One of my early memories is of Daddy having his camera slung around his neck with that ever handy light meter hanging from it’s leather strap right there with the camera. Wherever we went Daddy took his camera. He snapped pictures anytime we had a family gathering at Grandmother and Grandfather Sechrist’s house. If we had Mama’s family come from California to visit the camera was kept busy. With four little girls he had lots of models and he took advantage by taking pictures of us many Sunday afternoons right after church.
One of his favorite sites for photography was up on the hill by the water tower in Spur, Texas. Other times it would be our own yard. Many of his pictures were taken in front of a plain cardboard background that he kept in his “dark room”. The large piece was from some kind of discarded furniture display that he brought home from Godfrey Furniture Store where he worked. He tried portraits and wanted a good background for his subject. This background had a hole about the size of a silver dollar midway down the side. The top corners were cut off in angles. The surface was faintly marblized in tones of beige. How many times over many years Daddy pulled that piece of cardboard out for more picture taking! So many of his pictures have that hole and the slanted corners still in them. He was always going to crop the pictures but somehow just never got around to it. I love seeing these particular pictures because I remember that background and the memories associated with it.
When we lived in town there was a room off the side of the dining room that was “Daddy’s Room”. We weren’t allowed in there. unless specifically invited in by Daddy. Now that was a rare privilege. This “inner sanctum”, as Mama called it, housed all Daddy’s tools and his darkroom equipment. I do remember being invited in to watch Daddy develop some film. He cautioned me that I must not open the door or all the pictures would be ruined. I promised I would not get off the stool then Daddy turned off the big light and turned on a little red light. I still remember the strange feel of seeing everything, including Daddy, in that red glow.
Daddy carefully measured his powders and chemicals into the various trays and then took the film out of it’s little case. He patiently explained each step in the process as he submerged the film into the developer. Slowly he counted the time so that it would be in the solution just the right amount . He had several rolls to develop and as each one was finished he used one of Mama’s wooden clothespins to hang it from a cord he had strung up by the ceiling. I got to look at the negatives. They didn’t look right to me and I told him so. He laughed and told me I’d get to see the next step when the film had dried. I don’t recall the time frame. It may have been the next night.
Back in the darkroom he explained how he was going to make the pictures. He had cut the film into the individual negatives and was ready to print them. Again, he mixed chemicals in his white enameled rectangular pans. I don’t know exactly the whole process but he put the negative on his printer, put the treated paper in it’s spot, and exposed the paper to the negative. This photographic paper was then clipped with the clothes pen and submerged in the developer solutions. He moved the stool over close to where he was working. Lifting me up he let me watch as the picture magically began to show on the paper. He had told me to be quiet so he could count because he had to be just right. My, what a thrill when I could see myself staring back at me from that tray.
In about 1944 we bought The Place and moved into the tiny two room shack. Daddy had no place to store his photographic equipment except in the chicken house. I never saw him use it again. I suppose the flood must have ruined everything.
When Daddy died the main thing I wanted when I cleaned out his closet and the garage was Mama’s butter churn and Daddy’s negatives if either one still existed. Cleaning out the garage is a whole other story but I did find the churn and I did get Daddy’s negatives. Daddy had carefully put them between pieces of paper and had them stored in old cigar boxes and 3 X 5 inch file boxes. They were treasures to me but there wasn’t anything I could do with them. I kept them for seven years without being able to see them.
Last year I stumbled upon a $99 little scanner that said it could scan negatives and put them on a computer. I ordered this with some hesitation and very little confidence in it’s ability but knew I needed some sort of backup for those negatives so they wouldn’t be lost. I kept thinking that someday I would find someone who could print them for me. I hooked up the little scanner and put in the first negative. My, how surprised I was when the picture came up. The software instantly changed the negative to positive and I was looking at a picture of my young childhood. How excited I became as I put in one negative after another and could actually see pictures that I’d never seen before. I suppose Daddy had many that he never got around to printing.
This gave me an idea as I found numerous pictures of my sisters. Having one sister still living I decided to create an album of her childhood and send it to her for her birthday. One day, while in Walmart, I thought to ask if they could send off old black and white negatives to have printed. When the answer was yes, I began organizing negatives. I had over 300 printed. I then started going through all my old pictures and found additional prints that I could put on my computer by scanning then printing. My, how I love modern technology! I got busy and made the Birthday Album. This ended up being the best present I ever gave her. Her son told me she cried for 2 hours before she could get control enough to call me and let me know she had gotten it.
