This was taken sometime in the early ’90s at the quarry on McNeil Road in Round Rock. I spent a lot of time out there when I was at UT taking photo classes. Some of my favorite images came from those excursions.
I took this one on the same day.
It’s funny. I couldn’t find an old photo since some rearranging has made the Closet of Old Photos and Other Unfinished Projects more difficult to reach, but then sitting back at the desk, I saw this one framed and waiting right where it’s always been. I guess I just haven’t noticed it in a while.
It was taken in March of ’95 somewhere in northern Arizona. That’s me in the middle. The woman on the right is my wife, but not then. We were still just friends. The woman on the left is L. She introduced us, but I haven’t seen her in years. J took the picture.
That trip took us to New Mexico, the Grand Canyon, Vegas and finally to LA where I fell in love as the sun fell into the sea.
This sunrise was taken from the summit of Mt. Monadnock, New Hampshire during the summer of 1988, just before we moved to Texas.
It was the last thing I did as a Boy Scout and it was probably the coolest. We started hiking to the summit around 3am and arrived just before dawn. All around we could see the tops of other mountains poking out of a sea of clouds.
It’s the best sunrise I’ve ever seen.
I took this earlier this year as a summer storm rolled in.
When I was a kid, the story of the lost dutchman who disappeared while searching for a legendary gold mine on Arizona’s Superstition Mountain fascinated me. I remember looking at those mountains whenever we visited my grandparents in Phoenix and imagining all the stories that they must hold.
I like this photograph, taken with my old 110 in 1982, because faded with time and dirt, it reminds me of the myths of the old west and the magic they still hold for me.
I’d love to follow that old dirt road leading along the telephone poles up onto that mountain and search for that old mine myself even though I know it would be as futile as searching for the Loch Ness Monster or the Seven Cities of Gold. Hopefully, though, they wouldn’t some day spin yarns about the lost Austinite’s gold mine.
I took this at McKinney Roughs, an LCRA park near Bastrop, in June of 2003. My dad and I often go hiking during the early part of the summer when I’m off from teaching and the heat is still bearable. We explore the parks and trails that aren’t too far from Austin and usually get home by noon.
And, yes, I know it’s Saturday now, and yet it’s still Old Photo Friday.
My wife hails from southeast Texas where alligators are fairly common. I took this about six years ago at the Louisiana Tourist Bureau which is two miles from her parents’ house.
I’ve only seen a few alligators down there, but when I play golf I always make sure I have my sand wedge handy. It is, after all, the best fighting iron.
In the mid-nineties we lived in a duplex in south Austin. It was a good student/slacker home that was in sorry shape, but still, not without its charms.
One complaint was the above window, which sat high in the living room, level with the carport roof. It faced west and in the summertime the sun blazed through it as accurately as if the house had been built by Mayan astronomer-priests. Everyday during that first summer we were there (’95) the temperature in the living room was unbearable and you had to wear sunglasses if you faced that way.
Fortunately, my wife had the brilliant idea of painting it. So we trooped up to the carport roof with our roommate, some paints, and no idea of what to do.
The space scene you see here was the end result and over the following summers, it cut our electrical bill dramatically. When we moved out, we had to remove it – no star lasts forever – and so off it went, absorbed into the gravity well of memory, with the help of some turpentine and sandpaper.
We lived in The Philippines from 1979-1982. I joined the Boy Scouts in ’82 and the first big trip I went on was a reenactment of the Bataan Death March. The real march occured in 1942 when Japanese soldiers marched 10,000 American and Philippino prisoners of war to their deaths in one of the uglier events of the war.
We spent most of spring break with American scouts from all over the Far East Council as well as scouts from The Philippines and other Asian nations. We camped on the beach each night and each morning we were bused to where we had left off the previous day. The picture above is of a carabao, a kind of Philippine water buffalo, along with a few of the guys from the troop taking a break.
We saw a lot of the Phillipine countryside and one day walked through a village where heavily armed men – I’m talking ammo belts around their shoulders like Mexican revolutionaries – stood cradling their machine guns and smoking cigarettes while we hiked past. Our scoutmaster told us to just keep walking and “don’t stare.”
It was one of those experiences that has stayed with me, that made history come alive and through sore feet and tired legs, we all got a small taste of what those brave soldiers endured during World War II.
Update: I have now correctly spelled carabao. Thanks to Heather for reminding me of the difference in spelling between caribou and carabao. It would be odd to actually see caribou in The Philippines. But who knows, there is at least one tropical island that has polar bears.
During the summer of 1979 we moved from Washington, DC to Subic Bay in The Philippines. Along the way we stopped in Austin to visit my aunt. She lived in a duplex on Arroyo Seco and her dog shared the backyard with her neighbor’s golden retreiver, Jeremy.
The first morning we were there, we heard my brother screaming, “He’s eating me! He’s eating me!”
We went out to find that Jeremy was introducing himself by licking my brother who was pinned up against the house. I took this picture of my sister after we learned that Jeremy didn’t actually eat people and was in fact very friendly, but the look on her face suggests that maybe we weren’t so sure.