Blast from the past.

The last couple of days my best friend from high school has been in town staying with me.  We get together every year or so, whenever business brings him into town.  This time it wasn’t business, his father just passed away and he had a week before summer term started at the university he teaches at.  So, he came down to ski, so his kids could visit their grandparents (his ex-in-laws), and so we could just decompress for a couple days.

We reminisced over the old days, compared medical situations, discussed past and present (neither of us have a present) romantic interests, went up to Duchesne to see the property my brothers and I have and then visited local haunts from our adolescence.  You get the details to the trip to Duchesne and a couple haunts.

I’m going to warn you now, this post has 29 pictures that go along with it.  You’ll have to click below to see the rest of the post, this new feature on my blogger interface lets break the post in two pieces so you don’t have to spend the time waiting for all the pictures to load unless you want to.  Hope you enjoy.

Much better night at the Chevron

…. Kid pulls up in a little old Ford Escort and comes in to prepay $5 in gas for it.  He goes out, fills up the car and gets in the driver’s seat.  Three kids get out and start pushing the car – getting it going fast enough to compression start it.  As I’m watching this whole thing unfold, I just laugh to myself.

…. My junior year of high school the starter motor went out on my ‘74 Dodge Colt.  Being broke, this would have been a tragedy if it weren’t for 3 things. 1. The car was a clutch.  2. The house I lived in was on a hill. 3. East High School is right on the Wasatch Fault, which means it’s on a really steep hill. I went 3 months before I put in a new starter motor.  I just never turned off the car unless it was parked on a hill or full of friends, and I always made sure there was room for them to push it (that was the price they paid for a ride).  Actually I probably wouldn’t have ever put in a starter motor if I hadn’t got a job at Arby’s, which wasn’t on a hill and nobody wanted to come push start me at 1 in the morning.

…. And here’s proof that I’m not the only one that thinks talking on the phone while checking out at the store is rude:

Dating Criteria #34

.... I've been watching my "That '70's Show" DVDs, and in a couple of seasons a lot takes place in their version of a PhotoMat. Now, first of all, I love that show. It's my high school experience to the "T". We had a Fez, granted they were always female (Barbie and Tanya), but the foreign exchange students always hung out with our group. We had our Donna & Eric (Scott & Jenny), our Hyde (my best friend, Ed - he even lived at my house for a while), our Jackie (male versions, Eric & JT), our Lori (the slutty sister, not my sister though), and even our own Kelso (though I can't think of his name now). And although on the show they graduated in 1979, that's pretty close to my 1978.

.... Anyway, I've been thinking about how PhotoMats were huge for a while there and then, thanks to 1 hr and digital photos, they disappeared off the face of the earth.

.... Now, here's my point: if you have to ask "What IS a PhotoMat", then you are automatically crossed off my dating list for being too young. Yup, sorry. But if you have to read the next paragraph to see what a PhotoMat is, we just can't go out.

.... Just like the SnoCone booths that have cropped up everywhere, PhotoMats were little buildings like the one in the picture where you could drop off your film (remember film? no? sorry, no dinner and a movie for you), and then pick up your pictures a couple of days later. Just like everyone else, they sent the film in to some huge lab somewhere in California, Ohio or Iowa (it was definitely in the USA) to be developed and then held onto them until you came to pick them up.

.... Don't ask me why I felt the need to blog about PhotoMats. It's just something from my younger days that have been wiped off the face of the earth by the digital age. Like stickball, bore-a-hole, big ol' station wagons with fake side paneling and, uhum, spin-the-bottle.