RichardQ Loc: Colorado

Public launching of a model sailboat is serious business for the three male generations of this Parisian family, captured in April 1947 by my 1938 model twin-lens Automatic Rolleiflex, 75mm f/3.5 Tessar. I was on furlough from my airbase in occupied Germany.

Sirius_one Loc: S.F. Bay Area

Nice picture of a close-knit family.

Ched49 Loc: Pittsburgh, Pa.

Thanks for posting Richard, that photo was taken 2 years before I was born.

RichardQ Loc: Colorado

Thanks, Sirius. It certainly was a different time. I was just glad to be able to snap it without disturbing their concentration. That's the neat -- or should I say cool -- thing about the twin-lens reflex: it doesn't have to be held up to the face while composing and focusing.

RichardQ Loc: Colorado

Thanks for commenting, CJ. My oldest daughter is a year younger than you.

angler Loc: StHelens England

Excellent shot Richard and thanks for sharing.

Photog8 Loc: Morriston, FL

Nice suits, hats, shoes ...... now I feel guilty going to our model field wearing a ratty old shirt and raggedy shorts. ;-) Great capture of family fun in the year of my birth. The twin lens Rolli was/is a damn fine camera.

RichardQ Loc: Colorado

Thank you, Angler. I imagine there are similar scenes in Britain, although I suspect the sartorial rules have been somewhat relaxed over the years.

RichardQ Loc: Colorado

Thanks for the comments, Photog8. Oddly, many Europeans secretly envy the American approach to relaxed clothing and now sport blue jeans and colorful T-shirts embellished with American logos. I love my 1960 Rollei and mourn my 1938 Rollei which was stolen from my New York apartment back in 1967. It wasn't my first camera loss nor was it the last, so I guess I'm resigned to being a target.

James56 Loc: Nashville, Tennessee

Wow...just look at all the stuff going on. Across the pond, I see statues so this must be in a park setting. I also see many other model sailboats in the water off in the distance. The little boy on the left is leaning to get a good view of something in the water. Of course, everyone is neatly dressed. The boy in the foreground is holding some sort of implement or perhaps part
of the boat. At first I thought it was the elderly mans cane, but it has what appears to
be fins on it so I discounted that thought. The sailboat has real rigging and is flying I
believe the French flag. The spots on the ground below man holding the boat indicate
water has dripped from the boat so it may have been in the water before. He also seems
to be standing on a overflow drain. Perhaps to drain water from the sidewalk areas back
into the pond. At any rate...for me, this was lovely look back in time which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Beercat Loc: Central Coast of California

Richard ........

My father was born in 1926, went through the depression and yes, was in WWII

Here is a link on 16mm film taken by my grandfather between 1928 and 1934. The beach scene is Redondo Beach in the Los Angeles area in early 1929. The young boy (about 2 years old) is my father. The scene with the washer machine is in Oklahoma around 1930. The steamer ship was taken when my grandfather took the family from Los Angeles to France via the Panama Canal, around 1934.

Hope I didn't rain on your parade, just thought you would like to see some home video from the time you were young.

http://dallons.com/family/real2.htm

RichardQ Loc: Colorado

Thank you, Beercat, for a charming glimpse of the good life in California in the early Thirties. I only watched the first 15 minutes or so, but I'll sit through the whole feature when I have a little more time. I was raised in Pennsylvania and only saw the ocean in the movies until the Army Air Force shipped me to Keesler Field and Biloxi, Mississippi in 1945, when I finally saw the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. A few months later I shipped to France on the Navy cruiser Portland, so I got a closeup view for a week of the Atlantic Ocean in late Fall. Judging from your films, Grandpa was in the chips during the Great Depression so the family had it good. They were very lucky.

RichardQ Loc: Colorado

Wow, James, you really got into that shot! I'm glad you enjoyed it so much, but thank goodness you didn't have a "Twilight Zone" experience and get sucked into it. The stick held by the boy is used to retrieve the boat from the pond, which was in one of the parks near a major public building (I don't remember which, but since I didn't have access to any transportation other than the Metro subway, it wasn't in the suburbs). Incidentally, I scanned this from a 2-1/4"x2-1/4" contact print because my negative is still boxed up, otherwise you would have seen more detail.

Beercat Loc: Central Coast of California

My grandfather and grandmother immigrated to the USA in 1921 from Belgium/England. That was after he spent 3 years in the trenches of France during WWI. He didn't know very much English when he arrived. Within 7 years he was living in Los Angeles and owned his own business. When the depression hit he took government contracts and moved to Oklahoma of all places. We think of the thousands that left Oklahoma and moved to California. By 1933 the contract was up so he decided to take the family to Europe to wait out the depression. In 1936 he came back and started up a business again in Hollywood. He was a neon glass blower and of course this was the era of neon lights in Los Angels so he did well. If you remember Frankenstein the movie my grandfather made all the laboratory equipment for the movie props.

Back in the 1940's - 1950's if you had an infection on your skin, ears or throat you went to the doctor and he would use an ultra violet light on you. My grandfather's business made all of them. In 1946 he sold the business to his brothers who later sold it to International Rectifier. Not bad for a young man with no college and lied about his age (16) to enlist in the Belgium Army. He did well for himself but he came through Ellis Island ............ legally :wink:

Belgium 1913 - grandfather is middle row, 3rd from left. The family were glassblowers


Grandfather in 1916 - WWI


Boris Karloft at my grandfathers business - Frankenstein lab

RichardQ Loc: Colorado

That's a colorful family history, Beercat! I believe Hollywood re-used your Grandpa's Frankenstein lab equipment for the comedy "Young Frankenstein". Too bad you couldn't collect royalties! My great-grandpa came from Germany with three brothers about 1840, and all of them served in the Civil War (one was killed). Glass-blowing remains a prized skill in today's technologies. I worked at Bell Labs as a photographer/writer for 15 years during the 1980s and 1990s, and we had several glass-blowers on staff to fabricate special equipment as needed.