Posted in As Pictured Below, Family, tagged 1970s, As Pictured Below, brother, childhood, childhood fears, fair, fear of goats, goats, photo scanning, postaday2011, Scancafe, snakes, Spider-Man, Three Billy Goats Gruff on April 6, 2011| 2 Comments »
Why is Spider-Man holding a snake, you might ask?
Because the 1970s made NO SENSE, I would reply. Of all the things that we might do at the fair, my brother and I chose to sit on a bench with a guy dressed as Spider-Man holding a snake.
Also note that while I had just overcome a crippling fear of goats that came about after a tragic misreading of Three Billy Goats Gruff, I apparently had no fear of snakes AT ALL.
Posted in Family, Photographs, tagged 1960s, 1970s, aging, ashtrays, awesome, brother, bus, cancer, Chesterfields, childhood, collections, college, cruise, death, divorce, family, father, grandmother, groovy, heart disease, hobbies, K-car, secrets, teenager, Thanksgiving, tour, vacation, weird on October 13, 2009| 4 Comments »
A co-worker complimented me on my paperclip holder this morning.
It’s an ashtray.
My grandmother (father’s side) LOVED to smoke. She loved it like some people love their pets. It was her hobby.
When we were children, my brother and I would argue over who got to flick the Bic to light her Chesterfields, secondhand smoke be damned.
After her diagnosis of lung cancer/heart disease, she halfheartedly tried to quit. I remember looking outside one Thanksgiving and noticing smoke drifting up from the open driver-side door of her K-car. She may have sort of tried to take her doctor’s advice to quit, but she wasn’t taking any orders off of anybody.
After she died, I found secret stashes of Chesterfields all over her house, in handbags, dresser drawers and cabinets. They seemed like dirty secrets, and finding them made me wish that everybody had just shut up and let the woman smoke after her condition was diagnosed as terminal. Instead, she seems to have spent her last couple of years sneaking cigarettes only when she could get all the caretakers out of the house.
This is only one of the entirely awesome collection of ashtrays that I inherited from her. Most are very evocative of the ’60s and ’70s, and there’s not a plain one among them. Like her, they’re colorful and weird, and they don’t really go with anything.
She died in the fall when I was a college freshman. Every year about this time I realize that I’m becoming more like her as I get older (sans the smoking and multiple divorces), and we could have some great conversations if she was still around. We could have spent the last 20 years taking those crazy guided bus tours that she liked, smoking our way around the continent.
She would have been a blast on a cruise ship.
Instead, I’ve got the grooviest ashtrays you’ve ever seen. They may never see another cigarette, but they’re great reminders of a majestically weird lady that I wish had been around longer.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged '60s, '70s, '80s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, bellbottoms, boots, childhood, costume, fashion, Ghostbusters, kids, leggings, legwarmers, music, parachute pants, pop culture, rubber bracelets, silver bracelets, Swatch, teenager, tube tops on September 8, 2009| 4 Comments »
I’ve been invited to an ’80s party. While I’m looking forward to the music and pop culture references, I find myself dreading the costume.
I now know how people who grew up in the ’60s felt in the ’80s. You live through a decade’s fashion atrocities, then you have to put up with the whippersnappers making fun of them or, perish the thought, reviving them.
I saw girls in legwarmers last year, and they were nowhere near an ’80s party. Legwarmers are as hideous now as they were before.
Folks who came of age in the ’60s have seen bellbottoms make a rebound or two. Tube tops, last seen in the ’70s and ’80s, have experienced an unfortunate resurgence the past few years. Ladies, please. Mind your squishy parts.
Do I miss anything about ’80s fashion? I still love Swatches. Although they’re not as widely available as they were when I was a teenager, they’re still colorful, fun and quirky. I tend to gravitate toward Swatch stores when I’m vacationing, and thus have several watches that are inappropriate for many office settings and social affairs. One features a monkey. I may be picky, but I also might be kind of immature.
I miss wearing dozens of rubber or silver bracelets at once. I’m kind of sorry sometimes that I don’t have much occasion to wear two earrings in one ear.
In short, I guess miss the jewelry of the ’80s. You can have the leggings, parachute pants and slouchy boots.
Maybe I’ll go as a Ghostbuster. All the better to keep those damn kids off my lawn.
Posted in Photographs, tagged 1970s, 35mm, animals, childhood, digital, dogs, memory, mother, naming, photograph, Polaroid, Scancafe on May 22, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Morgus (maybe)
This is Morgus, my mom’s long-lived dog. I found him in a cemetery when he was a puppy. Ever since I got my digital photo scans back from ScanCafe, I had been thinking it was Newsted, the psychotic hound dog that I found outside my high school gymnasium.
Obviously, I shouldn’t be in charge of naming animals or making sure their stories live on in memory.
I have to highly recommend ScanCafe. They’ve scanned a few hundred old images for me over the past couple of months, with impressive results from 35mm negatives, color slides, and even Polaroid prints from the 1970s.
It’s beyond cool to see old pics that were formerly just laying around in boxes brought to life on the computer screen.
Also beyond cool: accurate recollections of names and faces. But I guess sometimes a girl can’t have it all.
Entirely Adequate 