Now that I have completed reviewing the archived box of 8mm videos (see previous posts) I delved further into our upstairs closet and began looking through hundreds of photos and negatives. I had no idea what to expect but hoped for some gems. Today I grabbed a slide roll labeled Building Our Home (Slide carousel 5). I didn’t expect much but was surprised by the memories conjured and needed some detective work to find dates. The slides show the construction of our house at 2881 Blue Spruce Drive in Salt Lake City.
The slide box of 100 slides is labeled, in my Dad’s handwriting, Building our home and Home building and landscaping. Unfortunately he did not put a date on the box. The plastic roller tray contains 100 slides but no notes on the individual slides. I had to figure out the date, as best as I possibly could. Here’s what happened—I examined the individual slides looking for notes that my dad may have made on the slides. No success. As I proceeded through the task of pulling each individual slide I noticed a slight dent in the cardboard. Holding the slide under a light and using a magnifying glass I could make out JUN and a 6 and perhaps a 3 or a 5 pressed into the cardboard (no ink). I rubbed some pencil lead across the date impression and was clearly able to see the date as JUN 65. Here’s an image of that slide—
If you inspect the pencil rubbing (you might need to get your nose real close to the image) you can discern the date JUN 65. This was slide number 1 of 100 and showed our orchard lot before excavation.
Slides 1 to 58 show various stages of construction up to AUG 65-a completed house.
Slides 59 to 100 each had a printed date stamp and showed stages of landscaping.
Slides 59 to 67 are dated MAR 67
Slides 77 to 83 are dated JUN 67
Slides 84 to 100 are dated SEP 67
The slides appear to be in the correct order. The dates would indicate when the film was processed and not the date the photo was taken. But, I can confidently date part of our family history from June 1965 to September 1967.
First, a bit of family history facts relating to this time period JUN 65 to SEP 67. Hopefully my sister Marilyn can let me know if I get any of the dates wrong—
- We moved to Salt Lake City from Great Falls, Montana, during the summer of 1964. A week or so after moving into our rental the Salt Lake Tribune reported that Great Falls had suffered a historical flood. Front page news with photos! A Google search led to a Great Falls Tribune article about the flood. It occurred June 8-9, 1964. My parents were devastated by the news and my father called a close family friend, Bill Floerchinger, and learned their family had lost their house. That’s the only time I remember my father crying. My Dad loaded us in the car and we drove back to Great Falls to see what we could do to help.
- My brother Bob began the 5th grade at Cottonwood Elementary School, Salt Lake City, Sept 1964.
- I began my sophomore year at Olympus High School.
- Marilyn was attending Montana State University in Bozeman.
So everything fits together. Because I remember the flood news and the shock it was to our family I could firmly date our arrival in Salt Lake City at June 64. The house was constructed that summer and we moved into it close to the beginning of the 1965 school year in September. Ninety days to construct a house sounds right.
I learned things about the Floerchinger family when they visited us in Salt Lake City, during the summer of 1968. I remember taking David Floerchinger, who was a couple of years younger then me, around the University of Utah campus in my Cougar XR7. I really thought I was hot stuff —but only when I was driving that car! The link above to Bill Floerchinger is to a well-written obituary that provided a lot of details about their family. To my shock I learned that the youngest boy Roger had died. I remember Roger as a toddler and really liked the little fellow. But a link to his obituary told about a full and productive life that was cut short by medical issues.
I mention all of these details because of the memories evoked when poking around these old videos, photos, negatives, and slides. I have a slide viewer that digitizes, a light board for viewing slides, and since I’m retired I have a bit of time to explore.
I realized that the home my parents built for us was beautiful. Of the 100 slides only a few have photos of family. But still the memories came back. Take a look at this single slide from the reel that particularly shook me as I didn’t remember what a beautiful area we constructed in. The Wasatch Mountains!—
So, I still have several reels of slides left to preview. My plans are to describe briefly the contents of each reel with dates and some general background info. I also plan to provide a link with a few slides showing a sample of the content. Those will be posted on Flickr.*
*Update—I decided not to use Flickr for posting these tray samples. All samples are posted on this site.
