When I check in with friends of my age, I can't help but take note of the relics they feel obliged to preserve. Mother's silverware and china, tucked away in a glass-front cabinet. Used maybe once a decade on some occasion or another. But a burden assumed by the surviving child, in full recognition that no grandchild will have a use for those souvenirs. The world has changed.
For me, it's Dad's cameras. They sit in a glass-front cabinet also. Relicts, now. You have a better camera in your cell phone.
You can still buy digital cameras in the big-box store, if you feel the urge for specialized photography. Old-fashioned film and photo paper is out there, on-line. Dad's film cameras aren't quite obsolete, not yet. When I gave Dad a digital camera he shut down his darkroom. He accepted the future.
We still have professional photographers, wielders of Hasselblads or Nikons, digital to the core. Still, I predict that's a vanishing profession. Like radio repairman, or TV repairman for that matter. We have grandchildren who've never seen a vacuum tube. Or owned a Brownie camera, or shot a roll of film in one.
No complaints. I have passed the torch to a swifter runner. Thanks for your tolerance when I trot out my old stories. Still, it hurts when I see a typewriter or a slide rule displayed in a museum case.
Dac Crossley
March 13, 2019
"Art and love are the same thing: It's the process of seeing yourself in things that aren't you." Chuck Klosterman.
Wow! Dac, how did you know where I am in life vis-a-vis obsolete accumulations of a lifetime!
Donna
Posted by: Donna McGinty | March 14, 2019 at 09:09 AM
Since I live in the old homestead, I have relicts from both parents and, probably, from their parents. As a former reporter, I also have a collection of cameras. Come to think of it, I have my sliderule, too.
Posted by: John R Lindermuth | March 13, 2019 at 06:26 PM
I gave my old cameras to Art Department at Ga. Southwester St. U. a few years ago, still have 3 functioning SLR waiting for when I tire of digital.
Vernon Powders typed letters until his death 3 years ago.
As always, I love your memories and wisdom!
Posted by: William "Hap" Tietjen | March 13, 2019 at 01:58 PM
Even as an architectural student at an engineering school we used slide rules. Still have my mechanical engineering father's 6 inch pocket slide rule and my 12 inch aluminum one.
1st camera - Kodak Brownie
Thanks for sparking the memories.
Posted by: Alan | March 13, 2019 at 10:37 AM
Good one, Dac.
I used a slide rule at SMU in a freshman year engineering course. We also had to learn how to survey as back then, even an electronics engineering student needed to know those things. I also remember going to the nearest 7-11 to test tubes when my TV stopped working. Carpe Diem, Cousin
Posted by: Stephen Baird | March 13, 2019 at 10:28 AM
Good for you,Sonny!
Please keep writing up your
good stories!!
Posted by: shirley | March 13, 2019 at 10:14 AM