Remembering Darkroom Days and Nights

 

   The term for today is disruptive technology. It means that new technology changes or disrupts what we know.  Take the typewriter, for example. No nostalgia can convince us to give up our computer keyboards and bring back the white-out correction fluid. The personal computer slowly killed the typewriter and not many people put up a fight.

   The same is true in photography. Digital cameras gradually improved year by year and before we realized it, our film cameras were obsolete. If you don’t believe me, try finding a roll of film.  In the days of Plus-X and Kodachrome, I carried a dozen rolls of film on vacation. I now have just one roll in the familiar plastic film container to remember “the good old days.”

   The good old days for me started in 1970 when I received a Kodak Instamatic Camera with flashcube for Christmas. Kodak introduced the auto loading camera in 1963 and sold 50 million of them by 1970.  The cost of film and processing slowed me down but I fell in love with photography.  My first official photography role was as the Boy Scout Troop 22 photographer – a title I claimed after earning the prestigious photography merit badge.

   A few years later I joined the high school yearbook staff and was introduced to “real” film cameras that our private school could afford. There was the Leica camera that may have come home with a GI from WWII and an ancient Yashica-Mat format camera that may have previously been used by Jimmy Olsen.

   The cameras were unimportant. The fun was working in the darkroom.  I logged hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours in darkrooms through high school, college and later work. Like a chain smoker, I carried the strong smell of chemicals like D-76, Dektol and acetic acid on my fingertips and clothes everyday.  Darkroom work was rewarding and fun but inefficient. 

   Franchises like Fotomat began offering low cost film processing and soon you could drop off your film at Target, shop and pick up your prints on the way out. The darkroom days were numbered but not dead until the digital camera appeared. Invented in 1975, digital camera sales boomed in the late 1990’s when the quality caught up with standard film cameras and costs came down.

   I was reminded of those good old darkroom days this past week when I came across “vintage darkroom equipment” listed on Ebay.  For only $50 you could get an enlarger, reels, trays, and a snappy red light.  That is a bargain if you are interested in taking up photo processing as a hobby. Vinyl records are making a comeback – maybe darkrooms are next.  The whole thing is a bit depressing when I see my old darkroom equipment listed as vintage.

   My darkroom days are over but I have boxes of old black and white prints to remind me of those many afternoons in the high school darkroom.  Today, no darkroom skills are needed to process smart phone pictures.  People can literally shoot, edit and send high quality photos with one finger and that finger won’t be stained with photo chemicals. Now that’s progress.

Prom Memories Don't Last But Prom Photos Do

 There are headline events we have all experienced that leave a mark on our lives. The high school prom is not one of them.

For more than 1000 Allen High School seniors, the senior prom at Southfork Ranch last month was hopefully a memorable evening and another check box on the road to graduation.

Senior proms are a big deal - for at least a month. A month later, graduation takes top billing and the prom dresses head to the back of the closet.

I can’t make light of proms because they were a big deal for me as well. Our boys only parochial high school rarely hosted mixed social events so I willingly volunteered for the Essex Catholic junior prom committee in 1973.

Under the watchful eye of Brother Lapa, crepe paper selections were made, centerpieces were planned and most importantly, a theme was chosen.  The Moody Blues hit “Nights In White Satin” would set the mood for this gala event, which was held in the high school ballroom (yes the ballroom).

I invited Eva Marie, a childhood friend. I bought some dress bell bottoms at the mall and secured transportation.  Unfortunately, I was a full six months short of New Jersey’s 17-year-old driving age so my father graciously drove us. We awkwardly sat in the back seat with plenty of space in between. That set the tone for the evening as we awkwardly danced under the crepe paper canopy. We are still friends but that magical night rarely comes up in conversation.

One month later, I attended the St Vincent’s Academy junior prom with a blind date. As a favor to a friend, I accompanied her friend Mary and sat in the backseat of my friend Bill’s car with plenty of space in between.  It wasn’t a romantic evening - it was just a fancy high school dance very closely supervised by nuns.

A steady girlfriend, Patrice, and a driver’s license made senior prom much more entertaining.  Unlike recent events, proms in “the old days” always included dinner, live music and dancing.  Other than a tux rental and a corsage, the price was fixed. I believe my 1974 prom was $40 per couple. A fancy dinner, limo, tux, prom ticket and after prom event might set a high schooler back $500+.

