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INTRODUCTION
To Rich and Jay : 23 March 2014
This file contains almost 8,000 35 mm photos that were take over a 21 year period from May of 1970 until October of 1991. This on-again, off-again project has taken me several years to complete. In addition to scanning the slides it was necessary for me to prepare a description of the content of each slide carousel so that you will be able to recognize what you are viewing. Forgive the inconsistent formatting of my description write-ups, which was primarily the result of me making mid-course changes to the way I wanted to present the information. As the carousels were not scanned in sequential order different description formats will be found throughout the collection. For example, my scanning project began in the middle of the collection when I prepared the DVD for you that covered your year in Greece. However, all things considered, you will have the info needed to know what you are looking at.
This photo collection would have never happened if it had not been for Tom Galbraith, a friend of ours at the time, who sent a Nikon camera to me that he had picked up in an Army PX while stationed in Germany. At that time it arrived I had no idea where it had come from. The camera was a complete surprise, arriving in a box with no information regarding its point of origin. With my departure for Taiwan eminent it was almost as if fate had delivered the camera to me as encouragement to document the next 20 or so very eventful years of my life, which included visits to almost 50 countries. The following is more detail about how the Nikon camera came into my possession, how it re-kindled my interest photography, and some detail about the photos in Carousel #1, which I took before departing the U.S.A. in the fall of 1970.
Until 1970 my familiarity with modern high quality cameras was minimal. My only experience with cameras came about when my grandfather, who was a professional photographer, gave me a Kodak “Brownie Hawkeye” point-and-shoot camera for Christmas in 1951. Immediately following that I developed some interest in photography and at one point actually began processing my own photo film in a darkroom that I had set up in my bedroom closet (your grandmother Ruby was not very happy about that). I briefly delved into home movies when my father gave me a simple Kodak movie camera right after Paul was born so that I could begin documenting the lives of my children. In 1942 he began doing the same for me. I have given you copies (on DVD) of the movies that he took of me while I was growing up and I have also given you copies (on DVD) of the movies he and I took of you when you were children.
More on the story behind the Nikon camera: In the spring of 1970 I received a package with no note and no return address that contained a new Nikon F single-lens reflex camera…..just about the best camera made at that time. I made a guess that it had come from Tom Galbraith. Even though I wrote to him several times I never received an answer. In my last letter I told him that I would be moving to Taiwan and the camera would be going with me if I wasn’t sure who it belonged to. Still no answer. Meanwhile, I was curious about this state of the art camera and began to play with it. The result of my learning curve is Carousel #1. It contains a lot of miscellaneous photos that I took while becoming familiar with the camera: You guys in Fresno; You guys with Judy Zander’s daughter Lynn at Sea Cliff Beach and at Frontier Village; Neighbors Sharon & Gerry Saunders; SFO; Joella with our workmate Clay Fiedler and at Gladys Roose’s house where she was living at that time; The Barrett Ave House; My 1961 Corvette, etc.
To give some context to Carousel #1 I should explain how turbulent my life was at time. After your mother and I divorced in 1968, due to a lack of money we were forced to co-habitate for awhile, but by 1969 I had managed to move into an apartment on Bark Lane in San Jose. You guys and your mom stayed in the Barrett Ave house. In early 1970 I moved you guys and all the furniture and appliances from the Barrett Ave house to Fresno at your mother’s request. I then moved back into the Barrett Ave house from Bark Lane. In April of that year I received the job offer that would take me to Taiwan and start me on a long career with HP’s international operations. Like the camera, this job offer came at just the right time. At this point in my life I clearly needed a break with the past. The Taiwan job, which was 8,000 mile away, provided it.
A couple of months before I departed for Taiwan your mother asked me if she could move back into the Barrett Ave house. I was in favor of this because you had lived there for almost four years………….and it was really the only home that you both had up to that point. So, I moved you guys back to San Jose and I moved into a motel (The Sun Dial Best Western) in Mountain View where I lived for the last couple of months or so while preparing to leave for Taiwan. A month later your mom got grandpa Jay to move everything again. This left us with an empty house, with her in Fresno and me in a hotel with just a few weeks to go before I would be leaving. Then a miracle occurred. The housing market was so hot in San Jose that local realtors were knocking on doors to see if anyone wanted to sell. One afternoon while I was checking on our empty house a real estate agent rang the door bell and told me that she had a buyer ready to make an offer. We sold the house for $7,000 more than we paid for it. Back then $7,000 was a lot of money and came in handy as we both began our new lives. Three weeks later I was gone.
Now, back to the camera story. At the end of Carousel #1 you can see that I spent a few days in Hawaii to visit my cousins while en route to Taiwan. After I had been there for several months I finally received a letter from Tom Galbraith letting me know that the camera was his. I returned it to him via an HP visitor and immediately bought an identical camera in Hong Kong. After traveling more than a million miles with me this camera, which is now with Jesse (I hope), was used for the last time in Sonoma in 1991. At that point I switched to a movie camera, which I last used in the 1990’s: Portugal (1994), our road trip to Seattle with the Kirchners (1999), multiple birthdays and Christmases with Zach and Jesse, etc.
Regarding the digitized slides, I did not take time to clean up any of them with Photo Shop. However, I will hang on to the originals just in case you ever want higher quality reproductions. I should point out that there is a separate group of carousels that are dedicated to Rancho Contento in Guadalajara, Mexico and the construction of our house there. Years ago I pulled these from the main slide collection so that all of the construction photos would be together. Jay can probably relate to these photos as he was there with us in 1982.
One last note. In addition to the countries covered in the photo collection I did visit others but was either there too briefly or was too busy to take photos. These countries were: Liberia, Kenya, Zaire (aka, Congo), Ecuador, Uruguay Paraguay, Belgium, Luxembourg, India, Japan, Sri Lanka (aka, Ceylon).
I hope that you find these photos enjoyable. They track a good portion of your lives as well as my own.
Dad