to our meetings.  As the remaining members of the house were dogs and cats, no problem.  Angus andFiona’s job was waiting for Tom, they didn’t need us.

Come summer time, though, there were summertime grandkids in residence.  They were well accustomed to going with Jan to a quilt shop, or with me to work if there would be a shortage of adults in the house.  I can imagine them squealing with joy in a quilt shop.  At the township they settled in with sketch books or potholder looms.

The summer Emily and Laura were 9 and 7 was the year UncleTom’s Tuesday night schedule got extended.  The girls were quite used to amusing themselves when they came to work with me, so I took them to fire board meetings and they settled into the back of the room with whatever they brought to amuse themselves.  When Jan left her meeting she went right by the fire house, and if the board member cars were still around, she’d pull in and pick them up.

One night they could barely keep quiet leaving the room and were pouring their tale into Jan’s ear as soon as the three of them reached the parking lot:  The firemen got a new fire truck today and one of those men wanted the firemen to start a fire so they could put it out.  The man who is the fire chief said that probably wasn’t a good idea; what if they accidently burned something. That other man said “That’s why we have insurance!”  And then you came, Aunt Janice, and we can’t watch that man start a fire.

Little girls were in bed when I got home, so we could laugh over the story Aunt Jan told me about missing the fire.  They were so disappointed!  I told the fire chief the next day how sorry those little girls had been not to see a fire and the new grass fire unit in action.  “You missed it,” he said.  “They walked out of here backwards, eyes like pie plates.  I was almost sorry I couldn’t start them a fire.”

The real end of the line

I vacationed after my girls were off and gone, and had no problem “roughing” it, but didn’t want to deal for one minute with mom’s campers.  Dad taught me to back one neatly into a camping space, surrounded by adjacent male campers watching “the girl”, and I was damn good at it.  I didn’t want to be caught in the act of actually setting one up; I couldn’t.  And I had no heart for mom’s favorite vacation chore, unpacking and laying out all those boxes of essentials.  Teddy Roosevelt exploring the Amazon probably carried less on his twenty pack mules.

Driving home from work one night I saw a little house on wheels.  A Dodge Transvan in a driveway, with a For Sale sign.  I bought it.  We got several years hard use of it before we lost interest and sent it on to a new home.  It had captain and co-pilot seats, a table that seated four and a sofa that seated a whole lot of kids in a row.  No safety belts, of course.  After the seating area there was an ice box, a propane stove, a sink and storage cabinets.  Only children stood upright in the center aisle, adults bent over.  There was a step down area at the back to stand upright and use the stove or the sink. The table and the sofa converted to sleep four at night.

One of the last years both my girls were home Mom’s annual vacation with full complement of grandkids was to New England.  She and I drove, via ferry across Lake Champlain for her to have her ferry fix, and spent two weeks in a circuit of New England.  I loved the country and had to go back.  I also came to the resolve never to own a pop up camper unless I had plenty of grandkids to set it up and tear it down.  When I saw that little house on wheels I knew it had to be.

Jan and I took it on one of its first trips, back to New England.  No ferry, as mom was not along.  Jan and I both were deep in photography and went looking for the flora and fauna, the landscapes, the sunrises and sunsets.  We found out how early the sun rises on the east coast and how much before that one must set out to see it happen over the ocean.  We never made a sunrise.

We travelled the eastern side on the way up to Moosehead Lake in Maine.  I wonder if you can still get a lobster out of a pot along the road for dinner every night?  We set out one morning to get a campsite at Acacia National Park.  When we got to the entrance there was a several car line, and a Ranger.  We pulled up and learned that as one car came out, another was allowed in for camping.  We were three or four cars back from the turn into the park, so what the heck.  The Ranger went up and down the line, explaining the routine.  When we were the next car to turn right into the park road, the Ranger moved us all onto a service road at right angles to the road we were on.  Across from the road into the park.  As more cars came, he directed them to the end of line on the service road.  Jan and I were first in line, we’d been there an hour or so and no one had left recently.  We could also see a dozen cars before the gate, across the road.

The Ranger came up, leaned in the driver’s window and said, “Listen, I need to go chase some deer out of an orchard.  I’m putting you in charge of sending people to the real end of the line.”  Jan said to do that she needed to be official, and asked for his hat.  “No, no, not the hat.  I’ll give you my gun.”  It would have been worth it for the hat, but not for the gun.  We went back on down the road to a campground we’d passed. I remember we pounded chicken breasts flat on a rock, with a rock, to have chicken cordon bleu for dinner that night.  It was also a long walk to the bath house, uphill.  Mom probably had tools for the former, and I know she carried a portable toilet in her camper.

We took that trip in mid August, as I knew winter in New England begins September 1^st.  We were in the Green Mountain Range on the way home, in a nice state campground.  Very early in the morning there was loud knocking on the door.  “Girls, girls.  I want you to get up and get on the road right now.  Big storm coming in and in an hour you won’t get over the pass.”  That ranger was right; we hit it as really bad rain not long after we got into New York.  I recall we stayed at Buttermilk Falls that night, which was a trickle over the cliff when we pulled in and a torrent when we left the next morning.

Not my last trip to New England, but memorable.

Mom’s can collection

Litter was less of a problem in my youth.  Perhaps there were fewer cars to toss from, and certainly no fast food wrappers to toss.  Kids scoured the sides of streets for pop bottles to turn in for two cents and leave with an afternoon of candy.  I remember my dad remarking on the cleanliness of English streets, parks and sidewalks when he visited, but I also can’t recall an appreciable amount of litter around me in my homeland.  When I was in college a friend routinely threw trash on the ground, explaining her motive was economic.  Someone had to be employed to pick it up, therefore she was contributing to the economy.  I could never square the moral principal with her economic theory and saved my candy wrappers for the corner trash bins.  On the whole, litter was a non issue. 

