Old Picture #467-32D4

… Ok, so my older brother scanned a bunch of old family pictures and sent them out to everyone, so of course at least one had to end up on here.  Why this one?, you may ask.  Look in the background.  Looks a lot like one of the cars I own now.  As a matter of fact, it’s a 1969 Ford Galaxie 4 door hardtop, basically the same car as Old Blue.  Same year and same color as the first LTD I ever owned.  So, of course it caught my eye.

… Even more than the car this picture makes me think of my great-uncle Arno, who was your basic funny guy.  You couldn’t pass a cemetery without him saying “You know, people are just dying to get in there.”  He always had a joke, and he always had a song.  It was either “C’mon Baby Light My Fire” or “Someone Left the Cake out in the Rain”, but in my memory if he wasn’t joking around he was singing one of those songs.  Him and my great-aunt Alba, we loved going to their house because you’d always laugh your butt off.

…That’s Arno on the left, my grandfather in the middle and I think that’s my mother’s shoulder on the right.

Good news and an old picture

First the good news.  Most of the faculty meeting today was spent on what will happen to us if the school is closed down.  Like I said before, I'll go on the surplus list and take the position of whatever school picks me up. I had thought I'd be stuck there for at least next year, but my principal told us today that is not necessarily the case.  Every Friday for the next 4 weeks new postings will come out, and we will be free to apply and interview for any of those positions.  We are not obligated to stay where we are assigned, that is just the only position that we are guaranteed.  Then, if I don't get my choice over the next 4 weeks, I can put myself on the summer transfer list, and as positions come up throughout the summer, principals will see my name on the list and can call me for an interview.  Since every position I've had has been a summer opening, this is very good news.  Good thing I have already updated my resume!

The picture is of my original garage, the one that was here when I bought the house.  It must have been built in the 40's, or before, and I never parked in it because the shingles were so bad you could see through the roof. I just knew that it would collapse one winter.  Which it did.  But instead of just collapsing, it fell forward, right onto the hood of my car.  The car I purposely parked outside of the garage so it wouldn't get damaged. Yeah, so much for that idea.

Snooze, you lose.

Yeah, but I snoozed anyway.  Woke up around 8 this morning.  Watched an episode of SG1 on DVD.  Got the paper.  Watched another episode.  Started a pot of coffee, the last of the coffee in the house.  More SG1.  Drank some coffee.  You probably get the jist of my day by now.  Finally got out of bed for real at 2:30.  Then soaked in the tub for half an hour.  Yeah, nice.  It's been a while since I've had a day like that, needed it.  

Oh, and thanks for all the congrats, you folks out there in the blogosphere are great!

And finally, since my last few posts have been pictureless - here's one from when I ran the stage crew at my first school.  I think it was the last year I was there.

Playing with Photo Story 3

Friday I spent the morning helping with a training on Photo Story 3, a free program for creating movie presentations with your pictures. So, here's a bunch of my old pictures that I put into a video. It's pretty easy to do, not including the time it took to get the pictures together, this took me less than a half hour to put together.

Old Picture of the Day

My oldest neices and nephew, this picture was taken at their parent's second wedding. Half of the birthdays this month belong to these 3 and this is long enough ago that they are all married and parents of their own 2 children. Time flies way too fast.

Old Photo of the Day.....

Yeah, begs to ask Why the hell would I post such an unflattering picture? or maybe What was I doing wearing pants that short?  Well, it was sometime around 1990, by the ages of my nieces and nephew.  Maybe earlier.  If I recognize the background, this was taken on an old bridge on the road between Capitol Reef and Hanksville, headed towards Lake Powell.  The back row is my older brother and myself. The next row is my older brother's wife, his oldest daughter and the two Gearheads. In front is the only other niece I had at the time and my nephew (who happens to be Naptime Nostalgia's husband now). Some pictures should never see the day of light.  But it has such pretty colors.

Old pictures of the day.

Camping at Lake Powell, like much of Southern Utah, used to be a lot of fun.  Then, about 10 years ago the rest of the world discovered it and ruined it for those of us who have been enjoying it since the mid 70's (and before).  Edward Abbey knew this and was smart enough to die before it happened.

