The Company Mugs' Mugshots

Part 30 of 30 -- Speaking Ill of The Dead

This is what the past looks like, formal pictures of guys from the neck up as far as the eye can see. Most of them being a link in the chain that goes back as far as we can imagine, the dark, the slime, the ooze, and that’s just their parents’ honeymoon. They came on the scene exactly as did we, humpa humpa, “Guess what,” Mom says to Dad. In that regard they’re no better or worse, but the same.

But Junior does his thing, climbing as high as President of the Firm! Busy making parts for machines, then as President overseeing the work, engaging salesmen, training them, getting the railroad on board for deliveries. And at the end of the day he sits back in his swivel chair and watches the smoke curling its way from the smokestack into nature’s loving arms. “This is the good life…” he thinks, then remembers, “Damn, Hilda was supposed to call the photographer to get everyone’s mugshot! Hope she did it. Everyone from me down to Buck Tinsdale mopping Warehouse Z, who said he 'reckons as how he can come up with a suit.'"

But all that's in the distant past. It's all done. We wouldn't know Buck Tinsdale from Rockefeller. And if he had a suit or not, no one really cares. I'm just scanning the picture, though, and it looks like everyone has a suit. No bib overalls spotted.

But now the only suit they have to worry about is the one the undertaker put on their lifeless body. And you know how they do that, cut the thing up the back and tuck it under your body. A simple earthquake and you'd be naked. But I guess they do pin it behind the shoulders and press the silk pillow in a little tighter.

Back to the picture: When it came time to assemble the portraits from the president down to Tinsdale, they needed to be arranged to show the pecking order, the hierarchy, without embarrassing anyone. Which was only a minor concern in those days, meant to encourage ambition and drive.

I wonder who the first 10% were to die. I could correlate obituaries with the names, but I can't quite make out the print. They seem to have been obscured somewhere along the line in the chain of custody of their memories. Perhaps out of jealousy in middle management, or later in the transmission of this data so that no one’s memory would be besmirched. I can see that happening. Like by the family of one of the guys, one of the last few to live, who bragged about him and besmirched the others.

A psychic could look at any one of these guys, especially if they weren’t obscured, and figure out their deepest secrets. But what goes on in the parts department behind the farthest stack stays there. Weird, the past has a veto over our knowledge of the future. Telling us in so many words, "You worry about you, let us worry about us. We’re dead anyway, so what do you want to know? 'Is there a literal hell?' We’re not saying, just let this suffice, bring fire extinguishers."

Wow, there wasn't a good guy in the bunch!

A Dead Guy's Mustache -- As Close As You're Gonna Get

 CLICK PHOTO TO GET AS CLOSE AS YOU'RE GONNA GET

This guy lived and died a long time ago, maybe 100 years ago.

There's lots of maybes. Since he was a young guy in this photo, he might have lived quite a while after this, with his mustache turning old and gray and eventually falling off. Or he might have sat for this picture, caught viral pneumonia from a sick photographer and fallen dead just moments after the shutter clicked.

Either way, he's certainly dead now, and his mustache presumably is lost forever. Exhuming the body is out, not only because of the various legalities that would have to be dealt with, but because we have no idea, no clue as to his identity. The only information I've been able to glean is that he lived, had a great head of hair and mustache, and died. And that he sat for at least one photo at a photography studio called Veatch in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Cedar Falls, Iowa? Now we're making progress! Which is probably still a dead end. Of course, if you want to go for it, be my guest. I am personally going to stand down and let the poor man rest in peace. And accept it that his mustache is gone forever, and that this enlargement is as close as I'm gonna get.

Still, isn't it a tantalizing detail that ... somewhere near Cedar Falls, Iowa, in a lonely, perhaps forgotten cemetery, this mustache still rules and reigns the nether realms six feet under? For me, it changes nothing. I'm still standing down!

So barring a miracle, an identification and the knocking down of many legal barriers to exhumation, I'm as close as I'm gonna get to this great example of a flamboyant mustache.

Isn't life amazing? We try to deny it, but life always comes with limits. You see a guy with a mustache, and he passes by, usually without allowing us a super close-up. Of course the inaccessibility is greatly multiplied for guys who lived and died a hundred years ago. But thanks to photography -- a relatively recent invention -- we're able to see it in all its glory.

