Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Their lives in a box

I have a shoe box containing all the photographs my parents took, from when they got engaged in 1922 until around 1956. Contact prints were so small in those days - (2-1/2 by 1-1/2 inches) - that it's not such a squeeze as you might imagine. I have dipped into these over the years, but now I have set myself the task of going through them systematically and scanning all the good ones into my computer.

I thought there would be good curiosity value in the pictures of the 1920s fashions, but I am finding something more profound happening as I immerse myself in the past. It is as though I am actually living alongside my parents, in a way that never seemed to happen even when they talked about their younger days, and I feel that I am beginning to know them better.

In the beginning were the loving shots taken of each other, having fun and showing off. When I realised I had got to the honeymoon pictures, three years after the engagement, I wanted to know where they were taken. On the folder was the name of the photographer and the town of Bognor. There was one snap of The Royal Hotel, and I was able to find it on the web, still recognisably the same now, 80 years later. Time stood still.

Note the 1925 swimsuits, both of them giving full body coverage! Soon after this, as all parents will understand, the pictures became filled with images of me, and later of my brother, and the pictures of each other became rarer, as the demands of family life took over. But their hearts didn't change, and in 1952 I took this picture of them together, still loving, as they remained to the end.

7 comments:

Avus said...

Oh I just love that basket-work sidecar! We had no car in early marriage, but a succession of motorbikes with sidecars, but when the 3rd offspring came along it was time to change!

Judith said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Judith said...

Sorry, Avus, but I realised that the basket-work sidecar, being a 1913 model, was outside the time frame of the pictures in the shoebox. So I have swapped it for one which is within it. I will do all the motorbikes together some time, so everyone can see them.

Avus said...

Glad to see you come from a motorcycling family Judith. I like the new picture of the mid-twenties Norton 500cc, with its Bonniksen speedometer and carbide gas lighting system - and what about that "flapper bracket"! (passenger seat for the uninitiated)

Judith said...

Haha! I thought you were a man who knew about bikes. I certainly knew about 'flapper brackets', but not the rest of the bike technology!

There'll be some more bikes along soon, and maybe you'll be able to identify the ones I can't.

Judith said...

Sorry friends, but I've changed this one yet again, otherwise I had the same picture twice in two days. So the motorbikes are now all in a later post, and you now have the advantage of seeing my father' plus-fours and hat. Err...I should plan better.

Granny J said...

As the family custodian, I have not shoeboxes, but several boot boxes worth of old pictures. I've scanned many for family members, but have posted only a few. My favorite collection is of Mom's dress-up costumes down through the ages.