A group of us had a great time and then aimlessly drove my father’s car all night long. We finished off with a trip to one of New Jersey’s famous all-night diners in our prom attire.  Unfortunately, the joy of an all-night prom was spoiled by my father who was waiting to drive to work.  Remember the days of one car families and no cell phones? 

It was fun. We got dressed up, had a fancy dinner and stayed out all night just like adults. The only lasting memory from that long evening are the photos we had taken.

Four weeks later we were caught up in summer jobs, packing for college and looking ahead. Prom was already reduced to a few photos.  Now, 48 years later, Patrice and I are still friends but I admit the topic of our prom doesn’t come up often, except for the tuxes. What were we thinking?

 

Send your prom memories to flipsidecolumn@gmail.com.

 

Fifty Year Old Music Still Rocks

 

What music were you listening to fifty years ago.  If you’re about my age, your stack of rock albums might have included Eat a Peach (Allman Brothers), Exile on Main Street (Rolling Stones) and Foxtrot  (Genesis).

If you preferred your music on the lighter side you probably owned Honky Chateau (Elton John), Catch Bull at Four (Cat Stevens) and Harvest (Neil Young).   The top country album in 1972 was Will the Circle Be Unbroken by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.  Good Hearted Woman (Waylon Jennings) and Let Me Tell You A Song (Merle Haggard) followed on the top selling lp list.

Fifty years sounds like a long time ago but the music from 1972 is still in circulation and listeners of a certain age have their ITunes and Spotify playlists loaded with “oldies” from the seventies.

The term oldies is hard to define.  Top 40 radio station programmers in the 1970’s considered any music made between the early 1950’s and mid 60’s to be oldies.  Using that same standard, Adele’s Rolling in the Deep and Katy Perry’s Fireworks are now officially oldies.

The classic 1972 tune American Pie often pops up on playlists fifty years later.  Can you imagine listening to the radio in 1972 and hearing fifty-year-old music?  The top artists of 1922 included Al Jolson, Fanny Brice and the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. The answer to the question is “no way would you hear Al Jolson on a popular radio station in 1972.”

The fact is that old music is more popular now than ever before.  A recent article in the Atlantic Monthly magazine reported that old songs represent 70% of the U.S. music market and that number is increasing. The article went on to say that vinyl recordings are now outselling CD’s with a large piece of those vinyl sales in reissues of “old” artists and albums.

I would like to arrogantly declare that old music – my music – is better and that’s why it sells more. Of course, it’s not that simple.  New music still remains very popular with young people but it doesn’t have much of a shelf life.  Younger listeners want to hear new songs at dance clubs and on pop radio stations but they don’t stop by the record store or the App Store to buy that new music.  They are more content to accept the playlist that streams over their car speakers.

In contrast, I bought Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album in 1973. I then bought the 8-track in 1974 and the cassette in 1977. I had to have the pure compact disc version in 1982 and eventually downloaded it from ITunes in 2002.  Now I just yell “Hey Google play Dark Side of the Moon” and it happens. How cool is that?

I think much of the old music has survived because it is also good music. Old folks like me appreciate their quality and younger folks might discover their parents listened to some pretty cool music when they were in high school.

That doesn’t mean all 1972 music was good.  In the top five records of the year, we see Chuck Berry’s My Ding-a-Ling, Michael Jackson’s Ben and Melanie’s epic Brand New Key.  You just don’t hear those classics much anymore although I’m still waiting for release of the ten album Melanie retrospective. Maybe next year.

   Send comments to flipsidecolumn@gmail.com.

Quarantine Like Its 1969

I found myself building a car model last weekend.  It was raining and I found a half-built ’69 Dodge Dart Revell model in my closet. It was started about 15 years ago on a rainy day by my daughter and me.  It stopped raining, she lost interest and we literally forgot about it.

So here I was on COVID day twenty-eight struggling to connect an exhaust system to a manifold. I came to the same conclusion I did when I was 12.  This pretend driver will never need an exhaust system.  I will just leave it out.  With that fast track approach, I finished the model in about two hours.  However, I pity the first person who tries to drive a car with no suspension or exhaust.

Like many people, the thought of staying at home for weeks at a time didn’t seem so bad with an Ipad and a laptop. What I hadn’t anticipated was spending many hours each day in Zoom calls on that laptop or answering emails on that Ipad.  I have become literally burned out on my own technology.

The year that real ’69 Dodge Dart first hit the streets I turned 13 years old. When my friends Gary and Bill were on vacation or otherwise occupied, I was trapped into entertaining myself at home – alone – with no technology.  Can you imagine?