Then mother discovered recycling in the 1980’s.  She was a selective recycler.  She chose aluminum cans.  As there were no aluminum cans in her house, she had to pick them up along the road.  Perhaps Lady Bird Johnson keeping America beautiful sparked her imagination.  Perhaps it was finding an aluminum recycling station a mile from home, where her trunk load of aluminum cans could be exchanged for silver, and even folding stuff.  Mother did not need the money.  Mother was on a mission, and the money was an adjunct.  Even at a dollar a gallon, I wonder if it covered her gas.  She considered herself too practical to set out just for cans, so the picking had to be part of a larger errand.

I asked Jan about the events of the final chapter of can collecting, which she supplied in detail, and had a couple more details of the opening chapter in Tennessee.  Jan and Tom, Mom and I went to Tennessee to attend a friend’s wedding.  Way up a mountain, down a holler, and up a bumpy road, past grandpap’s.  Mom was beside herself at the can bonanza overflowing the ditches.  Jan, Tom and I absolutely refused to be involved, so Mom went off alone to pick up cans.  She made so many trips her trunk overflowed and she transferred her loot to Tom’s pick up.  Then the mother of the bride saw the back end of the truck overflowing with empty beer cans.  Shirley was a founding member of the little foursquare bedrock church down at the fork, and beside herself thinking about wedding guests parking by a pickup full of beer cans.  The father of the bride cast an appraising eye over the loot and told mom that most of those cans were steel and would not fool an aluminum recycling station.  Bob did show her how to tell the aluminum from the steel, so mom spent an afternoon sorting.    Shirley would not allow the steel beer cans to be left at her house to go to the dump, so mom worked out a deal with grandpap.  Tom parked his pick up down in the field on the day of the wedding.

As time went on mother became even more efficient in collecting cans.  She used grandkids.  There was no penny ante collection, either.  They gleaned highways.  State Route 224, on the way to Aunt Helen Rita’s.  Imagine a big, blue Dodge Polaris, emergency blinkers blinking, slowly creeping down the berm of a state highway while five or six children walked the grass and filled bags with cans.  State Route 21 on the way to Aunt Laura’s could provide passing motorists the same scene.  This was such a normal afternoon with grandma that my girls didn’t mention it until it became a postscript to the final can chapter.

Eventually the bulk of the grandkids grew up, went to college, joined the service, got jobs.  Jan sized it up and decided it was time for mom to get out of the can business.  She was out of grandkids who were close to the ground.  “No more cans, Mom.”  Of course, mom refused.  The final deal was, no more cans unless Jan went with her.  Mom was in her late sixties, and a pretty spry woman, but getting in and out, stooping, bending, walking down the road and back cut into her recycle pounds when she was on her own.  That was Jan’s convincing argument; she didn’t have to play the dangerous card.  So, trips to collect cans dwindled until mom couldn’t stand it and wheedled another ride from Jan.

She got Jan to agree to a can trip one great summer afternoon, and selected Ira Road, down in the Cuyahoga Valley.  Like all the roads that climb out of the valley, it goes up a hill and has a number of twists.  Jan’s instructions were to leave mom at the bottom, go up around the first bend, turn around and commence collecting downhill on the opposite side.  Jan went up the hill, around the bend, turned around, back around the bend…..and she saw mom sitting on the tailgate of a station wagon.  Jan wasn’t even up the hill when mom slipped in the gravel, fell, broke her ankle.  In fact, the station wagon folks saw Jan let her mother out of the car and drive off, leaving the poor woman to walk up the hill on her own and she tripped and fell!  Jan never got a word in edgewise as the irate couple berated her.  With clenched teeth and lips, she helped mom into the car and drove her straight to Akron General, and waited several hours for the ankle to be set.

But wait.  There’s more.  Returning home Jan pulled onto the front lawn in order for mom to use the front door and avoid the long walk up the sidewalk.  “Wait for me to come around and help you.”  “I can manage these crutches just fine!”  And mom fell flat on her face.  Jan got her up, in the house, into a chair and said “You will listen to me until this is over or you’re going to a nursing home to recover!”  Listening pretty much happened, although mom never forgot the threat of the nursing home.  But that’s another story. 

We miss her.

Screen shots and time capsules

Several times lately I’ve clicked on a blog and had an error message.  Too bad I didn’t think to try a screen shot.  The Google logo is accompanied by a sad, broken down repair robot and the message says 502.  That’s an error.  The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.  Please try again in 30 seconds.  That’s all we know.  How can you not smile.  The next time it happens, I’ll remember to push print screen while I grin.

I walked over to my closet to see what I heard and did come back to get the camera for a shot.  Ryan (named for a fireman) is in the basket.  The entire top of my dresser is Ryan’s basket and Mr. Scaredy Cat can often be found there.  A neighbor just rang our door bell.  I’m used to Ryan zipping past me to the closet door and wasn’t surprised to find him.  I didn’t see Toby go past, but here he is, dropping socks on the floor, one pair at a time.  They have been moved to the highest shelf, out of his reach.  Or not.

The best of this picture is the tea canister.  Ann was cleaning off a counter when I visited, and asked if I knew anyone who could use the pretty can.  I had just told her about Caroline and her dad’s time capsule, and it all came together.  Her dad was fifty recently and I gave him a 1961 time capsule I found on Amazon.  Caroline was enchanted with the contents and wished she could get time capsules for her birthday.  And there was the perfect time capsule.  Ann and I went to several stores in several little Wisconsin towns.  She filled four advent calendars and I filled the time capsule. Those rocket boosters on the outside are candy filled straws that didn’t fit inside.  I can’t wait to see what her mother thinks of the pedicure outfit and the toe rings.   

Caroline had purple hair yesterday.