So today -- and today only -- you and I have this rare opportunity, a treat, the chance to zero in on this particular guy's cool mustache. Friends, feast your eyes! This is as close as anyone's gotten since he passed from this earth. And it's a chance that likely will never come again.

It's Me Against The Murderous Maniac

I've got to be real cagey about what I say about this matter. It seems there could be a murderous maniac on my trail.

It all started, like most terrible incidents like this do, with a road trip. I wasn't satisfied with what I could find in my own backyard, even though if I learned anything from The Wizard of Oz, it had to be that. Instead, I went out of town.

When you go out of town, especially as I did to a small town, you're just setting yourself up for trouble. The few people you run into are monitors for the rest. They're not used to strangers, but when they see one they go ballistic.

I perceived that I had quickly become the talk of the town. My vivid imagination told me that's the way it was, and naturally all my paranoia flags went up. Maybe if I hadn't stopped in at the local cafe it wouldn't have happened so fast. But in the time it takes to get a bite to eat, not only can word go out that you're in town, it gives them time to learn everything they can about you, assuming anyone there has access to the internet.

OK, so far, so good, at least I thought. I probably should back up and say why I was there. A couple months ago I got an iPod with a camera in it, so I've been having a good time taking pictures. As a guy with no demonstrable artistic talents, yet who considers himself a natural born artist, being able to push the button on a camera and have it yield a colorful picture, is a godsend.

Anyway, there I was, scouting locations for my next masterpiece, and I felt eyes on me. Eyes perhaps attached to bodies with hands attached to machetes! This is one sadistic little burg, I told myself, and I answered myself that that was a good point. So I was conducting myself cautiously, to say the least, even gingerly, with careful footfalls, prowling around in my car like a cat, stalking my prey, colorful scenes, rustic signs, rusty cans in alleys, a house in shambles, or, if luck would have it, a naked lady on a hammock.

When it comes to being killed, I like to think I'd have some premonition that it was about to happen, so I could avert it. But it happened suddenly, without warning. I saw a certain rustic thing, in part pictured above, with a metallic steering wheel and seat, hooked to a motorized vehicle used typically in farming, which I shall not name. Really big wheels in back, tiny ones on the front under the motor.

Then, and this is where danger reared its ugly head, a guy comes out of a barn. He's got what I'm picturing as big murderous eyes, a maniacal sneer, and he's wielding a big bloody machete, and I see what looks like fangs sticking out where his teeth should be. His hands are big and gnarly. His bib overalls are only fastened on one side and the other side is folded down. There's dirt on the T-shirt underneath, like maybe he used it at some time to wipe blood off his hands. His nose is breathing out smoke, like a bull in the arena. It's all I can do not to hulk out and throw a tractor at him, or at least my iPod.

Seriously, this guy was a mountain. No ordinary weapon could possibly kill him. It'd take a nuclear bomb app. If only I could get signal out here in the wild! I'm thinking, iTunes, don't fail me now! What would I give for an app like that? Up to $2.99, especially if it had at least 4 stars. But since there wasn't a signal, I decided to try non-violence. Could that possibly work? Possibly, at least long enough to get me the hell out of there.

He was murderous. He had a look in his eyes that threatened to tear me to pieces, limb from limb. And these were his exact words: "Can I help you find something?" Sounds helpful, right? But that's just code for, "What in the hell are you doing on this property, seemingly tampering with my tractor?" Real accusatory stuff! Since I couldn't nuke him, I begged off, "I'm only taking a picture of this ______ [see photo]." He said some other stuff that I couldn't make out, mostly guttural roars, foaming at the mouth, as I backed up slowly, opened my car door and got in.

I spun it out of the alley doing 40 miles an hour in reverse. Then I laid rubber on the road that probably stretched a whole mile. I imagined (and actually saw, I believe) zombies pouring out of old shuttered buildings. An old lady zombie ran into the road with an apple pie, heaving it at my car. It landed in perfect condition on the passenger seat! That was the high point of the whole experience.

But friends, this murderous maniac, the guy back at the tractor, I believe is still after me. I'm writing this as a kind of last post, in case I don't make it till tomorrow. If I don't make it, please send help! And nuke that little town ... all the way to hell and back!

