Righto then! Here we are inside the corner cupboard. No single malt collection. No urn containing Colin's ashes. No secret compartment hiding "ten pounds of the finest weed". No sparkly dress and pumps. No Santa costume. No Laughing Horse Blog Awards outfit. Not even any cups!
No my friends, what we mostly have in "The Cupboard That Colin Made" is photographs. Hundreds of them from those good old days before digital photography became commonplace, before the smartphones plague arrived. I am sure you remember those long ago days and you may well be in possession of many old prints yourself. They are part of our cultural history now and young humans born in this millennium are possibly bemused by past methods of capturing images.
I acquired my first digital camera at Christmas 2004 - it was a gift I had requested. Since then there have been remarkably few physical prints. Randomly, for the purposes of this blogpost, I selected the top box and again quite randomly I pulled out a wallet of photos from 2002...
That was the year that Shirley, Ian, Frances and I boarded an aeroplane (American: airplane) bound for Atlanta, Georgia. There was no need to visit a travel agent beforehand because I had planned it all myself - the hotels, the car hire, the insurance, tickets for the Epcot Centre and Universal Studios in Orlando and our very travel itinerary. From Atlanta to Macon to Apalachicola (FL) to Cedar Key to Orlando to Savannah (GA) and back to Atlanta. It was spread over two weeks and my plan came together quite flawlessly - apart from picking up two speeding tickets.
It was the first time that Shirley and the kids had been to America and they loved the whole experience. Ian was seventeen and Frances was thirteen at the time. The trip happened during their Easter holidays.
Anyway, back to the photos. Lazily, I have just photographed a small selection of them when I admit that superior reproduction would have happened through scanning the pictures on my printer but that can often be quite a faff. I apologise.
Above - the courthouse in Moultrie GA. There were state prisoners in the grounds on gardening duty but the guard said I couldn't photograph them. They were all black.
Below - Frances at the Ocumulgee Mounds National Historical Park near Macon, Georgia. Its history goes back over 10,000 years so how come some Americans claim that their country is so young that it has very little history of consequence? Waves of Native Americans knew this remarkable place for countless generations until Europeans arrived with their European ways and changed everything.
Below - two images from one of my favourite places in the entire world - Apalachicola, Florida. Situated on The Gulf of Mexico in Florida's Panhandle, it became a settlement because of fishing and oysters. Today it has growing appeal for tourists and a permanent population of under 2500. As Ms Moon has informed me, the oyster harvesting days are now gone because of pollution.
I had seen Cedar Key on a map and instead of heading straight for Orlando after departing Perry, we headed twenty miles west from Otter Creek on Highway 24 until we arrived off-the-beaten-track at Cedar Key on The Gulf Coast. Almost as charming as Apalachicola, we could only afford three hours before continuing our journey to Orlando. I remember pelicans and swathes of large flat fish feeding greedily by the pier.
Savannah was a characterful coastal city. There we met up with Chris, my friend from Ohio and his youngest daughter Abby but before we got there, I pulled off Highway 95 to visit the Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation on the coast of Georgia. Somewhat surprisingly, it was once a rice plantation but reliant upon the same kind of hard-working slaves that once made cotton production so profitable for landowners. I took the following peaceful picture on the kitchen decking round the back of the main plantation house.
Oh, please open that cupboard soon. It's always good to see what an Englishman thinks of my country. 😏
ReplyDeleteI just did open it!
DeleteOld photos give us many secrets. Funny how much we have forgotten when we open old photos.
ReplyDeleteOften they take us back and stimulate recollection as your Arctic photos do.
DeleteThank you. I was wondering what was in that cupboard (I'm nosy). I can't find Appalachicola on my big Atlas, though I found Appalachee Bay, is it near there?
ReplyDeleteApalachicola has a single "p" and yes - that is where it is Elsie.
DeleteAha! Found it, thank you.
DeleteA cupboard of secrets, treasures and memories - wonderful!!
ReplyDeleteSo it's exactly 20 years now that you have started digital photography.
I well remember the time when it was careful deciding about what to photograph, with only 36 images to the film. Then, because of the careful saving, at the end there would be two or three pictures left, but because we wanted to have the film developed, any old random motive was photographed, often our cats or ourselves around the house and garden. Sometimes those random pictures turned out to be best!
Looking back, what we had to do before was pretty crude. Digital photography is so much better - even though few of us ever transfer those images to photographic paper.
DeleteStupidly, I have not commented on the actual contents of your post. I remember you talking about the family trip to the US before, and what a great memory it is for your family. You certainly planned it well and made the most of your time there.
ReplyDeleteMore than twenty years ago in what now seems like a different life.
DeleteWe should probably do a favour for those who will take on our printed photos and cull the worst of them. We probably should...
ReplyDeleteI am surprised you liked the climate in Florida. It is a place a would avoid because of the climate.
We were in Florida at Eastertime. Climate-wise, I am sure it would have been far different in July or August.
DeleteMy daughters loved visiting their nan, the photo album's always came out, we have scanned in most of our decent old photo's. Our first trip using a modern camera was to Tunisia, where on checking we did not get the important photo we wanted we were able to try again, so their are many positives, I do love to hold a photo.
ReplyDeleteWith digital photography I still have to remind myself to click more pictures - because we can go way way past that old 36 photo limit.
