Random Excellence: Family of Don Parsons

Distant cousins Ina, Bird, and Bessie. Did they
make these dresses?

Reader Don Parsons sent me these selections from his family pictures, and I asked him if I could share them with everyone. (The captions are his.)

On the "Turkey's Back" post, Don wrote: "My dad passed in late January. I just finished cleaning out his house, along with some help from my angel wife and a cleaning company. There are numerous small file cabinets filled with plastic bags stuffed with old pictures. There are three tomato boxed stuffed with old photos, many of which I had never seen before. I'm slowly going through them now, digitizing the best and the historic. It's fun, time-consuming and painful all at the same time. If I was there, I'd give you a hug and we'd have coffee my photo-brother. Stay strong."

So here we have a few of the treasures from the Parsons family tomato boxes.

Four of my Grandfathers, starting from bottom right moving counterclockwise: Merle Parsons (my grandfather), behind him his dad William, his father Jay, and, seated, John, who lived to be 100 years, 94 days.

My grandmother, Maye Hankins Parsons, riding a horse in the early 1930s.

My dad as a small boy, late 1930s.

Mike again: Years ago when I was a photography student, I used to wish that I could go scour everyone's snapshots to seek out the elusive accidental masterpieces. Given the great mass of family photo material newly ensconced in my barn, the operative expression is: be careful what you wish for!

Thanks, Don. You stay strong too...yesterday my stress finally relented, and I was as torpid as a stranded manatee the whole day long. It was weird: I kept slipping into stage-1 sleep, where you still feel like you're awake but your thoughts start to get disordered and bizarre. I felt a little like I was going mad! Blissfully, Lulu let me sleep last night, and I'm rejuvenated this morning. Onward!

Mike

[How to Put a Picture in a Comment]

Product o' the Week:

Fingertip Pulse Oximeter. The link is from TOP to Amazon. This relates to health, not photography—it replaces one of the advanced functions on the latest Apple Watch. Takes your pulse and measures your blood oxygen. For heart monitoring, checking for COVID (low blood oxygen is an early warning sign) and slow heartbeat. I'm learning to correlate the way I feel with the readings. Works with iOS and Android. Nifty little device, super easy to use, and cheap.

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Michael Cytrynowicz: "Lovely photos Don!—and thank you Mike for posting them. It is such a pleasure to savor the details of how people looked, dressed, posed—the documentary function of photography is unique and irreplaceable. They are alive, their personalities and dignity visible."

Comments

[Dave Millier]

Back in the 1980s, I did an O-level photography course at a local Further Education college in north London. My tutor said one of the problems of being a photographer was deciding what to photograph. To the point where he had given up taking photographs, and instead visited local pharmacies and bought up prints that customers had brought in for D&P and not returned for. He would then search through them looking for gems. It seemed an odd thing to me, but each to their own. He did show us one film, where someone had carefully photographed a potted plant from different angles sitting on their lawn.

[Daniel]

Go through the old photos in the tomato boxes, bags, drawers and in the attic. They are still there and easily viewed.
In 30 years(and even now) when we are gone and the relatives and kids start clearing out our stuff for the big Rummage Sale - will they even look at the digital image files? Will they even be able to open the Photo CD's and BluRay discs some of them are stored on?

We are losing our history. A shoe box full of CD's won't even be looked at by most who find them, even if close family. At best they will become 'clay pigeons' for skeet and BB Bun practice.

[Paul in AZ]

My sister sent me a CD with a large collection of old photos. Poor quality scans aside, not one had any identifying information. That makes going through them an exercise in frustrating futility.

I too am guilty of not making notes on the backs of old photos. Note to self: do the some day.

At the other extreme a friend is a compulsive photographer with several terabytes of carefully annotated photos ~both recent digital and scans of old prints. I have to think a sheer size of a collection that large will be a deterrent to anyone willing to sit down to browse tens of thousands of snapshots.

Aaaah. The travails of photo collections.

[Andy Wilkes]

I too inherited a suitcase-full of photographs from my, and my wife's sides of the family. As time has gone by, I (at age 61) no longer have an 'older generation' to tell me who many the people on the photos are, except that my Aunt, with an interest in genealogy, had put names on a few. Perhaps if - as Daniel has written- we are losing our history because it's in digital form, it could be protected by a body of the size and expertise (maybe in AI) of Google who could bring some order to a vast collection of old and anonymous photos, and keep them viewable. Desirable or scary?
Having written the above, I also realise that the scanned 'shoebox' of old prints and negatives, when I put them on Smugmug were, as far as I can tell, never looked at by the wider family, so my role as conservator was quite futile.

[Richard Parkin]

In the photo of Don’s grandmother on a horse the sky through the trees and the highlight down the horse’s leg mimic the stance of the rider. I began to think it was some sort of artefact but I think it’s just coincidental or my imagination since no one else has remarked on it.