TV wasn’t an option during the day and any suggestion that I had nothing to do might lead to some household chores. So, I disappeared to my attic or basement and kept busy.  I was too old for Matchbox cars so I might set up the HO scale slot cars for two hours.  Then I would play with them for maybe fifteen minutes and spend an hour taking them down.

I might build a tower of baseball cards at the bottom of the stairs and kill time flipping cards down the stairs to destroy it. I could update my stamp collection with the packets of stamps that kept arriving by mail.  I considered reading the latest issue of Mad Magazine and Sports Illustrated as an intellectual activity, but my favorite solo activity was building models.

An entire afternoon could be pleasantly consumed for only $2.99 and some paint.  I was never very good at building them, but the challenge was there. It was great.

Just like Buzz and Woody in Toy Story, my models eventually got boxed up and stashed in the basement.  Years later, after we got married, decisions had to be made about how much of my “stuff” was coming with us and how much would become junk.  

I didn’t put up a fight over the models.  They would not match our newlywed décor.  I stacked them up, shot some photographs and dropped the box in the trash.  It was not an emotional moment, but I do remember thinking about all those quiet, rainy afternoons they represented.

I was right back there last weekend with that ’69 Dart.  It was a nice place to be and for a while. Being quarantined like it’s 1969 wasn’t so bad.

Remembering Fish Friday For The Wrong Reason

 

I was never a big fan of fish.  As a kid in a Catholic home, I assumed eating fish during the Lenten season was a form of penance.  My mother would probably have agreed with that– but not about eating the fish. The penance for her was getting her kids to eat fish.

Catholics have abstained from eating meat on Fridays since the earliest times. The reasons may have changed over the centuries but the practice remains.  In the early days, forgoing meat was forgoing a luxury. This was especially true in the Middle East, where meat was scarce and fish was plentiful.  Ironically, fish is now the luxury and meat is more or less affordable. 

The tradition of abstaining from meat never required one to eat fish.  That memo never reached our home so every Friday during Lent we had fish.  Of course, the 1960’s were the peak of processed foods.  We never had fresh fish but the canned tuna and salmon harvest in our home was plentiful.

Tuna was the preferred choice for my brother and I. Thank goodness for Chicken of the Sea. It somehow tasted less like fish. Fortunately, I never made the connection between their logo – a mermaid - and the can of fish.  Even so, mom had to disguise the fish as tuna casserole with cream sauce and peas.  Apparently, this most popular family dish was created by Campbells Soup in the 1940s although fish parts in crème sauce was an old 1800’s dish called cod a la bechamel.

Salmon came straight from the can in patties much like SpongeBob’s crabby patties. The best part of salmon cakes was the potato pancakes mom served with them.  The “pancakes” were served with applesauce. For a kid who gagged on salmon, two full tablespoons of applesauce helped the salmon go down.

Fish sticks could also be consumed with a generous amount of catsup or mashed potatoes. General Foods introduced fish sticks in 1953 under their Birdseye brand. They were part of a rectangular food stick line that included chicken sticks, ham sticks, veal sticks and dried lima bean sticks – egad. Only fish sticks survived and became the preferred choice in many countries where the quality of fish was suspect. Fish sticks also solved a bigger problem. Fishing technology after WWII led companies to overfish. To keep from spoiling, the extra fish was processed into frozen sticks - Yum.

Abstaining from meat on Fridays for Catholics became optional in 1966 when U.S. Bishops allowed members to replace the abstinence with other forms of penance. There was little argument from our household.  Fish Fridays soon became Pizza Fridays and all was good with the world. I haven’t eaten a salmon cake since.

It was never about fish of course. It was about abstaining from something we desire to focus our thoughts on more important things. It’s a big month for that as Christians prepare for Easter, Jews celebrate Passover and Muslims prepare for Eid al-Fitr, a feast that follows one month of fasting and reflection. Happy celebrations to all our Allen neighbors.

Send comments to flipsidecolumn@gmail.com.

Rediscovering The Wonder and Torment of Plastic Models

 

   This time will be different.  I’m a grownup and I know how to follow directions.

   With that in mind, I have decided to tackle one of my childhood demons – the 1:25 scale plastic car model.  After all, how hard can it be to finish building a level 2 plastic car model?  The answer depends on how you would define the word finish.

   I built a fleet of car models in my life.  It was a boredom buster for my friends and I in the days before video games. We would ride bikes to the 5 and 10 (cent) store and pick out a cool model along with a few jars of Testors paint and a new tube of glue. With the hopefulness of a Cowboys fan in August, we’d race home, stack a few Beatles lps on the turntable and crack open the box of wonder. 

