Damn! It's Been Forty Years? Already?

Going through old negatives and contact sheets is fun but finding an envelope of vintage prints is exciting! What made me keep this one? Why did I print it in the first place? Why did Stephanie photograph me that day sitting in front of my mother's apartment?

Lately it seems like I'm really living in a link between two eras, even three, a never never land neither the past that was or the present that is or the futures that might be. Lately I've found replies on my blog and received emails because of it from people that I know and correspond with, but I've also gotten a few from people I haven't seem or heard from in 35 years or more, people I didn't think would even remember me, yet they took the time to write.

One woman who lives in Orlando was actually trying to find out the price of silver. For real. Thank you Google! She was curious and stumbled across this blog, explored it a bit, and ran across some photos of people she knew back when she was 15 and living in Miami, way back in 1970. She sent me an email. I remembered her. She has four grown sons, a couple of grandchildren, and a 17 year old daughter interested in photography. She's about to remarry, this time to a newspaper photographer. Today we spoke on the phone for half an hour, and I promised to look for some photos that had her in them, from way back then! Thanks, Deb!

And today's picture? It was 1966 and my mother had convinced Stephanie and me to move to Miami from Massachusettes. We stayed at her place for a few weeks until we rented an apartment at 76th St. and North Miami Avenue, right across from Mae and Helen's Deli, where big thick heaped high roast beef sandwiches were 69 cents and a 12 ounce bottle of ice cold pop was a dime. Steph took this shot in front of my mom's place on Normandy Isle. That was her landlord sitting in the background. From the angle I think it was taken with the Minolta Autocord. I loved that corduroy jacket and wore it 'til it was so thread bare that new leather elbow patches wouldn't help.

Photo copyright Stephanie Brundage 1966