Philadelphia, miscellaneous

Here's a batch of random shots from the Philadelphia / Pennsylvania trip in 1982. Above is looking at Art, Maryann, Eric, Lisa and Arthur as they travel on the road ahead of us in their yellow station wagon.

The group of vacationers visit a fountain.

Mom in front of some building.

Some historic boat.

Ball Pit Madness

Mom waving from a ballpit. I'm thinking this must also be from Sesame Place. I can remember it smelling like feet.

Or maybe I just imagine that it must have smelled like feet.

Below is Lance, Lee and Kate.

Fun time's over as Jer gets hauled from out of the pit.

Pay bills, make a cake

Here, in slides that were processed in April of 1970, my mother pays bills (and sticks them in envelopes and puts stamps on them), then bakes a cake.

At least, I'm guessing it's a cake. There's flour, baking soda and sugar. I guess it could be cookies too.

Things of note:

- Looks like they had a pet bird, as evidenced by the cage hanging on the wall to the left of the fridge.

- These slides were taken during the few years that my parents lived in the "little house," where my grandfather lives now, before they built the new house and within the first year of their marriage.

- I think the kitchen table may be the same table I currently have in my recording studio, with the p.a. and boxes of microphones stacked upon it. It looks identical.

More Jessica

Here's my mother with Jessica, all bundled up the cold weather of December 1983. Notice the ever-present Figment and the head of the stuffed drumming bear peeking up on the left.

This was taken in the basement living room. Like the paneling?

Below: two more of Jessica from the same day.

There's the edge of a lobster pot, which had a glass top to make a coffee table. The lobster pot is now living outside by the pool shed. Our big old console TV is in the background, where now a 50" plasma sits.

The Family, 1983

Jumping now to December 1983 (and a particularly dorky photo of myself ... thank you, braces for correcting this), here's the family. Jessica at 9 months, Jeremy two months short of five, and I'm a month shy of 10.

The couch we're on is the old spindle bed that was converted into a couch with the addition of some pillows.

Slate painting

Here's my mother, painting Winnie the Pooh on a piece of slate. This is November 1975, but I'm pretty sure I could take almost the exact same photograph today, just substitute in a different craft project. This photo was taken in the upstairs living room, now the dining room.

I can remember there being many slate paintings around the house growing up. I'm not sure any of them are currently on display, but I think we should pull them all out of storage (if they're there) and have a gallery viewing.

Notice the Woolworth bag to my mother's right, on the couch. Woolworth stands out to me as the place where I would get plopped at the soda counter, with a milkshake, while my mother looked for deals. It was located on Main Street in Northampton. Some of the space that was Woolworth is occupied by CVS now.

From Wikipedia, on Woolworth:

The F.W. Woolworth Co. was among the first five-and-dime stores, which sold discounted general merchandise at fixed prices usually five or ten cents, undercutting the prices of local merchants. Woolworths, as it came to be known, was one of the first stores to put merchandise out for the shopping public to handle and select without the assistance of a sales clerk. Earlier retailers kept all merchandise behind a counter, and customers presented the clerk with a list of items they wished to buy.

Mark Twain House

Looking at these photos, I was wondering where they were taken, when suddenly in my head was the thought: "Mark Twain House." I've certainly been there on a school trip and at least one other visit since 1974, but I can't really pull up any picture of the place in my head, so I don't know what triggered the thought.

At any rate, a quick search on Google revealed that my subconscious mind was right. Maybe somewhere deep down I remembered being there?

The photo above is my mother and I. Below is a shot of the building, which is what I compared with pictures found online to confirm my feeling. Below that is a photo of some plants in the same batch, so presumably also from the visit to the Mark Twain House. I included it because I thought it was a nice shot. It looks like it was perhaps taken through a window looking into a greenhouse.

The Mark Twain House website: http://www.marktwainhouse.org/

Mom at the piano

My mother at the piano. It looks like perhaps the house was still being finished. Notice the exposed 2 x 4's in the background, and the mattress up on it's side.

Deerfield Gardens

My mother at Deerfield Gardens. The slides have the date "Sep 74" on them, which I assume is when this batch of slides was processed. My guess is that they weren't taken too long before that, since it's clearly autumn (as evidenced by the indian corn and chinese lanterns).