Smorgasbord

Here are a few random slides from July 1975. Above, a nice shot of a rose bush.

Below, the exterior of the house and yard. Some of those trees have been chopped down and replaced with others by now. The big tree peeking up above the roofline is the apple tree that used to live in the backyard. I'm not sure that you could take this same photo now without the new garage in the turnaround obstructing at least part of the house. Also, the driveway was not yet paved at this point.

Below is Frosty, an ice cream stand my mother worked at for a while in South Hadley. I have one very clear distinct memory of visiting her there. I can remember going around back and inside and getting a free ice cream cone.


It's either a hair salon, massage place or kung-fu studio now. I can't keep track and never think to look when I drive by.

Pretty much all of my strong memories from any time before the age of 25 involved free ice cream in some way. That might be why I eat so much ice cream now, as a way of tying memories to the ice cream experiences so there will be something I can remember 30 years from now.

We'll always have the ice cream.

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.

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.