Photographs from the past

The challenge is preserving them

There’s a bit of a sense of déjà-vu around here. Tadpole’s getting recruiting mail from colleges based on his scores on the PSAT.

Back some years ago, my PSAT score was high enough that I was a National Merit semifinalist. I got tons of recruiting materials in the mail. Most of it, I looked at, but then I dumped it in the bottom of my bedroom closet. I ended up with a walk-in closet knee-deep in college recruiting literature. I also got personal contacts from recruiters from a few colleges that really wanted me. It wasn’t the intense attention that top athletic prospects get, but it did give me the idea that I could go wherever I wished. So I applied to only one college, and I got admitted to that one and also to two others that decided to admit me even though I didn’t apply.

Tadpole’s now beginning to get the college recruiting letters because of his PSAT score. Wednesday, he got an email from the folks at Arizona State. He’s interested in architecture as a possible major, and ASU has a good program – what you’d expect when many of the buildings on campus were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright or Paolo Soleri. ASU also has a good music program, which is something Tadpole might consider as a minor. When I was in high school, the high school choir went on tour, and ASU was one of the stops along the way.

So I dug out some old photo albums to show Tadpole the pictures I took when the choir was on tour. I especially wanted to show the buildings designed by Wright and Soleri. It took me a while to find the right album and the right part of the album, and while I was looking, I saw a lot of photos that I had taken back then. I was startled to find out how very much Tadpole looks like his uncle Jerry at the same age – Tadpole’s hair is a shade or two darker, but other than that, the two are almost indistinguishable.

Tadpole saw a lot that he liked on the ASU website, so that’s now on his list of institutions that he’s considering.

Meanwhile, I found a lot of interesting stuff in those old photo albums. I have pictures of the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad from 1972, the second year it was operating. I have pictures of the Very Large Array radio-telescope from when it was still under construction and only partly functional. I imagine those pictures might be worth contributing to an archive somewhere.

And I also found some pictures of Fuego when he was small, that might be good for some blackmail. The one with the chocolate cake is a family classic that everybody has seen, but how many people have seen the one about scrubbing ears in the bathtub?

Meanwhile, I have all of these old photos in decrepit albums. The albums are the cheap sort with self-stick pages, and over the years, they have lost their stick. I have also learned that this sort of album doesn’t really preserve photos, because the pages are too acidic. I’m going to need to work on a new system. I hope Mother Superior and her friend Chronicler are available to help -- there's some good history here to preserve.