   Whether we were building a Model A Roadster or a hot rod Cadillac Hearse (seriously), the modeling process for 11-year-olds was the same.  Ignore the directions and start painting stuff.  The results were predictable but satisfactory for an 11-year-old who had lost interest about halfway through the project.

   Five and dime stores no longer exist. Neither do $3 plastic car models. Model prices now range from $25 - $40. Surprisingly, many of the actual models have not changed at all.  Model kit companies like AMT, Monogram and MPC have been bought and sold since the 1960’s but the actual molds and packaging have survived. The model I chose to rebuild my confidence; a 1960 Ford Starliner, was probably designed and molded sixty years ago.

   I say that I never finished a model because every time I assembled one, I was left with a pile of spare parts. There was a usually a water pump and a rocker arm, a few shock absorbers and a radiator hose left over.  That stuff was hidden anyway, right?

   The most dangerous but most satisfying part of the project was painting the car body.  Years of bad paint jobs have finally convinced me to follow paint instructions this time.  I watched a YouTube video and followed the advice of “professional modelers.”  Did you know you are supposed to wait for one coat to dry before applying the second coat?  

   Glue was the biggest hurdle for me. No matter how careful I was, there was always a smudge of glue somewhere on the “glass” windshield.  I recently watched an enlightening YouTube video on that as well. This time it will be different!

   Models weren’t much fun once they were completed but I never had the heart to throw them in the garbage. Years later when we were married, I wisely recognized that my childhood car models would not be part of the new home decorations.  I stacked them in a big pile and photographed them before sending them to the junkyard for good.  They all had one thing in common – a chubby fingerprint on the front or back windshield and a lousy paint job.

   This time I will build a model with all of the parts and no chubby fingerprints – probably. I will keep you posted.

   Send comments about your car model experiences to flipsidecolumn@gmail.com.

 

I withheld comment recently when someone on Facebook posted photos of the “ice storm” that shut down schools and highways in Dallas last month. Others were not so kind.

In fairness, it was a thin but solid sheet of ice that covered everything. The photo didn’t really tell that story and several readers mocked the phrase ice storm.  It really was more of an ice dusting but one person’s storm is another person’s dusting I suppose.

There is a sense of pride or smugness when it comes to telling tales about surviving terrible winter weather.  Bragging about the weather is an unsanctioned sport in coffee shops and office lounges “up north.”.  Most tales start with “It was so cold that….”  They often end with someone else saying “that’s nothing. I remember when…”  Eventually the group nods in approval that the final tale depicts the coldest, longest, or snowiest storm ever.

The title of worst winter storm, according to numerous sources, belongs to the Great Blizzard of 1888.  The storm hit the northeastern states in March 1888. It caused more than $20 million in property damage (about $550 million today) and killed more than 400.  New York City was buried under 22” of snow. Further north, cities were hit with up to 50” of snow in two days.  Wind gusts up to 80 mph buried buildings, horses and people under massive snow drifts.  Now that’s a storm to remember or forget.

There’s a bonding that occurs when several people experience the same storm, even though it may have happened fifty years ago. The really bad storms are etched in people’s memory in much the same way hurricanes and tornadoes mark history for hundreds of years.

Everyone has a good winter storm story. Texans may have felt left out of that conversation until February 2021 when the temperature dropped way down and millions lost power.  Winter storm Uri, as it was named, has the dubious distinction of being the costliest winter storm on record with $196.5 billion in damages.  My memory was more localized as I fought the ice flow in my pool for a week with a large wooden pole.

My personal winter storm brag is surviving the Chicago blizzard of 1982.  A week of snow was followed by extreme low temperatures of -26 degrees on January 10 and high winds that pushed the wind chill to -80 below.  The weatherman didn’t mince words when he said “if you go outside you and your pets might die.” It was good advice.  It was so cold… that ice formed on the inside of some walls of our home.  I should mention that it was a rental.

A temperature of -26 sounds darn cold but residents of Fargo, North Dakota will brag that their grandparents survived -48 degrees in the late 1800’s.  Then again, workers on the Alaskan pipeline recorded a balmy -80 degrees in 1971. Let’s just hope the storm tales are over for this season and we can get onto bragging about the heat.  Did you now that it was so hot in Texas last summer that…

Send comments and your own storm brags to flipsidecolumn@gmail.com.