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Anyway, it was about 1979, I was working at Free Wheeler Pizza and had just bought my first brand new car.  The 1979 Mazda GLC Wagon you see below.  ($4,500 with tax & license).  Free Wheeler decided to shut down the store and have a company party at Lake Powell.  This was not an unusual thing, Free Wheeler would open 2 to 3 hours late so we could all play in the company football team up at the U.  So my best friend Ed, another worker (Kathy if I remember correctly), her dog and I packed all our stuff into my great little car and headed down.  You may or may not have heard of the Burr Trail, in '79 it was 100 miles of dirt road between Capitol Reef and Bullfrog, through an area called Waterpocket Fold.  The road  was on the map, even showed the town of Notom about 15 miles down.  I'd always  wanted to drive down Waterpocket Fold, so we decided to make a day of it and go down the dirt road rather than take the longer (distance, not time) highway route.  I had about a quarter tank of gas and planned on filling up in Notom.  We get about 20 miles down the road without any sign of Notom, stop at wash that crossed the road to determine if the car was going to make it across and take a break.  While we were stretching our legs a ranger comes from the other side, says "howdy" and we get to talking.  I was a little concerned about how deep the wash got, since I didn't have 4WD I didn't want to get stuck, but the ranger assured me the car would make it through fine.  The I ask "How much further to Notom?"  Notom, well, Notom's about 5 miles back.  "Five miles back?" I sez, "All I saw there was a clump of trees."  Yup, that's Notom.  Nice, it's just a farm, no gas station.  Well, it's 75 miles to Bullfrog and all I've got is 1/4 of a tank of gas.  I ought to turn back, go to Capitol Reef and fill up, right?  Yeah, right.  I'm 19, Ed's 19, Kathy's maybe 21.  No way we're going back.  Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead.  Now, 50 miles later we come over a little hill.  The road goes down, through the wash again and up another hill.  On the other side of the wash, on my uphill side, are three Jeep's parked at the side of the road.  The guys are out locking in the hubs, getting ready to forge this huge river when they see that overloaded Mazda come over the hill.  I could hear them chuckle.  I came to a stop, surveyed the situation, determined the wash was no deeper than the spot we went through earlier, hit the gas, come screeming down the hill, splash through the water, continue straight up the hill and over to the other side.  Laughing all the way, 'cause you should have seen their faces.  Jaws on the ground, eyes wide open in disbelief.  Yeah, I wasn't even thinking about the gas situation at that moment.  As for the gas, we did make it to Bullfrog.  Put 11.9 gallons in an 11.5 gallon tank.  Drivin' on fumes I was. 

The contrast between the red rock canyons and the blue water is beautiful.

This is Al, Mitch and Mike, the original owners of Free Wheeler Pizza.

Old photo of the day...

In honor of my little brother's birthday, I chose this as the "old photo of the day". It's from the Motel West BBS days, back around 1987. He, his wife, another friend and I rented a house out in West Valley City, it became the Motel West hangout. To this day we refer to it as "HQ". Those were fun times, people coming and going at all times, like freakin' Grand Central station. Nobody bothered calling to see what was going on that night, they just showed up. One of my funniest memories from that time was when we had a water fight with the neighbor kids. The kids had the hose and some buckets or something like that outside, and the "adults" were throwing water at them from inside the house. We got soaked. They got soaked. The house got soaked. Fun times.

In the picture below are (by their screen name);

Sitting up : Your Conscience, Sir Duke, White Lioness, Ed Broadbent, Professor Faust.

Laying down : Frankie the Z

The head you can just barely see, underneath everyone else : The late, great Mr. Coffee.

Old Photo of the Day

The last time I went to Yellowstone Park was back around 1980, in the picture is (left to right) my sister, my older brother, my oldest niece and my brother's wife.  We stayed in a campground despite bear sightings in the neighborhood, and instead of preparing a legal brief, we planned out exactly who was going to grab the child and which door of which car we all were going to get into in the event a bear showed up.  I remember we left the cars unlocked with the keys in them for a quick getaway.  My, how times have changed since then.

Old Picture of the Day

This is a picture I took of the Salt Lake City skyline, sometime right around 1980.

Old Picture of the day.

This must have been taken sometime in 1980, by the size of my older brother's family.

• Back row - left to right - My mother, my dad's father, my little brother, my dad's mother and her sister.
• Middle row - my sister, my older brother with his son on his knee and my dad.
• Front row - me, my sister-in-law and right in front of her my oldest neice.

The Hacienda

My little brother turned a truck bed into a trailer, and with a carpet kit and this tent, had the greatest camper. Lightweight, could carry a ton of stuff in it and relatively easy to set up and tear down. And the best part, it looks like an old pioneer covered wagon. I wanted one. I found this picture while going through some old CDs I'd had hidden away in the garage, along with a bazillion other pictures. I have no idea exactly when it was taken, but according to the details listed on the picture file, it was last modified on 1/10 of 1999. I think that's when I scanned the original picture. I think he still has the truck trailer, although the carpet kit and tent are long gone. Look for more of these trivial pictures from my past in the future, as I continue going through the 145 CDs sitting in the box under my desk. Oh, and there's a bunch of Super 8 movies sitting in the box with them, from back when I was 12 or 13. I want to get them transferred to DVD, and maybe inflict you with them here too... (Bwyahahahahahahaha).