DeleteEnjoyed reading about your trip - the photos will be something to show your grandchildren.
ReplyDeleteNot that long ago I began shredding all the excess prints accumulated over the years, but had to give up, there were just too many! They filled two big black plastic bin bags and were dumped in the waste bin for paper (probably the wrong place for them, but there was nowhere marked "My Holiday photos"). Before there was access to cheaper and better quality developing, we always took slides. Each year my father would buy dozens of very cheap 35mm, 36 exposure film when we were passing through Switzerland. They were returned to us as rolls of developed "ciné type" film and a set of plastic "holders". Then would begin the arduous task of fitting the images into an individual holder - what a chore. When they were all finally mounted we'd have a film show - usually about a couple of weeks before we were due to set off on our next holiday!
My father took slides too and every so often there would be a slideshow. With photos, I find it troubling to throw any away. It is so hard to be ruthless unless your surname is Putin.
DeleteI have lost so many digital photos stored on electronic devices and wish I had made printed hard copies. It's good to use the cupboard for your photos.
ReplyDeleteBut as I have already signalled, all of those photos are over 20 years old.
DeleteWell to refer to my last blog 'A Cupboard of Curiosities' was painted by one of the artist, which people collected in the olden days. Past memories caught up in photos.
ReplyDeleteAmerica has a history full of vitality, far removed from the old country but it is a grand mix of people. Nostalgia is a good feeling to experience and our children are always interested in the history of the past.
I saw a Victorian 'Cupboard of Curiosities' in Burton Constable Hall in East Yorkshire containing all manner of interesting things gathered by a long deceased member of the Constable family.
DeleteI've never been to the US. I've got a very low carbon footprint.
ReplyDeleteWell make sure you wipe your feet then!
DeleteI enjoyed looking at the photos and reading about your trip to Georgia and Florida. You would make an excellent travel agent! It is amazing how the world of photography has changed. I remember on my first plane ride (to France) I was 16. I took photo after photo of clouds. My parents were not amused when they paid to get the film developed!
ReplyDeleteWe learnt to be frugal with our picture taking.
DeleteA cupboardful of memories cannot be beaten.
ReplyDeleteI like the word "cupboardful".
DeleteI still print all my photos and put them in scrapbooks. I have just finished putting the ones of my recent trip to Portsmouth in. I must have something like 30 scrapbooks piled up on a shelf in my study
ReplyDeleteIf I do have any prints made from my digital folders I use "Snapfish". Which service do you use?
DeleteUsed to use Bonusprint but have used Snapfish for last 8 or so years.
DeleteOh, how I love this! Pictures from where I live. Sort of. Too bad you didn't get to Lloyd. You would be shocked at how much Apalachicola has changed and Cedar Key has experienced a great deal of destruction from the recent hurricanes. Just horrible.
ReplyDeleteI really do find it amazing that you chose these areas to visit. Good for you!
And yes, this continent has a very ancient history which the Europeans tried quite diligently to erase along with the population and what a great job they managed to do. The history of this country is all built on blood and bones and the enslavement of humans.
Rice plantations made fortunes for many, many white slave owners.
I would have loved to stumble upon Lloyd and have a stroll around. Maybe I would have seen a 48 year old woman kicking bamboo in her front yard and I would have stopped for a chat and she would have said, "Do you know any of The Rolling Stones?"
DeleteMy ex was born in Moultrie GA, I have been there once for a funeral. The Gulf coast is a very relaxing place. I lived in Orlando from 1980 to 1995, my middle brother retired from Disney with 43 years of service. I have a few boxes of photos, and agree that something is lost in not putting them on paper.
ReplyDeleteNice that you could connect personally with this post.
DeleteMany years ago, I pulled out both of my similarly sized shoeboxes and digitized everything. I then sorted through and culled all but the most sentimental of photos so that they all fit in a single much smaller shoebox which resides on a shelf behind me, having been unopened for nearly 20 years now.
ReplyDeleteYou are a more organized kind of fellow than I am Ed.
DeleteWill you scan all of those photos to share with you children some day? My sister has been trying to organize the family photos for years now and it is quite the process. We often wonder if our children and grandchildren ( and great-grandchildren, etc.) will want these in the future or not.
ReplyDeleteAll that effort - you would want them to be interested wouldn't you?
DeleteSparkly dress? I never said a sparkly dress, but I like that your brain went there. Too funny.
ReplyDeleteI have a bunch of old photos too, in a cupboard in my bedroom. I've gone through some of them but need to do some more weeding.
It's lovely seeing your old photos and it sounds like a good trip.
Oh-oh. You got me on "sparkly". My secret is out.
DeleteI have boxes and boxes of photographs that need to be digitized before fading away. Would be a good project for this winter...we'll see.
ReplyDeleteI have the feeling that Spring will spring before your project has got off the ground.
DeleteThat's an interesting itinerary. I don't imagine many British people visit such off-the-beaten-track communities as Cedar Key! Even I've never been to Apalachicola or Moultrie, and I grew up in that part of the world. It's not surprising the prisoners were all black. There are many kinds of subjugation.
ReplyDeleteIndeed there are many different forms of subjugation as your library service has proved this week... "Nobody knows the troubles I've seen/ Nobody knows but Jesus".
Deletewell, that's quite a treasure trove then!
ReplyDelete