Stories
Personal stories, memories, and reflections from a life well lived.
-
Swaying in the Breeze
On one very hot day, my wife and I followed an abandoned Illinois Central rail bed to an old trestle bridge. What stayed with me most wasn’t the bridge, though. It was a patch of wildflowers dancing in the wind on the other side.
-
I Went for the Train
I have loved trains for just about as long as I can remember, so when I saw that Union Pacific’s Big Boy 4014 was coming to Chester, Illinois, home of Popeye the Sailor Man, that got my attention in a hurry. I was laying in bed that morning, soaking up the cool air from the AC while the summer heat was already gearing up outside, when I saw the posting. I talked my wife into going, and before long that was the plan. We were headed to Chester to see Big Boy for ourselves. It was hot as all get out that day. Not just hot, but that thick Illinois…
-
A Name in Gold
I wasn’t looking for a camera case that day. As a matter of fact, it was about the furthest thing from what I was looking for. I was hunting for a tool for door hinges. Because apparently that’s how these things go. How that turned into me staring at a nearly hundred-year-old camera case with somebody’s name pressed into it in gold, I still couldn’t fully tell you. One of those “you may be interested” things popped up, and mixed in with everything else were a few camera cases. One of them had something on it. That made me stop. At first, I figured it was just another old case…
-
A Story Hidden in the Case
Some old cameras are just neat old cameras. Then every once in a while, one comes along that feels like a little more than that. This one meant something to me before I ever really looked it over. My wife was out of state with her mom that day, and somewhere in the middle of all that, she still took time to think of me and my hobby. She came home with three cameras. That meant a lot to me. Stuff like that stays with a man. She did not have to do it, but she did, and that made them special before I ever opened a case or looked…
-
Part of a Story That Started Long Ago
When the package arrived, it looked like any other box that had come through the mail.Packing peanuts, bubble wrap, the usual packing job. Nothing unusual at first.But once I started unwrapping it, I had a feeling this one might be a little different. The first thing that surprised me was the weight. For something called a pocket camera, it was heavier than I expected. Not heavy in a bad way, just solid – like it had more years behind it than it was letting on. As the last of the bubble wrap came off, I noticed the box. The paper was yellowed with age, and there was handwriting on the…
-
Why I Chose to Shoot in Monochrome That Day
(This post continues a story from a photo I shared earlier.) There’s a song I’ve always liked called In Color by Jamey Johnson. He repeats the same line through most of the song, but it didn’t really hit me until I watched the video all the way through one day. Seeing those old photos in black and white, and then watching the color come in at the end, made the meaning land a little different. “A picture’s worth a thousand words,But you can’t see what those shades of gray keep covered…You should’ve seen it in color.” That line came back to me the day I took the photo of my…
-
Why I Started This Blog
I’ve spent a lot of years messing with simple hobbies. Working on engines, taking pictures, standing around a grill at cookouts. Somewhere along the line I realized those were the things I looked forward to the most. They slow me down a little, keep my hands busy, and give me something worth remembering later. This blog started as a place to keep all those moments together in one spot. I’ve always liked learning by doing. In the garage you figure things out by turning wrenches and making mistakes until something finally works. Photography isn’t much different. You pay attention, try again, and once in a while you get something you…