As the year moved along I kept getting the idea that I needed to make my sister another album with more of the family pictures. Mentioning it to Sylvia, my daughter, she asked if I would make her one also. Once started, I decided I needed to make one for myself. Now that would be three albums. Sure I could do that! However, I never do anything in a simple manner. I wanted each picture backed with red, then black paper. And, I found even more pictures that needed to be included.
I’ve told about Daddy and his picture taking but I haven’t mentioned that Mama treasured photos and kept them in a strange assortment of boxes. She had pictures of her grandparents, parents, siblings, and her childhood. Digging through these boxes I also found pictures from Daddy’s side of the family. The Greats and the Grands. I realized that not many people have pictures of four sets of great grandparents, in fact many pictures of them.
Suddenly my albums began to expand. I simply couldn’t make albums about our family without including all the pictures I had available of grandparents, great grandparents, aunts and uncle, cousins by the dozen. And what beautiful old pictures they are. So, back to my computer, my printer/scanner and many hours of putting pictures into them. Of course making three albums means all pictures have to be printed in triplicate. Oh, did I mention that they have to be trimmed on the paper cutter, and then each one first backed in red, then backed in black so that tiny edges of each color shows. These must be trimmed with exactness.
My piles of pictures for each album has grown. I now have each stack for each album divided into several labled groups. I have Mama’s grandparents, (that’s two sets) her childhood family, Daddy’s grandparents (two sets) Daddy’s childhood, and then our immediate family, all from old photos scanned into the computer or prints from Daddy’s negatives. My project groweth!!! Now, I’m thinking that to put these pictures all in one album will make that sucker so heavy that at my sister’s and my age we may not be able to lift them much longer! Maybe the best plan would be to make an album of the grandparents and our parents childhood. Then start a second album of just our immediate family’s pictures. I believe even those albums would be pretty heavy once all the pictures are in.
I guess I have picked up the desire to be the Keeper of the Heritage from both Mama and Daddy. They each valued photographs. Those pictures are ‘memories in a bottle’, memories of moments when family were gathered together having fun and fellowship. I must share these memories. They are too valuable to horde.
So, like Daddy in his darkroom or Mama with her various little boxes stuffed with family photographs, I gather the collection to save the past. I work in my “brightroom”. I scan, I print, I trim, I decorate, and I will eventually put these pictures in albums. I will stuff the albums full of memories, and as I touch each picture I remember ……………
I remember the 20 year old Uncle Bill, who came on leave during World War II, the laughter, the teasing of my two preteen sisters until they, wanting to get back at him, fed him a slice of soap between two crackers telling him it was cheese. I remember this same uncle who took the time to send a little 4 year old girl a post card while he was stationed in Miami, Florida waiting to be shipped to Europe where he was a bombardier dropping bombs over Berlin. I look at pictures of two little cousins I never knew because their parents divorced when the war was over and their daddy came home to a wife who had found someone else in his absence. I see cousins who were my best friends, our old jersey cow that gave the cream that I churned into butter, the collie dog my sister, Norma, pushed around in her doll buggy, the crocheted dress Mama made for me, the little sister who took every step I took for eight years and then suddenly died one hot July day, I see how Mama declined in health visibly after that terrible day, I see the four sisters, and then the three, I see the older sisters going off to college leaving a tearful, lonely twelve year old little sister behind, I see the grandparents who let me come visit every summer allowing me the opportunity to be with my 18 cousins, plus aunts and uncles, I see Mama as a two year old, then three, then four and see the sadness in her face after her beloved daddy was killed in a train car wreck; there’s Aunt Lea who could make a joke about anything and kept everyone around her laughing even when she had so many problems in her own life………………the memories go on and on.
What photo could I leave out? Who in the family is unimportant? Who could ever be forgotten? And so the albums get bigger and heavier. The albums become more precious. These albums, these pictures tell our history, so ordinary yet so unique. And I? I become the Daddy and the Mama who guarded the negatives and the photographs through flood, moves, tornadoes, depressions, tears, toils, and sorrows. I become the Keeper of the Heritage. I take my position very seriously because it is important. As one nephew told me, “I never saw my mother as a baby or a little girl. You have not only given her a present of her childhood, you have given it to my brother and me as well as our six children.”
And so I take up my scissors and glue stick, I turn on all the lights in the study so I can see to trim precisely, and I continue the task…………
But then I stop and think. Who will come after me? Who will guard the negatives or the old family photos? Who will see that we are not “lost” through indifference? Heaven forbid that someday some of my beautiful photographs of my great grandparents should end up being interior decorations on a Cracker Barrel wall! Oh my Gosh! What if I ended up on a Cracker Barrel Wall?
So who in the family will become the next Keeper of the Heritage? Who will be our guardian?