Look At This Great Picture

Isn't that a great picture? Huh? Huh? What do you think? I surely deserve some praise for it, don't I? Like a lot of praise? Because I took it.

And you know what, it wasn't really that hard to accomplish. Probably for some people it'd be tricky to get it accomplished, like people who don't have an eye for it, let alone an innate knack for style. But not for me, since I have an eye for practically anything, and my innate knack for style is simply without beginning and without end.

I'm looking at it right now, even while I type, because typing for me isn't any problem; I learned the keyboard when I was in junior high school, giving me the ability to look at a picture and type at the same time. And I really like what I see. I really like it.

It kind of reminds me of Sam Spade, you know, the detective that Humphrey Bogart played? He's like all noir all the time, that is, film noir, with noir meaning dark or black in French. If you've ever seen one of these films, naturally they're done in black and white, like my picture. So what have you got? Lots of shadows, venetian blinds making crazy sick patterns all over everything as the sun streams through. There's so many shadows a mouse might be hiding in plain sight and you wouldn't see it.

Well, look at my picture, venetian blinds, check! A bench or table, a good place for a '40s detective to sit, while presumably a Cuban ceiling fan turns creakily overhead, and somewhere, I'm not going to say it's not there, there is a mouse, in one of the corners. And look at the sun streaming through. If you enlarged this son of a bitch, you'd even see the dust motes floating in the room.

It's atmospheric, if I do say so myself. I love the light dangling overhead, just the kind of light a detective would pull down when he was trying to put the screws on someone to get their confession. The very light where a gun moll, which is the word they used for their women back then, would be touching up her lipstick, since she's very finicky about lipstick. Cherry lipstick, coincidentally the same kind they found smudgy traces of on the dead man's collar!

You know what? I've been seriously taking pictures for the last month, since Aug. 1. It's true, I've taken maybe 3000 (or it could be 2000) pictures, everything in my path. I started out all nervous, like you might imagine, because I hadn't touched a camera since maybe the '70s. So I'm all hesitant, then I discovered something about myself, probably something you've known for a long time from other contexts, that I'm a born artist. With that, I loosened up.

I always wanted to be an artist. But I can't draw, can't seem to paint, not that I've really tried, don't know music, can't read it. In every way that counts, artistically speaking, I've been a big fat zero. And that's a bummer to me like you couldn't know, because I've always thought I had the talent, if only it could be borne out in actual fact.

But when it comes to photography, any idiot (which I'm not one of) can be an artist. All you have to do is find something decent to look at, aim a camera at it, and push the button. And they've made it a lot easier these days, like with an iPhone or iPod, because all the tools are built in, filters, etc. It's like a multiple choice test where none of the answers is actually wrong!

OK, picture me on the set of the above picture. I'm brooding over it for like seconds at a time. I'm thinking, "How am I going to frame this son of a bitch so it comes out something I'm proud of?" Naturally, and this is where my innate style comes into play, I'm thinking I want the window off center. The bench on the right is going to look fantastic with the sun streaming through the venetian blinds directly. So I'm thinking that's where I'll leave it. Of course the left side is going to be more in the shadows, not getting a direct sunlight hit. Which ought to be your first clue that the mouse has to be over there somewhere.

All these thoughts are running through my head, and I'm mentally calculating all the angles, my brain being close to a super computer, very fast, and only crashing ... hardly ever. I called for quiet on the set, while, with great stability in my hands, I held the iPod. Then, with everything being in perfect place, I snapped the picture. I thought I could take one more, but I like to work with one take. If you're a perfectionist from the get-go, you don't need to do it twice. I'm like the sign on the plumber's van I saw the other day, "We do it right the first time."

I got my mouse and we vacated the set. I put down a dollar on the table for the management's trouble (this was at a restaurant), and we were off.

TECHNICAL NOTES: In post production, I darkened the original picture with a cool filter I have on an app called MagicHour. The details in the original photo weren't as obscure as I wanted ultimately. A darker picture would make it a place where Sam Spade would be more comfortable. So a click of one button and it was darker, darkened to perfection.

