Male Stripper Memories

Some projects take a lot of time. Sorting through old snapshots is one of those.  I haven't written anything for the last week because I've been communicating with my past.

It recently occurred to me that having ten photo albums sitting in a box in the attic was a waste of space and of the pictures. Why keep them if I was never going to look at them? So down they came and I began the arduous task of going through them.

The first thing I discovered was that I had an emotional response to many of them as good or bad memories came flooding back.  The second thing I learned was that I had been pretty good about labeling.  Thankfully, I had a fair idea of who all the people were.  Third, there were a lot of duplicates, blurry images, and otherwise unnecessary pictures.  

So, over the course of the last two weeks, I sifted through my life. Five photos of a boring party with work associates I never liked went into the trash along with three of the male stripper taken at a friend's 30th birthday party. (Trust me - one was plenty. I hope that guy found another line of work.) And so it went from college through several book signings.  Some stayed, a lot didn't. The ones that made me smile I kept. The ones that made me cry, I kept. The ones that didn't do anything for me were tossed.

Do you get philosophical when you look at old photos? I sure did. For years I had trouble thinking about an old boyfriend. Now, looking at a picture of him, I know that it is a good thing that we didn't stay together. A snapshot of my childhood home reminded me how happy I was when I found out the family would be moving to a Chicago suburb. (I've loved Chicago since I was a kid.) One can't help but ponder how life would have been altered if the events in the photos had not taken place.

Eventually I achieved my goal, after whittling the collection down to about 800 pictures, and dropped them off at filmtransfer.com to be digitized.  Will I look at them when they are on my hard drive? You bet. Family photos make wonderful wallpaper that you can change as often as you like.  It's a great way to communicate with your past while enjoying and appreciating your present.

Military Service - Talk About It

Memorial Day is tomorrow.  Many of us will go to picnics and enjoy a day away from our jobs.  Some of us might go to a parade and may even give a brief moment of thought to those who served in the military.

My father never talked much about his time in the Army Air Corps because he didn't think he did anything special. He went, he did his duty, and then he came home. When the base where he was discharged closed, I finally got Dad to tell me a bit. He spent only one day at that base but he will never forget passing through it because he was heading home. He also won't forget the heat of New Mexico where he was stationed for the latter part of WWII.

Yes, in 1945, Dad was serving at Alamogordo, New Mexico.  Do I need to tell you what was happening in New Mexico at that time?  He remembers how the sky lit up like it was daylight, even though that first atomic blast was 60 miles away. He said he could have easily read the newspaper in light that has been compared to that of several suns. 

After describing the events of July 16, 1945, Dad mentioned that he belonged to a flight crew that spent several months in Colorado for secret training.  The flight crew of the Enola Gay was not the only one in training for the mission.  

It made perfect sense.  There had to be more than one crew in case anything happened.  This had never occurred to me nor would I have associated my father with this historic event.

Our fathers and grandfathers are rapidly leaving this world.  They all have tales to tell that are part of our heritage.  If you don't know what your relative did in military service, find out.  Then pass that along to your children.  In communicating our own history, we honor those who went before us and tie the generations together.

God bless all those who serve and those who wait for them to come home.