I want some coffee!

More family stories. This one is a little... odd. After finishing active duty in the Marine Corps I found a job at Standard Stations, Inc. in Stockton, California. I was hired on the strength of having worked for a Shell station for a couple years while I was in high school. What I didn't understand when I was hired was that I was going to attend the training school at the station in Stockton, but then I would be assigned to a different station somewhere within  perhaps a 75 mile radius- I thought it would be somewhere around Stockton. Oops! When I completed the 7-10 day instruction I was assigned to a station in Cordelia Junction, California just a few miles beyond Fairfield, California- according to Google Maps the station was about 58 miles from Stockton (blue line which passes thru the San Joaquin River delta). I rented a room from a co-worker but the reality was I wanted to spend time with my friends in Stockton. So, except for perhaps one or two nights, I commuted 116 miles r...

I kept using film cameras for quite awhile after the word 'digital' became attached to cameras. It wasn't that I thought digital imaging was a fad and would go away. On the contrary it seemed like the natural evolution from film. My issue was that I (correctly!) guessed there would be rapid changes in the products and that newer-better-faster would run over the top of tried-and-true. What changed my cautious deliberation was the evening I was at a Country-Western dance event in about 1999. I saw a friend snapping pictures as fast as he could frame a shot. Looked like there was not much thought about composition. 'Getting anything good, John?' John Burton said something to the effect 'I'll weed thru them in awhile- I can just delete the bad ones and keep taking more pictures!' Say what?! He gave me the cheap tour of about 20 seconds. What I remember was a silver, boxy digital camera with a fixed (i.e. non-interchangeable) auto-focus lens (maybe fixed focu...

At some point my parents bought an Exakta 35mm camera for my mother. That went so well they decided maybe I would like to have a newer camera. My mother had an Exakta but they bought an Exa for me- made in the same factory and I'm not familiar with the exact differences between the 2 cameras except that the Exakta supported an interchangeable lens system while ( iirc! ) the Exa had a fixed single lens. My Exa probably looked just like this- a fixed lens reflex camera that shot 35mm film   The Exa was a reflex. And that was a little like moving back to my grandfather's old Brownie box camera I'd used for awhile: you looked down at the top of the camera to see the reflected image of what was in front of the lens. Unlike my Argus C3, however, the Exa showed the image as it was about to be recorded since it had passed thru the camera lens. If the image was out of focus, that's what you saw on the frosted glass screen so you could refocus. My mother's Exakta was similar ...

My family has always had an interest in photography. My paternal gf transitioned from still photography with a Kodak Brownie to a Keystone 8mm movie camera. My father never had interest in still photos but instead preferred an 8mm home movie camera eventually settling on I think (?) a Revere which could record audio. My mother was only interested in still photography. And I felt so uncomfortable being in front of a home movie camera I decided at a *very* young age that I only wanted to be involved with still photography ("don't look at the camera; now do something." Ugh! ). Sometime after WW-II (1950 maybe? We were living on E Taylor at the time) my mother bought a used Argus C3 35mm camera for $25 from B&H Camera in New York City via mail order (B&H Camera is still around and I'm still a customer). I thought it was downright ugly and simultaneously the greatest thing I'd seen since my 3-speed "English bicycle" (a Schwinn with skinny tires). So I...

I have to make a confession. I had a very unsettling moment when I started this post. Well, ok... make that about half an hour.  I grudgingly opened Google Maps to refresh my memory about locations and street names around Reno where I lived from mid-1942 till Feb 1953. Yikes! Either my memory has become a leaky bucket or they have changed the name of several major streets in Reno. Worse, Reno has been inverted so North is South and South is North- but not everywhere: just places I frequented as a child! Well damn- my 'reality' has Reno displayed on an easily rotatable map that I can position to suit the occasion.  That has been a splash of cold water in the face. Oops! I guess this is part of getting old ( and I don't like it! ). Actually it has to do with undisciplined mental imaging as a child not mixing well with adult discipline of map orientation, I know clearly that Carson City is South of Reno (and that's still true in my mental map). And I had a clear im...

My parents would roll their eyes at what I think were the good ol' days in Lockeford, California. But to my mind it was when I had just gotten my first car (a 1941 Chevrolet) and I could manage to drive to Lockeford on my own. We lived nearby in Stockton- that's about 14 miles SSW of Lockeford. The Ross & Deveggio residences were in the west side of town and it was a very easy driving through farm land. Close enough that, after Standard Stations, Inc in Cordelia Junction and commuting about 110 mi round-trip every day, I took a job at a then brand-new Chevron Station in Lockeford until I was ready to leave in the fall to start college in Los Angeles. But time has marched on and that brand new Chevron Station is now a privately owned automotive repair shop... This was once a brand new Chevron Station in the center of Lockeford ca. 1957. Though he no longer owned it, right next door was a grocery store that was once named Ross Grocery- owned by my maternal grandparents Lewis ...

When I was growing up, my maternal grandparents, the Rosses, lived in Lockeford, California. Lockeford is dribbled along California Highway 88 which is coincidentally the town's Main Street. Lots of traffic but more importantly (as I recall it) lots of truck traffic! Which was a challenge if my grandmother Mae Violet Ross was to receive a visit from her sister Ann. Ann was married to Louie Deveggio and their house was almost directly across the street. So it took a little care to make sure you weren't going to get run over when a visit was in order. Formerly the Ross residence in Lockeford. The only thing missing is the sign post out front that said "PHONE" and pointed to the phone booth on the porch. The Ross house above is little changed from my recollection in the 1950s. Even the picket fence is still there. At some point the Ross's sold the house to their daughter Catherine and her husband Ladoit Tucker. Ladoit repainted the house and I contributed a tiny bi...