CONUNDRUM: Of course I solely own the copyright on this picture. All rights reserved. It may not be used for any purpose without my express written consent, which I'm not bloody likely to give. Because I'm the guy who clicked the button, it's mine. Making me wonder, and this is the conundrum, if I had taken the picture with a timer, that is, without me pushing the button, would I still own the copyright? Or would I have to share credit with the camera itself? That's one for the courts to decide!

The Devil's Lesson: Never Put Anything Off

I probably shouldn't say, Never put anything off, because I have at least five tasks I could be doing right now. Except, of course, I can't do them all at the same time, so something's got to wait. I'll write this right now.

But you think some things are harmless enough to put off until later, until bitter experience jumps up to bite you on the ass and let you know, You should've done it when you had the chance!

Take this cigarette ashtray outside a major store, pictured above. I was there, sitting on the bench. I looked over at it and thought it'd make a nice picture, since it had about nine cigarette butts squashed in the sand. But, I'm thinking, there's no hurry ... they'll be there when I get around to it ... what's going to happen to them? ... maybe the sun will go down a little and they'll have a more artistic shadow, something evocative of loneliness, heartbreak, and being discarded, something to cheer me up.

I'm sitting there thinking about it, but it takes precious energy to get up and walk the one and a half steps to it, then I'll need to fire up the camera, and further strain my brain getting just the right angle. I'd just had a nap anyway and I was still feeling a little groggy. They'll be there, they're not going anywhere. It's not a cute kid with a rattle who's going to lay it down in five seconds.

Friends, I'm here to tell you, the devil is real. That's the only explanation that fits. The devil is real. And his main purpose in his infinitely sad and miserable existence is to screw with my head and make my life sadder. Oh yes, he dangles all the various temptations in front of my wondering eyes, but for the most part I've learned to say no to all that glitters, since in the long run it too will make my life miserable. But I'm thinking -- obviously -- there's very little percentage in the devil's favor to deny me an evocative picture, one stinking picture, of a bunch of squashed cigarette butts. But I was mistaken...

I'm sitting there, literally a step and a half from the disposal, when a guy, noiselessly, without a sound and without a glance or peep my way, rides up on a bike and proceeds to quickly take the butts out of the disposal one by one, until he's gotten eight or so, then puts them in his shirt pocket, and rides away.

I couldn't believe it. It sickened me, for obvious reasons. Smoking isn't good for you in the first place, let alone what you're likely to get out of a bunch of butts smoked by total strangers. But the really important reason why my stomach suddenly went sour, and replanted the seed of devil belief in my mind, coarsened by modern scientific knowledge against devil belief, was that I was deprived of the picture I had envisioned.

It stands against reason is a dozen different ways. But I'll just sketch out a few. 1) I've never sat on that bench before; 2) I've never contemplated getting a picture of that cigarette disposal before; 3) I've never seen someone ride a bike up and essentially empty one out; 4) The fact that it had to happen right that second, at that very instant, the very time that, within a few minutes, probably, I would have been taking the picture, boggles my mind. You think, No! The positive spin is it does once again grant me a place at the center of the universe, so maybe it's not such a bad tradeoff.

We've agreed it's totally against reason, that much is sure. And yet it happened just the way I described it! But perhaps oddest of all is this, the open question of why he left one butt behind!? That's what I have in the picture above, one cigarette butt! This guy removed them efficiently, one at a time, shamelessly, but then, against reason, left one behind. That's one of the questions killing me.

Could it be (and this is a serious question), could it be that someone so frugal as to be recycling used cigarette butts would also have the ethics to not take them all? This is serious business, something like Manifest Destiny. If you colonize and you take it all, that's one mindset. But if you somehow move in and coexist, that would be another. It would still be pretty bad if you moved in and took 90%, which is approximately how many butts the guy took. But if it's only used cigarette butts you're taking -- which are generally considered worthless -- and you leave nearly 10% for some other poor soul to come, that's a fairly decent ethic.

Or, think of this, what if he leaves one behind to prime the pump, so to speak, so smokers who follow won't think they're disturbing something pristine by leaving their butts? It would be the same principle of hanging a for sale sign and taking one of the phone number stubs yourself. If this is what his motive was, of course that's not as much a humanitarian move as would be leaving the last one for some other poor soul. But still, it's really good thinking!

