Saturday, June 2, 2007

Pictures from the past

We're just back (as of a little after 1 a.m.) from a trip that included the San Diego area, a bit of Mexico, and Las Vegas, where we left our daughter Julie to start a new phase of her life. More on all that later.

In San Diego we stayed with my old roommate Steve Egbert, who has hundreds (possibly thousands) of photos he's now digitized. I include three here. The one at the top shows me (second from the left) and friends being "cool." (I think my 15-year-old son was impressed, or at least surprised, to see this picture.) I don't remember the incident, but it apparently took place in 1975. A more normal picture of roommates at the dinner table accompanies this paragraph. And below is a photo that is almost hard for me to look at since it includes my beloved and now deceased sister Nancy.

Isn't she beautiful? This is years before she was diagnosed with MS. Nancy (Young, later Layton) is on the bottom row of the picture, furthest to the left. I'm in the middle of the row, next to Dave Beer (a roommate) and Joyce, who became his wife. Furthest to the right on the top row is my little sister Lynda, probably about 14 or 15 at the time. Next to her is another of my roommates, then Nancy Lucas, then her brother Jim Lucas (another roommate, now a lawyer in New York City), then Steve Egbert, and then my brothers Daren and Larry. I don't remember who is sitting between me and my sister Nancy. And I'm not sure of several other names in the other photos. I'll work on tracking those down and add that information later.


It's strange looking at these photos now and thinking of what has happened since: marriages, deaths and other losses and challenges, children born and raised.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

BEAUTIFUL!
Now tell the truth. I heard a nasty rumor that you left your eighteen-year-old daughter in Las Vegas. Could this possibly be true?

Anonymous said...

Yes, something like that. But you really need to know the details. I think I'll add another post and see if I can get someone like, say, "older singer" to tell the story.

Garry Wilmore said...

As Bob Dylan put it, the present now will soon be past. And that happens all too quickly, doesn't it?

Regarding your son's surprise at seeing you in those shades: Our daughter Vanessa is 13, which of course means that nothing I do is ever "cool." I plead guilty. A few nights ago I told her I graduated magna cum laude from Uncool School, where I was class valedictorian and editor-in-chief of Uncool Review, and that, while there, I had been voted Most Likely to Be Uncool. Ever since then, I added, I have been an unequivocal, roaring success at being uncool. Finally, I told Vanessa that when SHE had children in their early teens, she herself would have achieved a similar state of uncoolness. I don't think she believes that yet.

Julie Young said...

Is that you in the sunglasses? If so, that is now my ultimate favorite picture of you! I have never seen you in shades before, that's killer! You and me... sunglasses shopping.. it's a date.