Old pictures. Boxes of old pictures. Crates of boxes of old pictures. An attic full of crates of boxes of old pictures.

So many of them taken in front of cars, or beside cars, or in cars.  New cars being photographed for the ‘official record’.  Vacations. Trips to the beach.  Most of the time, when Kodak moments were being made, a car was involved.  It either took us to the destination of the memory being made, or was directly involved in the memory itself.  I’ve referenced before the fact that the cars we grew up with defined the different chapters of our lives. 

I look at all the pictures in our family albums that have an automobiles in them. Buttercup and I standing around the 1960 Ford Fairlane 500 I had the whole time we dated. Buttercup and I driving off from the wedding reception to our honeymoon destination in her parents’ ‘73 Buick Electra 225. Buttercup attempting to shove a Christmas tree in the back of a ’79 Honda Civic hatchback for our very first Christmas. Buttercup standing in front of an ’81 Olds Ninety-Eight, newborn baby in her arms, coming home from the hospital for the first time. I see a lot more Oldsmobile in the photo than I do our swaddled newborn.

Cleaning out Dad’s house when he passed was brutal; going through the pictures was one of the few bright spots.  It was the first time my sister and I had been together in a few years.  Looking at tangible memories that we’d shared over the years was as nostalgic as it was cathartic.  The process took hours and was one of the only times we laughed out loud that entire week.  Looking at each picture, one by one, we each had a small box in front of us for the ones we wanted to keep, a huge trash bag between us for the ones neither wanted.

Because the era my parents grew up in was before VCR tapes, digital disks, or iPhones that can store thousands of pictures in your pocket, the trash bag in between us became two bags,  then three, ultimately five.  I felt horrible carrying five bags of my parents memories to the curb, but they weren’t my memories, for the most part.  I didn’t have the desire to catalog the parts of their lives outside the ones that specifically involved family, nor do I have the space to do so, even if I wanted to.

But the box of the ones I wanted to keep are classic.  Of course, not all of them involve cars, though a high number of my favorites did.  Christmas’s, confirmations, trips to relatives and journeys to far flung vacation destinations, all documented on yellowing, curled square pieces of glossy paper watermarked with Kodachrome on the back, a white border around the edges, a date stamped when they were taken, or developed anyway..

Did we ever really look that young? Did America? At what point did cars lose their style? Was it the same time women stopped wearing Big Hair, or did that come later? Look how many people smoked back then, and did they all attend family events at our house? Maybe that’s why the photographs have yellowed, not time. After all, these were taken on Kodachrome; that was supposed to last forever.

“Is that Jimmy, the cousin from Waco, we only saw once or twice when they stopped by on their way to AstroWorld?” my sister asked.

I looked over at the picture she was holding.  “Yep,” I said.  “That’s him.  I was shocked when I heard he was arrested in Junction for a double axe murder.”

“What?”  Are you kidding?  I never heard that!” she shrieked.

“You were probably drunk when Mom mentioned it at Christmas that year,” I told her, but I couldn’t stifle the laugh.

“Swear to God, I never know when you’re making stuff up and when you’re telling the truth,” she said dropping the picture into the bag between us.

“I have a hard time myself,” I admited.  She doesn’t know about the stories on Bring a Trailer.

There was a picture of her backing out of the driveway in Dad’s ’66 Chevy Malibu.  Yellow with a black vinyl top.  The hair was piled on top of her head in more a modern sculpture than an actual hairstyle, the ozone over Fort Stockton partially depleted from the Aqua Net aerosol cans involved in the process.  I let her have that one, despite the Malibu being featured.

There was one of me sitting in my uncle’s white ’57 Thunderbird, just a tot.  My favorite car ever.  The one I’ll buy when the rights to my novel are sold.  (I’ve got to finish that thing.)  Six or seven years later, there’s me beside the same uncle’s red ’64 Studebaker Avanti, the car he bought with the insurance money after a drunk driver ran into the Thunderbird and totaled it.  I’ll say one thing, the guy had some taste in cars.

There’s one of my grandparents in front of their brand new pink and white 1957 Studebaker President.  What was that thought process?  I stop to do a little math on that one.  Grandma and Grandpa were actually several years younger when that shot was taken than Buttercup and I are right now.  Yet, they look so old, and Buttercup and I still look like the picture of vim and vigor!  Or is that just how we see ourselves?  Or how I saw my grandparents? So many questions.

We open the box of pictures from the late forties to mid-fifties.  All black and white, but still on Kodak paper, the kind with sculpted edges, because your photos should be attractive on the edges in case the subjects in them are not.  There’s dad leaning up against a bullet-nose ’52 Studebaker Commander sedan.  Suicide doors.  Wide whitewalls.  The chrome looks like he’d spent hours making it gleam.  He must have been about 22 at the time.  A handsome devil looking confident next to his ride.  

I wonder just what it was that drew both sides of the family to the Studebaker brand.  Then I remembered that in my younger days I purchased two Oldsmobiles, a Plymouth, a Mercury, and a Saturn, so who was I to judge their automotive decisions because the brands they bought went defunct?  Holly molly, there we all are in the green ’69 Pontiac Catalina at Mount Rushmore, four massive stone figures looking down in approval from a time when we were proud of our presidents .  “Look!” I tell my sister,  this is when we went to the Grand Canyon in the ’72 Impala.  Dog dish hubcaps on an Impala?  Jeez, why didn’t he spring for full wheel covers?”

“I didn’t go on the trip to the Grand Canyon.  That was the year I got married,” she replied.

“That’s right!  I remember now why it was one of my favorite family vacations!”  I chortle.  Some things between siblings never change.

There’s a picture of the yellow Buick Riviera Dad bought when he retired from the Navy and got his first civilian job.  Such a beautiful car.  Absolutely horrible quality, but stunningly gorgeous.  There’s the yellow ’67 Mustang.  The man had a thing for yellow, I’ll give him that.  But damned if they didn’t all look good.

Since going live with the blog, I’ve received emails from a lot of folks.  I appreciate hearing from you.  A few have even attached photographs of cars or motorcycles from your past.  Apparently you look back on your chapters in terms of vehicles, too.  Some have included a little background with the picture.  (Every car IS a story!)  I may include some of these in future stories, without sharing any personal details, of course.

Then it got me to thinking, always dangerous.  What about a separate page on the blog just for such submissions?  Call it KODACHROME.  Each post, a vintage photo from the past and short blurb about why you kept the picture, even if you didn’t keep the car?  Some say you can tell a lot about a man by the clothes he wears.  I say you can tell a lot more by the car he drives, or did at some point in his life.

Most of us would like to have one or two back from years gone by.  Chances are we won’t.  (I’ve got to finish that novel.)  But we can share the car, truck, boat or motorcycle that was a chapter in our life and say why it mattered.

If you have an interest, email me a pic and a paragraph.  Or just a caption.  Let me know if you want your name mentioned.  If there’s enough support for it, I’ll put a page together in the future. As soon as I’m done mailing mugs.

Share your thoughts in the comments, your pictures via email. Listen to Paul Simons’s Kodachrome while you type it up to mail in.