To the uninitiated, the idea of spending an evening viewing slides packed 100 into a carrousel (my uncle and grandfather owned the latest technology, my father refused to upgrade his single slide at a time projector on moral grounds, or something) may sound interesting, possibly quaint, but no one I knew was burdened with traveling relatives, let alone two sets both of whom traveled to the same destinations, all of whom took photos. All of whom shared.
My Grandparents liked to travel as cheaply as they could. They boarded the coaches (a nice word for a large greyhound bus stuffed with overfed Americans) run by the early travel companies. I don’t know how they traveled or on what kind of conveyance since my own memories are colored by my parents – the original drifter – hostel staying – hitching hiking – five dollars a day travelers – who were horrified by the idea of riding around any country en mass, crammed into a bus with their fellow countrymen, viewing the world through smudged windows.
What can you see out a bus window? The two of them would grouse on the way home. My brother and I were too busy trying to fall asleep in the car to see if our parents would carry us to bed (but they never did and we had to walk to our nice beds) to enter the conversation. We didn’t know much then about Mr. Frommer and his famous book. All we knew was that to travel was to experience life outside the bus, and away from the “tourist” spots. Which I would later discover is a problematic attitude since many things I wanted to see in the world, fell under the rubric of “tourist”.
My grandparents embraced the tourist sobriquet and marched in line to see everything there was to see, as cheaply as possible. I don’t ever recall that my grandparents vacationed; they only traveled.
My grandparent’s slides were of marathon quality, the experience, extreme. My grandfather snapped all the photos during their trip. He then built up an armament of up to 600 slides, per night, blasting through our consciousness, convincing us it was just like being there.
My grandmother was in charge of the running commentary. She had a loud voice, which was too bad since it kept us awake.
My Grandparents were very proud that they could feed their children during the depression and the war. They were quite good at saving, sometimes hording as was the case with my grandfather and tools, but he did not hoard, save or otherwise ration out film. Grandpa was an indiscriminate photographer, something was interesting, or caught his attention, he took the picture. He created hundreds of photos per trip and printed every one out into slides, because that was the only choice, all the photos on film were printed, money spent, take your chances. And since he had spent all that money to bring the photos to life, I’m sure he felt that each photo was worthy of viewing, even if it was the same lion, dangling in the same tree, seven times over.
“Look at that lion, I think he moved by the sixth picture, you should have seen how many other photos the others in our tour took, I only have these seven, I was very discerning and only took another when I thought he moved. See that? He moved in the fifth frame.”
Those photos are now lost, but I can describe that lion to you if you’d like.
Who’s Afraid of the 70s? April 30, 2009
Tags: 70s, comment on 90s, commentary
I read an article in a business magazine titled Who’s afraid of the seventies?
In the seventies we seemed to all live an ordinary life.
We walked along the shore happy when we discovered the odd whole shell that washed up. But before we knew what was happening, a tidal wave off shore was gathering momentum, then speed and suddenly a wave filled with objects of need and want loomed large, even over the higher ground. The wave paused just long enough for those on the ground to admire the shiny objects caught in the deadly water before the whole smacked down and engulfed us all in waves and waves of objects and desires.
After a few years of churning haphazardly through the tide, often bruised by floating objects since desire and acquisition have sharp corners. Just as abruptly, especially to those furiously dog paddling and simultaneously grabbing at more stuff, all the while just keeping their head above the water, the tide sucked back from land as violently as it hit.
Now the water wave pulled away all the things, all the objects and all the dreams that those who had been treading water managed to keep afloat during the flood, back out to sea and into deep water. And we wake, and drown.