Them was the days.

[Ron Mummert]

I've been cleaning house, & sorting though piles of old photos & letters contained in about a dozen shoe boxes. I got to a stack of letters (remember letters?)sent by me to my folks during my military years of the sixties. (Mom saved everything). I began to read them all. One missive from the summer of '64 was sent home after I arrived back at my base in Monterey, CA; having driven there cross country from The Wash. DC area. in my '59 Olds 88, a distance of about 2900 miles. I gave dad the trip stats..... "The car ran great, Dad, only used 1.5 quarts of oil, & got 15.1 mpg at 80-90 mph" "Total gas bill was $75.00!" "But that included an expensive run through Wyoming where gas was 44 cents a gallon!!!"

Drill baby drill!

Ron.

[subi-crosser]

Originally Posted by Ron Mummert

I've been cleaning house, & sorting though piles of old photos & letters contained in about a dozen shoe boxes. I got to a stack of letters (remember letters?)sent by me to my folks during my military years of the sixties. (Mom saved everything). I began to read them all. One missive from the summer of '64 was sent home after I arrived back at my base in Monterey, CA; having driven there cross country from The Wash. DC area. in my '59 Olds 88, a distance of about 2900 miles. I gave dad the trip stats..... "The car ran great, Dad, only used 1.5 quarts of oil, & got 15.1 mpg at 80-90 mph" "Total gas bill was $75.00!" "But that included an expensive run through Wyoming where gas was 44 cents a gallon!!!"

Drill baby drill!

Ron.

When my brother was in the Navy in 63, he came home on leave and saw a 59 Impala 2 dr HT sitting on a car lot. It was black with a 348. He slipped a some 'payola' to a salesman to secure the purchase. He bought the car.
He drove the car for YEARS!! He drove it to and from Maine, where he was stationed, commuted to Balt from Cumberland. (Changed the oil every week),
Drove the car over 200K. About 25 years ago, he backed it into his garage and shut it off. It still sleeps there.....

All the 'pitted' chrome was pulled and rechromed and put in a cabinet, all rusted and busted stuff was purchased and stashed in the attic.
This could be the year that I SHAME him into pulling it into the spraybooth!

This could be the year that I pull my 61 Ford Convertable out of it's cave and run it through the booth.

I bought the car in 72 for 100$, I was a senior in high school.

Gas was 24CENTS a gallon! My big expense was back TIRES!
Bro's big deal was transmissions, followed by tires.

GOOD memories!

[dcarrb]

I remember going to the Sinclair station (who remembers their green brontosaurus logo?) at the end of our block in a '66 Galaxie 500 with a nearly-empty 22-gallon tank and telling the attendant, "See if it'll hold ten dollars."

Keep those letters. An uncle of mine passed away last week, and Mom still had letters he'd written home to her from northern Africa and Italy during the darkest days of WWII. Treasures.

dcb

[TheKoP]

It's pretty cool that you found that stuff and even cooler that your Mom saved it all. As dcarrb said, hold on to them and cherish them. I always enjoy coming across a box of old photos or letters and going through them.
Sadly, with the domination of electronic communications I really think that experiences like that are close to being extinct. Kind of like the whole digital download thing, I prefer to hold the actual item in my hands, not just know it's saved to a hard drive. Always wondered how many pics of mine will be deleted someday, only to be forgotten forever

[Ron Mummert]

Keep those letters. An uncle of mine passed away last week, and Mom still had letters he'd written home to her from northern Africa and Italy during the darkest days of WWII. Treasures.


Yeah, I too have kept all written correspondence over the decades. Last year I rounded up a year's worth of 1968-69 letters exchanged between me, & my then future wife who was in Germany. We wrote half in Deutch, half in English, on Air Mail paper (another gone forever item) As they were generally PG-13 rated, I put them in sequence in a 3-ring binder, & presented them to my grown daughter as a memoir. She couldn't thank me enough. What are we gonna' do with cyber messages? Lost in space. Sigh.

Ron.

[TomsSVX]

buy 50 print cartridges and get to work!!!

Tom (someone who can appreciate history)

Originally Posted by Ron Mummert

Keep those letters. An uncle of mine passed away last week, and Mom still had letters he'd written home to her from northern Africa and Italy during the darkest days of WWII. Treasures.


Yeah, I too have kept all written correspondence over the decades. Last year I rounded up a year's worth of 1968-69 letters exchanged between me, & my then future wife who was in Germany. We wrote half in Deutch, half in English, on Air Mail paper (another gone forever item) As they were generally PG-13 rated, I put them in sequence in a 3-ring binder, & presented them to my grown daughter as a memoir. She couldn't thank me enough. What are we gonna' do with cyber messages? Lost in space. Sigh.

Ron.

[dcarrb]

Originally Posted by Ron Mummert

What are we gonna' do with cyber messages? Lost in space. Sigh.

This is a legitimate concern. Nobody writes cards and letters anymore, recording media are digital, newspapers are all but gone and magazines can't be far behind. We're not leaving tangible THINGS to the historical record.

dcb

[subi-crosser]

Originally Posted by TheKoP

It's pretty cool that you found that stuff and even cooler that your Mom saved it all. As dcarrb said, hold on to them and cherish them. I always enjoy coming across a box of old photos or letters and going through them.
Sadly, with the domination of electronic communications I really think that experiences like that are close to being extinct. Kind of like the whole digital download thing, I prefer to hold the actual item in my hands, not just know it's saved to a hard drive. Always wondered how many pics of mine will be deleted someday, only to be forgotten forever

Is the 'pic' on your 'Identity' a REAL 'coat of arms'??

we had a thread about them last year.

(since we are talking about history here)

When my father-in-law passed, all his 'stuff' ended up shoved into my closet after the in-laws took what they wanted. There was a dusty wooden box left behind. His granddaughter and I 'discovered' the box and opened it.

the 'treasures' of HIS father were inside! There was a piece of the teakwood that came from Dewey's Flagship, there was a Nazi cap worn by a NCO on leave, complete with his name written inside.
there were Knives, hand made, using deer horns. There was 'keepsakes' from 2 world wars. there was the books he had his classmates sign in the late 1800's!. I am SO glad that the sibs didn't claim that box!

[subi-crosser]

Originally Posted by dcarrb

This is a legitimate concern. Nobody writes cards and letters anymore, recording media are digital, newspapers are all but gone and magazines can't be far behind. We're not leaving tangible THINGS to the historical record.

dcb

If you mark on your old 35mm pics, use a pencil! That way it won't go away in 20 years.

I recomend that you get the old pics out and mark them before you lose your mind or die. Otherwise, they are just pics of things that no-one remembers.

Sweetie and I have been doing that to 20 years worth of 35 mm lately.

[TheKoP]

Originally Posted by subi-crosser

Is the 'pic' on your 'Identity' a REAL 'coat of arms'??

we had a thread about them last year.

Nope, it's the symbol of the city I was born in (Poznan, Poland). Kind of put it up there as a placeholder and decided to let it hang around. Did some searching for my family coat of arms but didn't come up with much. It wasn't a common name in the "Old Country", though there are a few of us still running around.