As I was going through my Mom’s album of family photos from the 70s and 80s, I came across an envelope tucked between the pages. I was delighted to find that it contained a collection of medium format slides that seemed mostly pretty well-preserved. I don’t have the equipment required to scan slides this large, so I packaged them up and sent them off to ScanCafe—ironically, all the way back to Illinois, where these slides sat for decades before I carted them off to California—to be digitized.

I was delighted with the resulting images. The slides contained photos of my father, his mother, father, paternal grandparents, and three of his brothers; his four other brothers hadn’t been born yet. Some of the pictures were formal portraits, which allowed me to date them to 1947: they conveniently included a calendar and a clock as part of the setting. Others featured Dad and his brothers boxing in a basement and what Dad thinks might be one of his uncles’ cars outside the laundry his grandparents ran.

I took home a couple additional albums when we returned from our Christmas visit to Elk Grove Village this year. I don’t expect to find anything as surprising as these pictures inside them, but anything’s possible: if I’ve learned one lesson over the last year, it’s that my mother loved to stash things in unexpected places.

Gallery: Wong Family 1947

Even though I have a long backlog of our own photos to go through, I’ve also been working on scanning old family photo albums from both the Flack and Wong sides of the family. The most recent batch covers my family from Christmas 1976 to Spring 1982.

I remember these pictures living in a large, red, leather-bound album filled with heavy, black pages. Each photo was individually mounted with black corners, allowing complete freedom over their placement. At some point in the last several decades, my mother moved them to a more modern album with fixed plastic sleeves. That change, combined with the fact that some of the photos are nearly 50 years old—old enough that my brother has no recollection them being taken—made the process a little surreal, as though my distant memories had been transported to a slightly different context from the one I remember. They’re at once familiar and different from my memories. I found it surprising how much a simple change in presentation was able to affect the feelings engendered by these images.

The photos themselves were a blast to look through. They cover a range of birthdays, holidays, and family gatherings from the time I was four through the year I turned ten. A lot changed over that interval: we moved from Wheaton to Elk Grove Village; fashion transitioned from definitively 70s to stereotypically 80s; and new cousins and spouses came on the scene. Also, I was cuter than I remember being.

I particularly enjoyed seeing from pictures from the Chicago blizzard of 1979, which in my memory was tremendously exciting and fun (I’m quite certain my parents felt otherwise). That year made all the winters that followed feel just a bit underwhelming.

Because these scans were taken from decades-old prints, their quality straight off the scanner was highly variable. Some photos showed dramatic color shifts, and others had faded significantly, reducing the richness and depth of the colors. I’ve done my best to freshen them up by improving contrast and saturation and attempting to eliminate unnatural color casts. But I’m a novice, and the results were not always perfect. I suspect I will revisit some of my editing choices over the years to come.

Gallery: Christmas 1976 – Spring 1982

Completing the journey through the box we found in my parents’ basement—see the original post here—we found two more sets of photos: one small box of slides from a business (I think) trip to San Francisco around 1964 and a larger set of slides from a visit to Wisconsin in 1970.

The slides from San Francisco were actually duplicates, perhaps the highlights from a larger collection that has been lost to time. The box they were stored in was unlabeled, so it was a surprise to see the familiar California state flag when I scanned them. The set consists of only 14 photos, but contains images of a few landmarks I was able to identify, including the Japanese Tea Garden and the Sutro Baths, which were still operating at the time (they apparently burned down under suspicious circumstances in 1966, just a couple years later).

The other set consists of pictures that we think were taken in Adams, Wisconsin, where my great-grandmother lived. It includes a number of more artistic photos—perhaps my grandfather or grandmother had a flair for the dramatic—as well as some family snapshots. The snapshots feature three people: an older woman who we suspect is Mary Moravec (née Primus), my great-grandmother; a middle-aged man, who may very well be a relation of some kind; and a toddler. Given the timeframe in which these photos were taken, it’s distinctly possible the toddler is still alive: he’s probably no more than five or six years older than me. If you’re out there and you somehow come across this, let me know!

This is the last of the photos from the box. I was initially disappointed there were so few, but I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to see pictures of my grandparents, mother, and uncle from ten years or more before I was born. Perhaps more will turn up at some point in the future.

Galleries: Moravec San Francisco 1964, Moravec Wisconsin 1970

The box that contained the slides in the last post also contained reels of 8 mm film that appeared to hold some home movies from around the same period as the slides: roughly 1961, plus or minus a year or two. I shipped them off to be digitized by the company that scanned the photos, and you can watch them here.

The reels contained three distinct movies. The first captured scenes from the Halloween party discussed in the last post; I don’t think there’s much more to say about it than I already have. The second shows my Uncle Jimmy and my grandfather on a summer fishing and boating trip, presumably somewhere in Wisconsin. And the third shows Uncle Jimmy swimming with a friend at a lake; I’m guessing this was in Wisconsin as well, perhaps as part of the same trip, but I have no way to know for sure. Unfortunately, it appears that none of the movies feature my mother, which was a bit of a disappointment. Nevertheless, I’m happy to have seen these and saved them, as it’s probably been 60 years or so since they were last watched.

Gallery: Moravec Movies ca. 1961

We found a relic in my parents’ basement this summer: a box labeled “Moravec Slides” that had been there, probably untouched, for 45 years. I thought it might be completely filled with old photographs, but unfortunately — or fortunately, depending on your perspective – much of the space was taken up by a slide projector, slide carriers, and various slide-related paraphernalia. There were some actual slides, however, as well as some 8 mm movie film.

Some of the slides were developed from medium format film and were thus beyond my ability to scan at home, so I sent them off to be digitized professionally. The galleries linked here contain the results.

The first, I’ve labeled Moravec 1960-1961. It’s important to note that I really have no idea when these pictures were actually taken and what the circumstances behind them were (leaving aside the two shots of a Christmas tree, which seemed pretty obvious, though the year is a mystery). With that in mind, the dates on the images are just a guess on my part. Judging from changes in my mom’s hairstyle, it seems pretty clear that they were spread over the space of at least a year or two, but beyond that I can’t say how they relate to one another in time. There are a few shots of Mom at home, including some in which she was apparently getting ready for a high school dance, as well as some shots of the family on vacation somewhere, most likely at a resort on a lake somewhere in Wisconsin or Illinois. It was especially nice to find some pictures of my grandfather, who appears in very few photos in the family albums I’ve seen over the years.

The other batch was labeled Halloween 1961, and, sure enough, it contains a collection of photos from a costume party my grandparents attended 53 years ago. I’m not sure where the party was held — though I’m pretty sure it wasn’t at their house — but it’s an interesting time capsule of life in the early 1960s. The costumes are definitely a product of their time, and a few of them absolutely would not pass muster today.

Galleries: Moravec 1960-1961, Moravec Halloween 1961