Blessings on those Kodak moments
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
My Great-Grandpa Ehrhardt didn't believe in having photographs taken. When Scripture said not to "make unto you any graven images," he took that quite literally to mean black-and-white Kodak pictures. He'd have nothing to do with picture-taking. We do have pictures of his wife, in her later years, and we have pictures of their children as adults but there are no snap-shots of youngsters playing around the farm or of relatives lined up for Sunday dinner.
The lack of a picture means that we have only hearsay. You could probably look at his sons and guess the description of the man-who-had-no-pictures-taken, but we'll never know for sure. When Aunt Naomi was visiting her relatives in California one time as a young girl, the subject of the missing grandfather came up. An older relative called to her and said, "Come look at this man walking by the house. He looks just like your grandfather did!" And what Aunt Naomi saw was a man with a long white beard.
Blessings on the man who invented cameras and all the recording devices that have become so familiar to us today. Blessings on the family members who had their pictures taken so we can see their faces. There's something so magical about seeing the family resemblance.
The Brunner family is about to have their annual family reunion and on the front cover of the invitation is a picture of G.H. Brunner, his wife, and their first four children. It's amazing to see — one of the little girls in the photograph, looking at us with fierce brown eyes looks just like a little girl who runs the streets of Ramona today. "It's Kaitlin," I say, "Kaitlin Brunner, five years old, with the genetic coding and look of her ancestors."
I give thanks for that magical life cycle that produces a similar-looking child in the family chain 100 years apart and the similar magic that records both events. While we're giving thanks for the invention of the camera, we also should give appreciation for the dedicated souls who kept track of the pictures, lovingly arranged the album pages, and carefully wrote the names of the people involved.
My aunt Naomi's albums are in great shape. We were hunting for some fragments of history the other day and when we saw her album, we wanted to scan all the pictures on its pages. Scanning, now that's a phenomena of this era where you can effortlessly copy a picture, send a photo over the phone line by e-mail, and then print off a perfect reproduction. If you had told my great-grandfather, he would have shook his head in disbelief. "Ach, nuyah." The graven images were becoming more insidious.
The Ramona women were having coffee at the Ramona Café, talking about family memorabilia and acknowledging that their family memories are waiting for some day when there is extra time and the extra will to organize them. "You just get caught looking at them and saying, 'oh how cute' and by the time you are through looking, they all go back into the box — there's no time to put them in a book," said one.
Another lady admitted that most of her family photographs were still in the "box stage," too. Everyone laughed. "We should at least write the names on the pictures," someone added. Heads nodded around the table. The collective conscious in them pondered their future, imagining not knowing a familiar face, not remembering what occasion, not recalling a particular place where a picture was taken. There was a silence as they contemplated not being here to name and explain their pictures.
"A picture is worth a thousand words," they say. I know I wish we had just one picture of my great-grandpa. But what of the pictures with no words attached, no names? Antique shops are littered with unidentified old photographs, sold as decorative items and left for strangers to claim. Meanwhile, the family, the community is deprived of knowing, of seeing that magical chain of life.
It's another day in the country and I wonder how many women went home that day, after having their Monday morning coffee and started work on their photo albums?
