Some of my favorite slides from my 'Nikon' years are of these granite rocks along a stretch of the Maine coast. I remember them as a little more salmon-pink than the above scan shows, but I do think you get a fairly accurate idea.
Some other favorites can be seen in the last part of this post: photos of family members at my cousin Cindy's wedding. So scroll down now if that's your main interest!
I had driven up from Boston to see my friend Max (who made his first appearance on these pages in South Bend, BOXES 101-102), whose relatives owned a summer camp in Maine and where he spent time most summers. I'd heard many camp stories over the years, and it was great to finally see the place. I can still picture it--the lake, the trees, the main lodge--but am sad that I didn't try to document it with my camera; or if I did, the photos didn't turn out. What I do have are pictures of a side trip we took to Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor. We stopped at Sand Beach, where the weather was sunny and warm, though I recall a sign saying the water was 55 degrees. The hill in the first shot is called The Beehive (I've since read).
But it was a perfect day for clambering over those granite rocks lining the coast beyond Sand Beach. For the most part I'll just let the following photos speak for themselves:
And here is Max:
The shapes and colors of rock piled on rock were endlessly fascinating:
The Nikon with its zoom lens did allow me (or rather, I figured out or guessed at the right settings) to capture a gull in flight and, later in the afternoon, a lobster boat:
Later that afternoon we drove through the rugged interior of the park. I'm not sure whether we reached the top of Cadillac Mountain, but here are a few photos of the terrain:
Then it was down to Bar Harbor, where I had my first lobster dinner, at a shack along the wharf--a vivid memory, though I didn't think of taking a picture of the lobster with the corn on the cob on the side. I did photograph the lobster shack itself, but it somehow didn't turn out; at least I caught the harbor itself:
When I left Maine, I cut through New Hampshire and Vermont to Lake Champlain, where I took a car ferry across to the Adirondacks. The drive was certainly scenic, though my only photographic record before I got to the lake is the following:
The lake crossing itself I did record:
That night I stayed with bookseller Lloyd Currey and his gracious wife in Elizabethtown. (David Hartwell had arranged the stay--thanks to him too for a great evening and morning!) The Adirondacks themselves looked like they were straight out of Hudson River School paintings (except for the telephone wires):
I believe the above photos were taken at sunset near Elizabethtown, while the next ones are from the morning, when I continued my drive:
I passed by Lake Placid at one point:
My next stop was in Rochester, where my friend Tim Tulloch was living. The slides show that we went on an architectural tour of the city. I haven't been able to identify the Victorian-era house below, but to the right of it (or below) is Louis Kahn's 1962 First Unitarian Church:
And Rochester has an important Frank Lloyd Wright design, the 1908 Boynton House:
One other place I photographed was the 1892 Wilson Soule House:
Either as a detour on the way back to Cleveland or as a separate trip with my family, I was able to attend my cousin Cindy's wedding in Western Pennsylvania. You've met some of my aunts, uncles and cousins already in previous posts (BOXES 15-17; BOXES 22-24), and here they are in 1977. First are the bride and groom, Cindy and Dave, and then Cindy's parents, Uncle Angie and Aunt Cil. (Regretfully, a number of the pics were taken in shadow, but I've tried to brighten the faces as much as I could.)
Next is Cindy's sister, Beattie, and then the two of them with their brother, Michael:
Here are Aunt Rose and Aunt Fanny in the first shot; Aunt Frances and Mom in the second.
Next is my Uncle Tony, with my cousin Joanne behind his right shoulder, her mother, Aunt Mary, to the right, and Cousin Billy, in the sunglasses, to the left; not sure about the baby but probably a grandchild of Uncle Tony.
Now a more formal pose, with my father's three brothers, Uncle Pete, Uncle Tony and Uncle Angie, with their sister, Aunt Rose, in the middle; plus Aunts Fanny, Cil and Mary.
And for the sake of completeness, here are other shots taken moments before or after the one above:
Here are a couple shots of Jim; in the second he's holding Jamie, with the town of Yatesboro in the background:
I'm in a couple of shots, in my polyester suit, with Jim, Jamie, Mom and Dottie in the first; and with Jim and cousins Ron and Sam in the second:
Here's one more shot of family outside the reception, and one inside with (right to left) Aunt Mary, Aunt Ann (Uncle Tony's wife and Aunt Mary's sister--somehow she wasn't in the outdoor photos), Cousin Sam and his wife, Joan.
Finally, here are the wedding couple leaving the reception:
Back at my PA aunts and uncles' houses, the next day, I took some more photos. Here is one (similar to one I took in '67) of the view from Aunt Frances' (originally my grandfather's) front porch, followed by one of the house itself (a replacement for an earlier building):
And here is the barn on the property, and then a photo of her daughter Betty Rose and her family:
Across the road and up a hill from Uncle Angie's house you could walk through some trees to find the remnants of an old coal mine. In the shots below, you see Jim climbing up a slag heap; more relatives walking along the edge of the slag; Jim on the left with Aunt Frances, Cousin Angelo and Dottie on the right; and some abandoned mine equipment.
At the end of this box of slides I find one photo back in Wisconsin: of my campus after I arrived back for fall classes. (This precise view no longer exists, since a new wing fills all the immediate space beyond the sidewalk, linking the building on the right to one out of sight on the left.)
Except for a Christmas visit to Ohio, my next slides--quite a few boxes--document a road trip I took with Max from Sheboygan to Phoenix, where we met up with my friend Gloria and made a loop through the southwest, eventually arriving in Los Angeles, with a side trip up to San Francisco, and eventually a drive on my own back to WI. The next several posts will report on the trip.
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