The way I'm resolving this in my mind is this: It's a lesson to me to never ever again put anything off. If I see something worthy of my artistic photographic talent, get the picture now. And the other resolution to it is to know I have a dreadful enemy in the devil, and if there's any way for him to ruin my best laid plans, he will do it, so I must be continually vigilant.

My Kafkaesque Photo (Or Maybe Not)

The other photo I got today (the first one is here) is the portrait of the guy on the left. On the right is Franz Kafka, the famous author. I was thinking my guy looked sort of like Kafka, but maybe not. Kafka's face looks a little wider.

I don't usually buy portraits like this, since they're usually kind of boring, but there was something odd about the guy's right eye. The white at the bottom eyelid looks like it was a photographer's touch-up, for whatever reason. At first it looked like the eye was too big compared to the other one.

Here he is with part of the cardboard frame. The photo was taken by the Hodge Studio of Topeka, Kansas. If anyone knows who he was, you can let me know in the comments. Thank you.

1934 Photo - Boy With A Milk Bucket Yoke

Sometimes I'm in the mood for old pictures of people I don't know, if there's anything interesting about them. If I see one I really like and don't get it, I have serious regrets for about a day.

I haven't bought any old pictures for six months at least, but was out today and got a couple. This is a snapshot that's interesting to me, since I don't see that many milk bucket yokes.

F*** STDs

A serendipitous happenstance of letters randomly coming together, I'd guess.

Someone Trained A Secret Camera On Me

I'm pretty sure it had to be someone who reads this blog, someone who is well aware of my comings and going, who trained a secret camera on me, which I have subsequently found and disabled.

I found it today, and I'm hoping it hasn't been there that long. Probably not, because I usually keep an eagle eye out for invasions of my privacy. I'm known for spending an extra long time kicking around for microphones and other surveillance equipment, lest anyone learn and document my secrets.

Of course I have enemies. No one in my position can hope to have everyone love him, though Lord knows I try. But I've done things, I've offended people, I've caused trouble for some of the authorities. Then there's the jealousy. When someone's on top, someone else wants to take his place.

But why now? That's a great question. It might be because it's the holidays, right when they think I might let down my guard. Or maybe it's just that it's the end of the year, and they've had this assignment and suddenly the calendar's against them and they've got to get it done. I can see that, because I myself hate to have to carry over old business to the new year.

What I actually think is going on is that they're looking for personal scandal. And I can guess what it's about, three guesses and the first two don't count, one of those deals. My post on "Body Language With The Pink Professor" was just a couple days ago. And I was a little coy about some of the possible goings-on between him and me, for very good reason. Because it's just the kind of scuttlebutt that can ruin a guy.

So what better way to try and bring me down than to turn to surveillance. Especially with a camera. It's economical, you don't have to pay someone to sit with it. You turn it on, you go to town for lunch, you come back and you've got pictures. What it might show, let's say if I was doing anything scandalous in its view, might be very damaging.

Have you seen those cameras they train on birds? They're insidious, because the birds don't realize it. You've got birds bathing, picking their feathers, eating, and even mating. But I'm not a bird ... I'm much smarter than that. And I'm not going to mate with the Pink Professor right out in the open, especially in view of their camera, if ever. Because that would be a roll of film that might very well end all hopes I have. It'd certainly end my viability in the short term, until the scandal died down.

OK, turning to the camera, I don't recognize the model. It's essentially a piece of plastic, and I don't see the usual markings of a camera, labels, an on-button, etc. Even the lens seems to be permanently encased in plastic, as though it's meant to be opened only by someone who knows its special secret. The back is completely open. I don't see any workings whatsoever. It's very weird.

In one of my photos, I've set some common household items next to it for scale, so you can get an idea of its dimensions. It's very small, a little smaller than other cameras I've seen. As to how it was supposed to function in the photographer's absence, that's another unknown, as there's no wires, no LEDs, no flash, no computer chips, no batteries, not even a solar panel to power it.

But, hey, I'm not alone in recognizing it clearly as a camera. I aimed it at two separate individuals, as an experiment, and they both thought it was a camera, one even going so far as to shield her face and say, "Don't take my picture!"

