The
limited amount of time that you could record on a movie cassette led to people
trying to pack in as much action into 150 seconds as possible. Many of these movies ended up feeling like
you were seeing the 1960’s through the eyes of someone who had Attention
Deficit Disorder. Even if you had 10 to
15 rolls to record that special event, it still took a few seconds load between
switching out cassettes so you would still have lost pieces of action between
where the last roll ended the new one began.
Worse, it would take at least a few days to send off the film and get it
developed so you couldn’t really be sure that you got everything. Primitive as it seems now, it was the best
technology that we had at the time. It
was the only way we could go beyond capturing
a nanosecond of action in a photo.
Rather than explaining how your child learned how to walk, you could
show them taking those precious tentative steps out into the world. You could see them doing it in those
ridiculous puffy pants with ruffles on the back, the hair in a silly sprout and
toddler saddle shoes. You could see the
pride of the Mom or Dad taking their child's hand and leading them down that path with
a big silent smile on their face – and appreciate how timeless that moment is. Different clothes, different decade, but
still those tentative steps have to be taken by every toddler and experienced
by every parent.
I guess
the reason I’m waxing nostalgic about all this is because for my holiday
project for my mother and my brothers and sisters this year, I decided to
convert a few reels of personal home movies into digital video. I tried at first to do it myself but trying
to get a 40 year old projector to gently play the precious moments of my
recorded childhood didn't work out so well. I found that the decades of dust made the machine smoke
and when I tried to un-jam the film, my finger got shredded in the sprockets
before I could even get my video camera set up.
I decided then and there to have the professionals transfer it. The quality would be better and the chances
of bloodshed were much lower.
My brothers
got a selection of home movies from my mother’s house which has been pretty
empty since she moved from Miami to Tallahassee to go into assisted
living. The films spanned from 1957 from when
they lived in Medford, Massachusetts to various vacations up to 1974. My mother was pretty meticulous about
labeling the outside of the film canisters so it was easy to see what year it
covered and what activities were documented.
I got a dual 8 mm viewer from the place that I was having the film
transferred so that I could see the movies in advance to decide which movies were
worth transferring. Putting the film on
the spools and cranking them through the viewer brought back to life those memories that had remained still for all these decades. Birthday
parties with pony rides, trips to Mathason Hammock, a family vacation to
Pioneer City, or just playing in the backyard were all subjects of these long
forgotten films.
I
picked out the best of our collective toddler-hoods. I got 200 feet of film from 1957 when my
parents still lived near Boston and my sister Sharon and I were still six to
seven years from existence. It was
interesting seeing my older sister Kathy playing with her baby brother Bill in
the pool in their backyard, seeing her climb on monkey bars and totally mug for
the camera. Again, these films were
silent so any sound of her little voice singing to her brothers was never
captured. There’s the footage of my
brother Bill’s second birthday which proved that no matter how advanced we as a
species become, kids will always love ice cream, cake and getting presents –
those emotions are pretty timeless. Then
there are the images of my brother Steve as an infant being passed around and
adored as infants always are. Then there
is the footage of my parents young and just starting out with their
family. My mother is wearing bright red
lipstick which was your make-up basic back then with matching nail polish. She looks vibrant even in light of the fact
she had three children in five years. My
dad looks thin and has no problem pushing a stroller or shooting some of the
movie footage so that my mother is actually documented in the movies. My grandparents still look like my
grandparents but with less gray and more energy. It’s a little freaky to see all these people and
how they looked before I was born. I’m not jealous mind you, just interested in
the dynamic before I came along. There
is one part where my mother is throwing back her head and laughing out loud - something I rarely saw growing up probably because probably after having five kids to
look after, she didn’t has as many LOL moments.
When I
got to the footage of 1966, I got to see myself at three and my sister at two
playing in the backyard. My brother
Steve who is about nine at this point is clowning around as I douse him with a
hose. My sister Sharon running around
topless in the backyard with me in my favorite bathing suit (I still remember
how much I loved that suit!) The two of
us were so close then, she was my little Dee-Dee. I was 16 months old when she
was born and I couldn’t say Sharon but I could call her Dee-Dee. It stuck through the time we went to
college. I remembered how much she
hated sand on her toes and would insist on sitting in a chair while the rest of
us played in the water. It’s those
little seemingly small details you remember the most.
I
finished the editing the video and put the holiday footage together at the end from
1957 and 1963. I hoped my mother and my
siblings would like it. I took it with
me to Tallahassee so that my sister Kathy, my brother Bill, my mom and our
families could watch it together. I also
uploaded it on Vimeo for my sister Sharon and Steve to watch. The time came for us to watch it in Kathy’s
living-room on her DVD much like we used to as kids when my mom got our the
projector so we could see the footage she had just gotten back. I was amazed how much Kathy and Bill
remembered of their Massachusetts days.
We laughed at the our antics as children and at the patience my father
had at trying to keep a band of five kids together while my mother documented
what she could. My mother remembered
people we couldn’t and it felt good to hear her connect to those old memories
and see herself as that young mother excited to have her daughter try on a coat
from Felines Department store. Here’s a
link to a 60 second mock movie promo I did for The Codys – A Party of Seven.
I guess
my hope with all this is to remind the Cody kids how close we used to be before
adulthood, marriage and our own families got in the way. Our
mother is beginning to lose her memory and soon these home movies will be all
we have to connect us to our past because she won’t be able to recount those moments
to us anymore. In a way, I guess that’s what
this blog is about. If my kids ever
wonder who I was, they can look here and get an idea of what their mother
thought and the things I went through, both good and bad. It also makes me think for all the video
equipment I have around here - I need to take video of them and save it because they will be grown and out before I know
it. I’ll want them to remember the good
times and not all the times I had to say that we need to watch our money. You know, the silly times in the park or on vacation in Chattanooga or just playing around in the living room. I'm going to be 50 years old this year and yet I still remember vividly playing in my childhood Miami backyard, the smell of the fresh cut grass and how much my brother Steve used to make me laugh. It seems like yesterday and yet it was 47 years ago. I just want my kids to remember their childhood and to be able to smile about it
because it all goes by so very, very fast.
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