nostalgia bore

I'm a total photo bore; I can spend hours looking at them, even if they're nothing to do with me. Whenever I'm at my 95 year old grandmother-in-law's house I ask her to pull out the old box of snaps and "talk about the war" (which she loves to do since she can't remember what she had for lunch or my name any more). In her case, she was a Mennonite refugee escaping Ukraine after the Russian Revolution. Today I re-gained access to a bunch of my own old photos and was struck by how sometimes you'll find one that reflects a brief moment in a past time that can call up these vivid sensations -- even if you never actually lived them yourself. Is this a kind of genetic memory I wonder?

This photo is titled "Me and my girl in the jungles of St. Joe -- summer 1923." You can almost hear a tinny Charleston playing at the beach house while Sylvia and George pose coyly. What's he doing with his hand? Is that actually a bathing suit he's wearing? And where is St. Joe?

Here we are back in Ukraine in my great grandfather-in-law's store. It may be taken the same year but it's definitely a different era from Sylvia and George and their plans to go to a talkie in downtown Winnipeg that evening.

Fast forward to the 1950s and there's my dad (Sylvia and George's son) with his bags, Bryl Cream and 1951 Pontiac. I think he's on the way to meet Scooter and Biffy at The White Spot Drive-In for a chicken pot pie and Coke float.

And here are Hal and Chris (my
maternal grandparents) living the good life on Eustace's boat, late 1950s. The only thing you can't see is the martini. When they were doing road trips all over Mexico, where they lived most of their lives, she would drive and he'd light the cigarettes.

We must have hit "the modern age" because it's a colour photo! This is me at the lake, pouring water on my adored godfather's feet. I probably lit his stogie for him and put Sinatra At the Sands on the hi-fi for his listening pleasure.