No one -- that is, no one I know -- likes to have their privacy invaded. They (and I) prefer to come and go undetected, unseen, and of course unrecorded. Whatever dirty business we might be up to when we get there, we'd prefer no one else found out about it. Let those goings-on be between us and our partner. Certain things are not meant for prying eyes and wagging tongues. And I for one don't appreciate anyone -- and I mean anyone -- trying to get pictures of it.

Thankfully, I've got possession of the camera now. And I plan on breaking it.

Note: I have a confidential word for the person who put this camera up: I believe I know who you are. I think I've got it narrowed down, your identity. So don't be surprised if there's a little 'turnabout is fair play' in your future! Just a friendly warning. But where and when I strike, that's going to be my own little secret.

Medical Brochure Mash-up

Here's one that caught my eye, a mash-up of old and young. Photo today by me, your humble correspondent at Grandma Slump.

Everyone's Energy Radiating Everywhere

I was looking at some old pictures of us -- including me -- today from years ago. For a while there it looked like we let people take pictures of us without acting self-conscious, shy, and ugly. (That's not me in the picture).

The big insight I had -- and I get this insight once in a while, so it's not new -- is how beautiful we were back then. I mean gorgeous beautiful. I'm looking at some pictures of me (not included at the website here) and I am stunned at how great I look. It's amazing.

But then, we think we get old and ugly, old and hideous, etc. And suddenly we're very self-conscious and shy, saying, "Please don't take my picture."

The insight mentioned above isn't just how beautiful we were back then, but how beautiful we must be now, if we would only realize it. Look at it this way: Back then we weren't walking around saying how beautiful we were. We weren't. In fact we were thinking others were so much better looking than us. We had an inferiority complex. Or we felt like 'if this was different' or 'that was different,' then we'd be content. In other words, we were thinking back then just like we're thinking now!

And what we ought to have been thinking then is how beautiful we are. And what we ought to be thinking now is how beautiful we are. It's a simple truth, and it is a truth. We were beautiful, gorgeous then. And if we could only believe it, we're beautiful and gorgeous now.

I would love to collect people if I could. If somehow you could latch on to them without hurting or hindering them and keep a copy of them in a big jar, maybe like the City of Kandor from Superman comics, that'd be great. Or you've got a big file of them, where no one gets hurt, no one suffers, and everyone lives happily as their beautiful selves. Because I guess I love people more than I usually think I do.

It's sometimes tough to be around people, though, because they have their own thing and they're off on it. You've got to keep your distance. You can't go up and say weird things like "I'd love to collect you." Or they'd send someone over to collect you, in a nice big file at the county jail!

Wouldn't it be great to be able to tell people how utterly beautiful they are?! I think it would. I saw a stunning couple yesterday at a function. And another guy went up and told them how "sharp a couple" they were. I thought, Hmm, that's probably not appropriate, but he was utterly right. This couple looked like a million bucks. I wanted to say something like that myself. Like "You two are DROP DEAD STUNNING," but I kept my lip zipped, since our typical thing is not to comment on people's appearance.

And everyone's got it. Even the craggiest, craziest looking person, has something intrinsically wonderful about them. Like me, or like I sometimes imagine I look. I have problems with my appearance. The big danger is to take a picture of me now, then look at it in 20 years and have to say, "Wow! I was beautiful back then!"

It happens. You're beautiful right now.

Note on the Photo: I don't know this young lady. This is a picture I got at an antique store. So in a very mild, limited way, I do collect people. It's quite a photo, I think. The room is so spartan and elementary. She's apparently dressed for Easter, with the bonnet. But she reminds me of Little Bo Peep. Another weird aspect of the picture is how she seems to meld right into the couch.

The Way They Were -- Sometimes We

 

I got these pictures the other day at a thrift store. It must've been a deal where someone in their family (or families) didn't know who they were anymore -- there's no identification given -- so they got rid of them.

Being a kindhearted soul, and knowing that adopted pictures don't eat much, I took them in, with an adoption fee of 50 cents apiece being paid to the attendant.

I think one of them is pretty cute, and I'm not saying which. I don't want to hurt the other's feelings. But the other one has a distinguished look and has nothing to be ashamed of. When I'm that age I hope I look as good!

But however good I think they both look, you can't deny that they look old fashioned. You see the pictures and immediately you think, That was the olden days sometime. Which must have been uncomfortable for them at the time. Walking around with everyone saying, Why the old fashioned look, sister?

