Family Archives

October 17, 2012

91st Birthday Season Kicks Off

After my preview presentation of Ordinary People in Altenburg Tuesday night, the staff of the Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum surprised Mother with a cake, flowers and balloon, kicking off the start of her 91st Birthday Season. Several of Wife Lila’s Class of ’66 showed up, including Terry Hopkins, who came all the way from Florida.

Friend Shari and her mother attended. It’s not often that someone can say that his first high school girlfriend and his last high school girlfriend are attending an event. Brother Mark came down from St. Louis.

A very receptive group of 37 (if I heard correctly) watched my photos and videos and listened to my war stories. They were actually TOO receptive. My goal was to figure out how to cut about 30 minutes from a presentation I did this summer. Riding Partner Anne warned me that if I played off my audience’s reaction, I was going to go long, not short. That’s exactly what happened. Now I have 46 minutes to cut. I needed someone to yawn or check their watch to clue me in that the listeners were getting restless.

Thanks to Carla Jordan and her staff for doing a great job hanging my photos, offering hat-stretching compliments and recognizing Mother’s Birthday Season. I would go into more detail, but my brain is fried. I don’t see how teachers do this kind of thing every day.

October 12, 2012

Emblem of freedom

This 1942 lithograph, Emblem of Freedom, hung on the wall of my grandfather’s liquor store in the Prather Building in Advance. I was always fascinated by the perspective.

I lost track of what I had done with it. It was over the mantle in our living room for a long time, but we shuffled other images up there over the years.

When I was packing for my trip back to Cape Friday morning, I looked in the back of our guest room closet for some stuff I had stashed there. It was behind some framed collections of old press passes.

Not visible in 1946

The flag picture isn’t visible in this 1946 photo of Roy Welch’s store. That’s Mother and Grandmother Elsie Welch in the photo.

The store had been rearranged by the time I was old enough drive my toy tractor round and round the floor, looping through the small store room in the back left. In the winter, some of the regulars would cluster around the old stove visible toward the back right.

I remember the counters being on the north or right wall. The shelves with the bottles were on the left wall.

In background in Spin City

A copy of the flag picture showed up frequently in the background of a TV situation comedy. I’m pretty sure it was Spin City, starring Michael J. Fox. It got so I would look for it as the camera panned the room.

October 11, 2012October 11, 2012

Thoughts Turn to Turkey

I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to Pinterest. Still, when I think about it, I’ll “pin” some of the more interesting photos on the blog to my board. In some ways, It’s kind of cool how you can see the wide scope of pictures I’ve written about. If you click on the photo above, it’ll take you to my Pinterest page.

Thanksgiving turkey is most popular image

The most “pinned” of all my photos is Son Adam carving the Thanksgiving turkey at his house in 2010 I’m seeing more folks looking at the photo now, so thoughts must be skipping over Halloween and jumping straight to Turkey Day.

Top on my list of things to be thankful for will be that it’s after election day. I may not be happy with who won, but at least the ads and phone calls will stop.

Projects under control

I finally got my presentation for Altenburg whipped into shape. I’ll decide what to cut after the preview show Oct. 16 at 6:30 pm. Son Matt is busy printing two calendars and the show catalog/book. All I have to do now is load the car and drive 1,100 miles. My tentative day of departure was Oct. 10, but I never get out of town on time. If I load up on the 11th, I should be able to go wheels up early on the 12th. Early for me is anything before 2 in the afternoon.

If I see anything interesting along the way, I’ll post it; otherwise it’ll be slow for a few days.

October 10, 2012

I Only Need Them to See

I stopped by Son Matt’s house a couple of days ago to drop something off and arrived just as Grandson Malcolm was getting home from the second grade with his new pair of glasses. From the outside looking in, they are pretty spiffy. From Malcom’s perspective, they make the world a lot sharper.

“I can read that sign over there now,” he said proudly. It was just a blur before.

Poor boy didn’t have a chance

I got my first pair of glasses in the fifth grade. My teacher ratted me out. He couldn’t figure out why I could read really well, but had trouble with board problems when I wasn’t sitting in the front row. It turned out that I was horribly nearsighted, particularly in my left eye, which tested out at about 20/200. Ironically enough, I’m left-eyed, so that’s the eye I use to shoot a camera or a gun.

(Want to know which is your dominant eye? Extend your arm and point your index finger at a distant object. Close one eye, then the other. The eye that is looking where the finger lines up is your dominant eye.)

The good news for both of us (he’s nearsighted, too) is that it’s one of the few things that gets better with age. The bad news is that your eyes get worse and worse at focusing at close things when you get older. I had to admit to slipping over the edge when I was working on a construction project that required me to work in 3/16 scale. I just couldn’t make out the measurements no matter how much light I threw on the drawings. It was bifocal city.

I carry two pairs of glasses

I carry two pairs of glasses. One pair is ground on the top for distance; the bottom focuses at 19 inches for closeup work. My “computer glasses” are set for 27 inches at the top, which is the distance to my monitor, and for 19 inches at the bottom for closeup stuff.

Strangely enough, my distance vision – once 20/200, if you remember – has improved enough that my latest driver’s license doesn’t have a glasses restriction on it. I still wear them all the time, but I can get by if I have to.

It’s nice to know that I could probably pass my draft physical now. When I went in 1969, the guy giving the vision test told me to take my glasses off and read the third line. “If I take my glasses off, I can’t see the CHART, let alone the third line.” He thought I was being a wiseguy, but I was telling the truth.

The farm boy behind me failed the test, too. Until, that is, he told the examiner. “I want to be a Marine.” The examiner said, “In that case, you pass.”

[That’s not me in the picture, by the way. It’s Ohio University Post Editor Andy Alexander in 1969.]

We all passed the hearing test

I still haven’t figured out the hearing test. We were all herded into a dimmed room and given black boxes with a button on the top. “When you hear a tone, press the button and hold it until the tone stops,” we were told by a guy who must have been used to dealing with the hard of hearing because he was yelling.

We sat there for a few minutes. Nothing was happening. Guys were looking around the room at their neighbors, exchanging quizzical expressions. After a few shrugs of shoulders, we all started poking the black button randomly. After about five more minutes, Loud Guy came back and proclaimed that we had all passed.