Old Photos

My latest project is to go through and scan all the photos my parents have that I am interested in keeping (yes, I know, it's amazing what all you can think of to do when you are unemployed). At any rate - my Mom and Dad have thousands of photos, many of them going back to their childhood. I've already scanned in over 500 and I still have a stack to go.

Unfortunately my mom's system for keeping her photos is to simply dump them in boxes in no particular order. Even though this makes it more difficult to determine when or where or why a particular photo was taken, it's actually quite exciting to open a box and not know if there will be a picture in it from their childhood, or my own, or even one of my children who are now grown.

It's also kind of fun to figure out the aforementioned when, where and why of a particular photo. You have to do some detective work and find clues, things like names on a birthday cake in the photo, or items of clothing, or the automobiles in the background, or the ages of some of the children, or even what house the photo was taken in or in front of. In some cases, Mom was kind enough to write when and what the photo is about on the back of the picture. Several of the photos in Mom's box also came from my older sister - and she is great about documenting her photos on back.

Once I get all the pictures I want scanned in, I plan to give a copy of the them to my family members who'd like them. After that I'll have to start on Donna's and my photos from our pre-digital photo days. Thankfully, at least those photos are in photo albums that Donna made each year. Still, there will be hundreds more to scan in.

I'll try to share some of these in future posts. Meanwhile, enjoy the photo above, one I've titled "Baby Steve Crying," I think it was the only time I cried until I was about fifteen :)