I'm just kidding, of course, because back then they all looked like that. They had an old fashioned look because that was the fashion back then before we junked it and did something different. Elvis launched the sexual revolution and we never looked back.

I've got some old timey pictures of me as a kid. There's a picture of me I see almost everyday of me standing by one of Grandpa's Chevys, either a '56 or '57. It's awesome that Grandpa had a '56 Chevy, without him ever dreaming or knowing what they bring at antique car shows now. We'd ride in it without knowing we were riding in a classic.

Another old timey picture -- three different ones, actually -- show me in a baby swimming pool. My parents and I lived right here on Grandma and Grandpa's half acre in a tiny house over by the well. When I say a tiny house I mean it was as small as a house can be and still be a house with people in it. When they took it away it sat on the back of a truck and didn't need a "Wide Load" sign. So that little house is in the background of these pictures of me in the baby pool. And they were taken at just a slightly varying angle, each one, meaning that you can see a stereo image of the house if you hold them side by side and let your eyes drift them together. That thrills me. A stereo image of a house that's not there. It might not be anywhere anymore. Although as an adult, maybe 30-35 years ago, I went to it in the town where the truck took it. It was small. But somehow I didn't take any pictures. Dumb.

The pictures of Grandma and Grandpa taken in olden times show a normal young couple, not knowing what would happen to them in the future. But they looked confident enough to keep living, as indeed they did. One of my favorite pictures of Grandma is of her playing in the snow with a friend. She must be a teenager. She's seen in the picture from the back, like she's darting away from a snowball. It's very vivid. She's in motion, a kid at play. It's the best picture I've ever seen of people where you can't see anyone's face.

Advice to everyone: Mark your pictures. Put your name on there lightly on the back. Otherwise someone will throw them away. Then a guy like me will buy them. And they'll end up on his blog about the olden days.

I Really Look Old

I saw four or five pictures of me that someone took a couple weeks ago, pictures taken from various angles, not just head on.

I was stunned to see them. I'm not kidding. Stunned. I am really really an old man. This is something that doesn't happen to me very often. It really opened my eyes.

I think like the same kid I always was. And that's the way I think I look in my mind. Even when I look in the mirror, I don't precisely see an old man looking back.

But there I was. The pictures don't lie. I am ancient and I look it.

Long live the old timer!

Mystery Picture Of Old Faithful Appears

The picture you see is a mystery picture ... a picture that I did not take ... yet which appeared on my cellphone! Read on ...

You may remember the details I gave yesterday on the spewing of Old Faithful. If not, see yesterday.

In short, my cousin and I got the gas jets on, and with the required effort it takes to do it, Old Faithful was revivified. But one detail should not escape you:

I looked at it awestruck for a moment, then fidgeted with the camera and clicked off the picture [posted yesterday]. "I got it! I got it!" That was an historic moment. I paused, awash in emotions and literal water.

Then I heard the phone ring. It was Roto. There was a problem below. The water was massively spilling around him somehow, whether by seepage or a leak. Everything needed to be turned off, and so it was.

How many pictures does it sound like I took? Clearly it suggests one. The picture was taken, I paused, then I heard the phone ring. Roto tells me there's a problem and that everything needed to be turned off, and so it was. Admittedly, it doesn't say I didn't take other pictures. It doesn't exclude the possibility that I could have clicked off several more. Only I'm telling you I didn't!

And yet ... and yet ... this is crazy, I know ... when I checked my cellphone today ... there were two additional pictures ... weird. But to make it even weirder, in the mystery picture above, the intensity of the geyser is quite a bit more pronounced than it was in the first picture. And the angle is different. I don't recall seeing it in this way! That's part of what I can't get over.

How could it have happened? I'm thinking supernatural means. No, no, hear me out! There's a history of strange things happening with cameras and pictures. Strange hoverings of ghosts and demons behind people, or in the foreground of a picture. Deceased relatives suddenly appearing in a family photo. Ectoplasm blotching up a photograph in an unpleasant way. Weird double exposures -- apparently -- but the photographer swears that he only pushed the button once. Swears to it!


