Summer Family Vacations
On Friday, April 30th, I sat down to work on some photo cleanups.
One of the many groups of photos in Aunt Susan's collection that Grandma saved were these travel photos below, and using the same program on My Heritage I was able to clean them up. A few were black and white and the rest a pinkish reddish color that was usually the case with photos from cameras in 1957.
It was pretty easy to determine who is who as by that time Barbara and Susan had run off to get married so it was just my mom and her younger siblings ,Shirley, Bill and John.
I then decided to reach out to each of them asking if they had any memories of these photos? Indeed they did and thus, I posted their memories on our family Facebook page. But for those not on social media , here are their memories
AUNT SHIRLEY
I do remember some. Russian River for a couple. Bottom pic was Disneyland shortly after it opened. We took the train down. Mom took a fall in the tub. Had to call the hotel doctor. Thankfully she was ok. Fun to see again.
UNCLE JOHN
Hi Linda,
Thanks again for being the family ancestry sleuth!
Some of the photos are from Cloverdale by the Russian River where we begged to go for a swim on hot days while visiting the Cook grandparents. But two appear to be from in front of a dam site, maybe Bonneville Dam on the Columbia. Mom took us on a driving trip in one of our Packard's ( Bill will know which one) two others may have been from a trip to Disneyland when it first opened. As I recall, in 1957, we took the train down the coast and stayed in a real hotel surrounded by orange groves. I think Bill was there but took the picture. Those were the days when you wouldn’t think to ask a tourist or some stranger to take a picture for you.
John
UNCLE BILL
Hi Linda,
I think John is right. Clearly the Russian River photos are from our fairly regular swimming spot north of Cloverdale and those others from Oregon and Disneyland trips. And of course the car is the 1953 Packard Cavalier which served us for our growing- up years, 1954 - 1962. What I remember best about the car trips, of course, was riding in the car with windows down on hot summer days (no air-conditioning in those days), stopping at Foster Freeze when Mom wanted to get us cooled down, and us urging Mom to pass slow-moving lumber trucks on those old 2 lane highways, which she sometimes would do, much to my excitement. Any road trip of any length in those days meant overnight stays at a motel and eating in restaurants, a very rare treat in those days for us!
And I would bet that those stylish shirts John and I are so often shown wearing in summer photos were sear sucker - easily washed out and quick to dry, needing no ironing (very important, since all of the girls' clothes did require ironing - no jeans and tees in those days).
I'll echo John's thanks and appreciation for serving as the family ancestry specialist and for all of your efforts to salvage and restore these old photos and identify the mystery persons in the very old ones!
Love, Uncle Bill
NANCY SEITAS (ME MUM)
"I remember your Grandma's fall in the tub but as the tram ride into the Disney park was so close, she let us go on our own. At that time, the crowds were not as huge as they are now, so we felt like we had the whole theme park to ourselves!"
As a point of reference AT THAT TIME (and don't fall off your chair when you read this) The cost of Disneyland in 1955 was one dollar for adult and 50 cents for children. The cost for each of the rides were anywhere between 25 and 35 cents!!! Oh those were the days!
Some of the photos took some time to revise and clean up but thanks to the My Heritage program, I was able to do so. According to my Dad who used to be a big camera buff, he wrote the following in an email "i think they may been taken with a Polaroid camera which gave one an instantaneous print, but were known for their poor photo stability over the years. I seem to remember that they recommended using some type of goop spread over the photo soon after it was taken to increase its life. Maybe that was not done."
So dear family compare and contrast the sample below:
BEFORE AND AFTER
