ROSA with her fella

Many photos of Rosa to come over time. Through my eyes she was an interesting person, but then she might have been completely opposite. I will create the life I want for her. Her reality will no longer be attached to the images of her. A life unknown, but now an image that will live on. I think I would have liked Rosa.

When my best friend gave me the photos she told me the story she felt was attached. Rosa is a little bit like Jean who was on her trip to Honolulu last year. Bits and pieces of life images, not enough to construct a full life. With Rosa there is much more.

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This fella is in quite a few shots with Rosa so we'll assume he was her fella. Here they sit quietly along a river. I'm imagining it's in California because photos of her around this age all seem to be in the U.S. Then again, what do I know?

ROSA with her fox

This is Rosa. At least that's who we believe she is. This is from a negative that was stuck in a packet of old photographs that had belonged to Rosa. My best friend bought them years ago. We don't know the story of Rosa other than life began in Europe and at some point she moved to California.

I posted another photo of Rosa last year. She was young and lovely in France and didn't have a dead animal draped across her shoulders. I've never understood the supposed charm of draping an animal, head and tail included, around your shoulders.

I will have more photos of Rosa through the years.

Gentlemen...START PEDDLING!

This is another negative from the same little packet where I found the sled airplane posted a few days ago. Same neighborhood? I don't know. Built by the same person that built the plane? Could be.

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I looked up "Trico" and found quite a few listings for various products. Everything from video games to industrial lubricants. Perhaps the way "Trico" is painted on this car will be familiar to someone. Perhaps this was a logo long since gone. Anyone? If you recognize anything post a comment.

If this belonged to the same kid that owned the sled I'm wondering what sort of career he chose. Did he end up in WWII working on engines? End up in Detroit designing cars? Or end up owning his own gas station? Probably none of the above. We'll never know.

COME SLIDE WITH ME

I have a packet of negatives bought at the flea market. I've never scanned any of them. I thought that every so often I'd just pull one out and scan it. We get what we get. There are I believe 29 negs in the little packet with "misc. negatives" written on the front.

The first one reminds me of one Jim Linderman at Dull Tool Dim Bulb posted the other day of a model plane coming in for a landing on a bed with a white bedspread. It was wonderfully odd, no doubt about it. This one is not quite so odd...I think...maybe. A sled made to look like a plane. Homemade or store bought? You decide.

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I'm trying to imagine some kid in this thing rattling down a hillside while the mother, wearing an apron, stands at the kitchen window with furrowed brow, fingers nervously twitching at her mouth, wondering if junior is going to survive. Don't worry mother. I've seen worse. My cousins used to sit at the top of a very steep hill on Tonka trucks and go bat-you-know-what crazy until they ran into a bush. They all strangely survived.

Of course, the geography of this landscape has me wondering if these people had a hill. Did a kid just get in it and have someone pull them while they pretended to fire the dual guns? And how did they steer this thing? Too many questions. No answers.

Hmmmm...perhaps a German spy looming in the foreground taking photos of this US top secret fighter jet? Nah. Most likely the guy that built the thing.

Brothers, CAIN AND ABEL

I look at these boys, brothers no doubt, and think of Cain and Abel. The one with a slight smile, the other unemotional. I also think of the two brothers in East of Eden.

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I have no information about these boys. We bring to them what we want.

I find it interesting that their hair parts in different directions. Perhaps they're twins and the mother parted their hair differently so she could tell them apart. However, the one on the left looks slightly younger.

From the CUT THE CAKE COLLECTION

"Here little darlin', let me cut you a piece of birthday cake. Oh no, no, no...it's harmless...like me. Come now darlin' just a little piece before this ship gets-a-rockin' again."

Brownie HAWKEYE CAMERAS and vernacular photography

For many of us the Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Camera is the first camera we ever used. The Hawkeye was first introduced by Kodak in September 1950 with an original list price of $6.95. I always remember this camera being around the house. It was a mysterious plastic box that I loved to hold and look through, pretending to push the shutter, capturing visual moments.

My folks first allowed me to use the Brownie on an outing to Ft. DeRussy at Waikiki. We were on a picnic with my best friend and her family. Somewhere I think I still have the blurred pictures I took that day, but I can't find them. I also have a photo of myself using the camera at my grandmother's house in Pennsylvania the first summer after we'd moved back to the mainland. Again, I know it's around somewhere and had it just a few months ago. I remember putting it away for safe keeping. Yeah, well, now I don't know where I put it. I do however have this photo of a complete stranger with her Brownie Hawkeye taken in 1955. That's all it says on the back, 1955.

I also have the small pamphlet (shown below) that came with the camera. When you consider how easy point-and-shoot cameras are to use these days, just the mere fact that you had to load film into one of these little boxes would confuse kids today.

To see more interesting facts and memories people have of their Brownie cameras go to the Kodak site and then click on "View Story." Well worth the little bit of time it takes to view the history of the different Brownie cameras.

How many vernacular photographs in your collection were taken with one of these?

Click on any of the images to see them larger.

GUFFAW if you must

Well, that pretty much ruined the shot. This is why I've wondered if the photographer took another. Or were all of these people surprised when they got the print and saw dear sweet Grace with her finger up her nose? That's Harold sitting next to her. Harold who was in the moment of the shot. Grace was in her own moment, far removed from what she was supposed to be doing. A quick guffaw should have been heard when you saw this.

And now we close with the entire group in place. Living a hopefully nice life, no family feuds too hard to overcome. Frank, the grandfather, probably teased Grace, the granddaughter, for many years to come about picking her nose in the portrait.

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Wish I knew where they lived. Was this taken at a house in the country or city? Right now I'm going with city. Why? Because they have a lock on their mailbox! For some odd reason I think of locked mailboxes as something from today, not the sweet gentle past...which of course was not sweet and gentle.

Did they have marauding droves of drunken teenagers out on Friday and Saturday nights beating up mailboxes with baseball bats? It's still done in my neighborhood. I have a lock box. A large communal lock box which someone recently pried open with a crowbar. Even my junk mail isn't safe anymore.
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Tattered and Lost volumes 1 to 7 available at Amazon.