I was just reading a book on Saint Charbel (Sharbel) the other day, the hermit of Lebanon. He lived in the 1800s, basically alone, so there aren't lots of pictures of him. None that I know of. But it's on record that these other people were standing near his old "stomping grounds" and had a photograph made. But look right there in the foreground, seemingly coming up out of the ground or a shrub. That's him! They did not see him in front of them but he was actually there when they checked their cellphone. And as far as I know that's the only photograph of him!

Most people run for cover when they see a camera. This guy wasn't even there and he couldn't manage to keep out of sight! In truth, he wanted the faithful to see his apparition and to debate it forever whether the others Photoshopped him in. They claim they didn't ... and I think they sound sincere.

And just one other example in passing. My late father, who served as a monk, told me the weird story of Lahiri Mahasaya and cameras. A photographer tried to take a picture of the yoga master, but it didn't turn out. Lahiri said, "I am Spirit. Can your camera reflect the omnipresent Invisible?" The answer by implication would be no. Then he said, "Come, then, tomorrow morning. I will pose for you." An author explained the strange result, "This time the sacred figure, not cloaked with mysterious imperceptibility, was sharp on the plate." According to the photographer, though, the previous day Lahiri was having a bad hair day, so apparently any state we can attain short of mahasamadhi still allows for vanity.

All I know, friends, is I did not take the above picture of Old Faithful. It just somehow appeared! You see it and you're amazed, as I confess I'm amazed!

If there are any stories of miraculous healing from gazing at this picture, please send them to me. I'm hoping to honor the photograph by cashing in on it.

Looking At Pictures

Some years ago I made a scan of 500 and some pictures from one of my Mom's old photo albums. The pictures were ones that Grandma took -- some of them. Others that other members of the family must have snapped, particularly the ones that had Grandma in them.

It's always interesting to look back and see these people, many of them dead now. (Except Grandma, of course.) That's what I'm thinking all the time when I look at them now, how many have passed on. Uncles, aunts, like my aunt that died in November or December. Cousins even. I have one cousin anyway who died.

I have another cousin -- who I haven't seen for years -- who had some serious trouble with the law. Some of his pictures are in those 537 scans. I look at him, all prim and proper in his suit and tie and think, something went wrong with him. Maybe it was destined in his upbringing. He was adopted into the family, my uncle seems like he might have been a strict kind of guy, my aunt maybe not the greatest. I really don't know. Maybe the uncle wasn't strict, maybe the aunt was the greatest. I'm just going by feelings, especially about the aunt, that I myself had growing up.

There are cousins I was especially close to, and that doesn't include this particular one. It's amazing to look back at them. Plus, when you make a scan, the picture comes up on the computer at about 3 times the original photo, so you can see a lot more detail.

Flat Stanley

Maybe some of you have heard of Flat Stanley. I think it's Stanley. It's every name, actually.

Kids make a picture of themselves and send it off on adventures, around the town, the state, the world! I saw a wall full of pictures of kids from an elementary school. And it was Flat Jane, Flat Andrew, Flat Cameron, Flat Jennifer, etc.

We'll be featuring at this website, occasionally, Flat Grandma Slump. Watch for Grandma Slump's picture in various places that I happen to travel to. (I don't really range very far from home, so this might take some time. I probably could Photoshop her in at the top of the Eiffel Tower, up on the Empire State Building like King Kong, except my picture of her is of her seated. How to get around that, I don't know. Maybe one way is to cut off her torso and make the bottom of a body like a hinged kneed party hang-up person, easily posed and clever.)

Wherever I go, I'll have to toss in her photo.

Playing The Part

Playing the part of Grandma Slump is Mother Kendall, the only identification on the back of this photo.

We welcomed this photo to our home yesterday, finding it at an antique store. It was supposed to be $3.00 with a 10% discount. The lady at the counter said it'd be that much for any photo, be it small or big. But when we got to the counter with it, she said, it's 50 cents, plus tax. How that happened, we wondered about. But it's always nice to save money, especially on something like this that we were obviously willing to spend $2.70 on.

That I don't get. The lady knew we were willing to give her $2.70 for it. Why tell us it's 50 cents when we're right there with the money? The only reasonable answer to that question has to be: It's the magic of Grandma Slump! She did it from Heaven.