a scan a day

summer, 1977

Such a perfect shot of my brother & I on a family vacation. Life was so hard in Hawaii. To be fair, we were on a glass bottomed boat. I was queasy.

party at our house, c. 1960s

This was sometime between ‘66-‘68, those are the new years eves we spent in Houston. That’s my mom in yellow and she is talking to the fantastically dressed & coiffed woman who has her back to us — I imagine her name to be Jacqueline and she lives in a fancy town house. My mom’s friend Ricky is wearing blue & she’s the only person I really know in this pic.

Suits! Men wore suits.

Rifle, CO, mid-sixties

My dad took this while on a business trip. He was there reviewing a joint venture shale-oil recovery project, which he says wasn’t viable at the time. (My dad worked in the oil bidness.)

Midland, TX, c. 1967

This is my favorite picture of myself from when I was a kid.

I was so hot!

Somewhere in England Switzerland in 1975

England was the last leg of a six-week family vacation that had previously included stops in Thailand, Greece, Italy & Switzerland. We traveled together on planes, trains & automobiles and stayed in hostels, B&Bs, & the occasional hotel/motel.

Edit: My dad says this is in Switzerland. He would know since he took it!

ship, c. 1977

Another Maui shot. My dad took it, I put a frame on it. And cleaned up about, oh, 6000 little bits of black scratches/dust that were there after my dad scanned it from a slide.

Me, Flying in the 70s

I got kind of lazy with this blog for a while, for various reasons, but flickr’s new editing tools have made it more appealing again. Stuff doesn’t have to be perfect — I used to painstakingly paint all of the little black scratches out of many of the pics; brutal! — now I can just do a quick edit when I upload. Whee!

It doesn’t have to be perfect, only pleasing.

Anywho. Flying to Singapore? Hong Kong? One of those places, in early 1974. Look at the curtains on the window! It wasn’t even first class.

Note to Mom, c. 1968

I assume this is from one of my brothers. My dad had much better handwriting than this.

Hong Kong, 1985

Visiting my folks at Christmas. I’d just given myself a haircut with a pair of manicure scissors and I think it looks good. It’s pretty hard to f*ck up my hair.

Mom and Great Grandma, c. early 1950s

Nice to see my mom had the same completely awkward teenage body I did.

May 2, 1992

Nearly twenty years ago, on the Venice Beach boardwalk with a National Guardsman on day 4 of the LA riots. I’d been living in CA since February and had already endured earthquakes and floods — I expected the locusts at any moment. We were helping a friend secure their shop on the boardwalk. It was eerily quiet and beautiful that day.

LOOK. AT. THAT. HAIR.

Me and my brothers in Corpus Christi, TX, 1972

We’re so groovy. That’s a Buick Wildcat behind us, I think it was a ‘68. This was right before we moved to Westport CT. We were Texas kids, I was born in Austin and my brothers were born in Houston (ha ha, my hometown’s cooler). Anyway, we said things like “yes ma’am” and “no sir” (unless we wanted to get smacked) back then (do parents still teach their kids stuff like that?) but after we moved to Westport, we  had to stop saying it, in school at least, because teachers thought we were being smart asses; we were just being polite.

Resurrecting this tumblr starting today!

J.C. Davis is my paternal grandpa and this receipt is, I believe, for the car pictured here.