}

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Oldham Pond, 1936

Oldham Pond, 1936

Oldham Pond, 1936

I love this photograph and I find the notes on the back so fascinating. You can still see the original notes on the reverse written in pencil. Someone went back at a later time and retraced those notes in pen. The handwriting is the same. They also added "Gene and Margie were 11 yrs. of age."

This photo captures at least five distinct experiences: 1. The day on Oldham Pond 2. The original annotation of that memory 3. the retracing of the notes and the addition of the ages 4. my purchase of the photograph 5. its new life on this website.

It's a little sad, though, that I own this photograph instead of Gene or Margie or their children or grandchildren. I feel this to be true of all the old picture we find. There's a sad period of its history during its abandonment to a box at the swap meet. Who knows how long it stayed there. And I got someone else's memory for .50 Cents.

2 comments:

Sean said...

I agree. You have to wonder who discards some of these things. I once purchased a box filled with school photographs, school papers,letters home from a brother in the military etc that all belonged to the same lady from Uxbridge in the 1930's. The worst is military medals; who would get rid of one of their relatives medals?

Eric said...

I don't know who would mean to get rid of those things. You have to wonder if they were just bought up in some estate sale or something.