My Dad still has his enormous metal desk with its swing-out typewriter compartment. Our old manual machine is gone but it looked very much like this. I learned to type in school, part of rows of kids clacking letters in unison, with weekly competitions to see who could type the quickest with the fewest mistakes. It was followed by many a late night or pre-dawn morning pounding away to meet some deadline….
Continue reading “Typewriters”1960: The Austin
Young friends of mine (by young I mean 20-30 years younger) are always surprised by my comfort with manual transmissions. They (the transmissions, not my friends…) will soon become a thing of the past – they’re precipitously close now – a shame for me because, while automatics are more relaxing to drive, I’ve always loved the feel of a standard and the driving benefits it gives.
Our first family car was a British, circa 1960 Austin Cambridge. It took us on our move from Winnipeg to Calgary, it was the one I learned to drive in at 16, and it remained the second family vehicle for many years after that.
Continue reading “1960: The Austin”Air Travel
I flew for the first time at age 12 in 1967. Our family had driven back to Winnipeg for a visit and Mom and Dad let Mark and I fly home. Strangely, I remember almost nothing about that monumental event. In 1988 we took the kids (6 weeks, 3, 8, and 10 years) on a domestic flight where they were showered with colouring books, entertainment kits, and snacks… which doesn’t happen any more. Since then I’ve flown countless times – with Larry, family, friends, alone. The whole experience has changed… a lot.
A Momentary Pause
If I sit back and let my brain run free, it’s amazing what it comes up with – one memory becomes many, then many more. Most are simply smile-inducing but some are unpleasant; the trick is to decide what to include and what to let rest. It’s more evident now as I hit my pre-teen years.
COVID has Trapped My Photos
I’ve considered an autobiography for years, but I decided to create its website only recently.
I have scads of notes. What I do not have are most of “my” photos – those of my growing years. They reside in the basement of my family home in Calgary and in the scrapbooks I made for my parents 40 years ago.
Continue reading “COVID has Trapped My Photos”The Kodak Brownie 300 Movie Camera
Kodak brought this camera to market, at a cost of about $25, right at the time I was born. Exposure was set with a dial around a fixed focus lens meaning that focus was not adjustable, and you had to choose the distance between the nearest and farthest objects as you filmed so that a “sharp enough” focus was produced. The learning curve must have been interesting!
Each 3-inch reel held about 3 minutes of entertainment. On occasion, we got the projector out and made a family evening out of it. It took time to thread the film through the guides, then rewind it at the end, and it was a real downer if the projector lamp blew without a replacement on hand, but we loved those evenings. With each new child (and ultimately there were five of us) it brought more amusement.
As a young adult I decided to collect all of those reels and splice them into larger ones. I spent hours viewing, editing, and splicing snippets of our lives. I then had it professionally formatted for a VHS video, the go-to technology of the time. It has since been reformatted for computer use but I imagine its days in that realm are numbered as well.
My Name is Sydney Jo 