Today, I'm Thirty-Four

I'm using the fact that today is my birthday as an excuse to post these pictures of myself from September 1974 when I was 8 months old.

I finished rescanning the first carousel last night (which is where these photos are from) so I should be onto other things after this, and away from just posting cute pictures of myself as a baby.

For today, though, that's what you get. Enjoy.



Seeing myself getting a diaper change keeps me humble.

Me again

Clearly, I was cute. Wish I had an explanation for what happened ...

The Family Cars, 1974

The driveway and the cars. September 1974. In the background is my father's work truck, the West Side Air Conditioning van. In the foreground is, presumably, his play vehicle. EDIT: My father says this was the family car. I think it's a Chevy Vega.

The front yard stretches out behind them to Route 47. This is before the driveway was paved, clearly. Way off in the distance is one of the two willow trees that were in the yard growing up. It grew huge and was cut down a few years ago.

The grass looks freshly mowed.

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.

Stroller, finger suck

One thing I've noticed about this first carousel of slides is that it's going to seem like this blog will be all about posting cute pictures of myself as a baby. While I won't be scanning in chronological order, these two boxes of slides that I grabbed last weekend are mostly focused on 70s and early 80s. There are a whole bunch of other slides still in the basement, packaged in cube holders that fit our 80s slide projector, that will be get scanned eventually and those will contain many more pictures of my siblings and the various foster children we had over the years.

For a little while, though, it's going to be mostly about me so be warned.

This one is me, in a stroller, sucking on my ring finger (which was my favorite sucking-finger for many years), on the walkway in front of the house with the front yard and hay fields out beyond.

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).

My father and I

I've recently pulled several boxes of slides from the basement of my parents' house and purchased a new scanner with the ability to scan slides.

In this slide: my father and I in September of 1974. I was eight months old. My father is wearing his West Side Air Conditioning uniform.