Picture This

 

I recently stopped by my parent's house to retrieve an empty Pyrex that had contained homemade soup that I brought them last week. As is often the case,  waiting for me on the stove inside the back door was a pile of stuff, in addition to my empty soup container.  My 80-something year old parents are constantly cleaning out nooks and crannies of the home they've lived in since I was two.  But they can't just throw stuff out. For some reason,  they need the approval of a third party.  As the closest child, I am all too often the responsible third party.  Today's cache was an album of my 1995 move to Oregon complete with pictures of my first wedding. I clearly had no more use for these then they did,  but on my way out, my dad added that if I was going to throw them away, that they would happily take the empty album back.  So literally they just gave this to me for the tedious task of removing all the photos so they can start fresh with an empty photo album!! It was driving home that I realized I belong to the last generation that feels a personal attachment to photographs. 

The way I was brought up, photography was an important part of life.  It went so far beyond the simple act of point and shoot and you have that moment in time in your pocket forever like we have (and take for granted) today.  First of all,  you needed a physical camera! And film. Then came the developing. It was an extensive process. Even after all that,  you weren't guaranteed the pictures would be any good.  How rapidly or slowly you got to see your pictures would depend on how quickly you would shoot a roll of 24 prints. Heck,  my dad was so stingy with film that we'd see one roll of pictures a year. Half from Christmas and half from summer vacation.  When you had those photos finally developed, they were sacred. You couldn't touch them with dirty hands,  you held them by the edges, and you NEVER threw any away.  Even if they didn't turn out, you tucked them into the photo album anyway.  Maybe behind a better one.  

While I'm going through pictures of Mount Rushmore, a 26 year old version of myself in my old University of Wisconsin Hockey sweatshirt standing in the Badlands, and the stunning grounds of the Columbia Gorge Hotel,  I came across the photograph I posted here.  Through a series of moves around these United States and a string of jealous girlfriends, very few pictures remain of me and that time of my life.  But the longer I looked at this photo, the more questions I asked myself.  The photo is of Meike Haasemann and myself ice skating on a winter flood plain behind her house on Lake Michigan.  It was taken in 1986 or 87. It somehow has stayed at my parent's house for the last 37 years (which explains it's longevity).  It's an 8x10, which is an odd size for a casual friendship photograph. Meike and I ran in overlapping circles for most of high school. But when we were seniors at North High,  we were both dating people from South High.  On weekends the four of us would hang out and take road trips in Hans' (Meike's boyfriend) father's Audi. But during the week Meike and I would hang out. Because if you were 17 and didn't have a car, way over on the south side may as well have been the south side of Chicago. But back to the photo....Why did we take it? Since I had the 8x10, was it my camera? Why would I have had my SLR camera out ice skating? Who took it? I didn't really bring a tripod ice skating, did I? I assume there were a bunch of us there. That was the norm at the time.  "Hey..... What are you doing?" And a half hour later, a dozen people were there.  That was what weekends and high school friends were all about, right? You didn't think about what "it" was, you only thought about who you wanted to be with doing whatever "it" was.  At a basketball game,  we'd take up an entire row. Hanging at McDonald's,  it took three cars to get us all there.  At the beach,  it took a half dozen blankets to fit us all. I've always considered myself an introvert. But just looking at this picture made me remember those people and those days, how much I've changed, and how much I haven't.  When all is said and done, I remember they were good friends and even better times.  And THAT'S why you don't throw away pictures.