1966 Cross Country Trip- Part 12- Home Movies and Slides

 Last year, I finally had Mom's home movie reels put onto DVDs. Some of them were of her cross country trip with her parents. There were no labels on some though so I didn't know until afterwards what was on them. 

   There were a few of California. I discovered that one of them was actually from a trip that Dad, his mother, and brother took out there, also in the mid-1960s. It seems odd to have them both combined on that DVD.

   Colorado, New Mexico, and Boys Town, Nebraska were on these. A few other destinations I am not sure of though. 

   Some of the footage seems dark; I don't know if this is because this is how it originally was or maybe the passage of time affected the quality of the reels. It was fun seeing them despite this.

 Other events are also on these DVDs. These include a bit of my parent's wedding and their honeymoon, 3 other weddings, Mom's trip to Boston, Grandma's trip to Germany, Grandpa at the farm, and Dad with his mom and brother in DC.

Slides

I am trying to decide if I want to have some made into photos. I did have one done- Mom and Grandma. I am not sure where this was taken. I took photos of the slides when they were in the viewer but they didn't come out that well. A couple might be from Iowa since they are probably the same cows from a field that we do have a photo of. There are 3 of the trailer and car too.

Same photo, taken in slide viewer. You can see the tree in this one but not the one that I had done at the photo shop which is kind of disappointing.

I had retaken some of the photos at a closer distance. These came out just a little better. I probably will have them done at the shop after all, eventually.

Grandma and Grandpa

 We don't have that many photos of my mother's parents together. This is my favorite one-

I love these photos of Grandpa with their poodles- Shu Shu and Prince. Mom said that her Dad wasn't crazy about her getting these doggies at first but then he became very attached to them; they were more like his doggies than hers.

I am not sure when any of these photos including the one of Mom with her parents were taken. I don't even know if Mom would remember because of her memory problems which makes me wish that I had talked about her family history with her years ago. She probably told me some stories over the years but I can only recall a little of the details. I should have kept a journal of them all along.

I really didn't do that great of a job scanning some of my photos- I plan on redoing them eventually. I have been working on organizing family photos for a while now, along with other projects such as the slides and 8mm movie reels put onto DVDs. It has been fun taking this trip into the past.

My Family's Slides

 I bought a viewer to look at our family slides. We have a small one but it is broken and unable to be repaired. It has been interesting seeing these; there are many from 1968, including my parents wedding. I have been gradually taking batches of them to a photo shop to have made into pictures. It is kind of expensive but worth it. 

Some are not that great so I wouldn't spend money to have them done. We already have many of them from our parents wedding. I was trying to just pick out a minimal amount of each event at first but now I want to have more done. I have about 60 of them already.

These are a few of my maternal grandfather. He died a couple of years before I was born. 

I was taking photos of slides when they were in the viewer hoping that these would turn out good enough to have some of the photos that weren't on the top priority list printed out cheaply at Walgreens but this wasn't that successful. You can't really use the flash. The edges seem dark. I did try adjusting the brightness on them with Windows Photo but still wasn't satisfied. I am sure that if I had Adobe Photoshop or other program, it might do a better job. I don't really want to spend money on that. I would rather invest in getting more of them done professionally.

Here are the same photos as above- the slide viewer versions. Yikes- they are worse than I remembered

My parents didn't really do that many slides of my brother and me. There are only 15 or 16 from 1971. Those are the very first ones that I had made into photos. I also had them scanned onto a flash drive, something that I should have done with the next 2 orders. It is easier and comes out much better than scanning them myself like I have done with a lot of my photos so far. There are many more yet to be done which I haven't been in the mood for. It is discouraging that they aren't always aligned perfectly even though I have tried my best to get them that way.

Here is what the viewer looks like-

 

Mom's Viewer-

A box full of slides- 

Autumn Leaves- 1971

I recently had photos made out of  these and other slides of my brother and me from 1971. There were only about 14 of them. All of our other slides are from before my lifetime- many are from 1968. I guess that by 1971, my parents weren't as interested in doing slides. 

It has been fun looking at them on the viewer. I still have about 90 more to do. I wish that I could afford to have many more made into photos but this is expensive so I could only pick out a limited number.