No, I'm not referring to that.
After thinking about it for a long time, I made the big decision and ordered a digital camera. It arrived one Friday morning in early September 2001 while I was at work, and I eagerly opened the box while my wife was making lunch. I loaded the (included alkaline) batteries, put in the Compact Flash memory card (16 megs), turned it on and pointed across the table ...
That was a Friday, Sept. 7, and I had a football game to cover that night. The new digital camera came along. I had taken my work (film) camera along to take pictures of the game, but I got some shots with the digital before the game, as our team limbered up. But the clouds and sky distracted me, which happens fairly often ...
On Sept. 8,
As you can see, I was trying out the date imprint feature on the camera. It seemed so neat. A few days later, I turned it off again.
On Sunday afternoon, Sept. 9, my wife sat next to me on the couch to "watch" the football game. Naturally, she dozed off. But she woke up a little later and held her "big baby," who just eats this kind of attention up with a fork. She still does...
No pictures on Monday. On Tuesday morning, I was in the office doing my usual Tuesday morning thing--updating sports schedules. I was by myself, focusing on that, when the office manager came in. "You didn't hear???" I saw what had happened a few minutes later when I had to take my wife to work.
The girls basketball games that night were canceled, but the cross country meet that afternoon went ahead--many of the teams had already left. I went there and got some pictures, but I didn't want to go home. Man's inhumanity to man. I couldn't understand why this happened. Of course, I was well aware of what is happening in the world, and I uttered the mastermind's name before anyone else.
So instead of going home, I drove south. I passed some old railroad cars rusting away on a siding...
I went further south, towards my mom's house, and along the way I got an idea. She had been talking about an old white pine where she used to go when she was a girl. It was on a "mountain" near the rural home where she grew up. We had looked for it maybe a month earlier, but we were on the wrong (south) side of the hill. While thinking about it later, I remembered the old nature trail she once spoke of, which is on the southwest side of the mountain, and decided to go there and look around.
And after a while I found it. There was so much downed timber between the tree and the road that she couldn't have gotten in there herself, so I took a number of pictures of the tree and the sandstone outcropping it was sitting on--she used to sit at the base of the tree, legs over the outcropping, and sit and think.
After that, I went to my mom's place, hooked the camera cables to her TV and showed her the pictures. Here is "her" tree--or as much of it as I could get, since the camera's lens isn't very wide-angle ...
The tragedy consumed everything, but life went on, and I was up in Ontonagon that Friday night. I got a picture of some fishermen in the channel leading to Lake Superior...
The game was played in coolish, drizzly weather, which is normal for this time of year. The lighting here is also typical--bad.
The next day, Sept. 14, I took my wife to a quilt show in town. She liked the quilts in this book, but she couldn't make heads or tails out of the instructions ...
They had lots of nice quilts there ...
As you see, the date imprints were gone.
On the next Tuesday, Sept. 18, girls basketball was back in action. I drove about 60 miles to my game and passed a group of turkeys along the road...
Then, on Sept. 19, I was back at the football field--but this time it was for a service in remembrance of the victims of the attacks. The mood was somber. A little bit of anger, but much, much more sadness than anything else.
But life went on. On Sept. 20, a Thursday, it was sunny and crisp, and fall was definitely in the air...
That's the big old maple tree across from our office. It always is colorful in fall.
The leaves were changing under a vivid sky ...
... and the little roads through the pines were lovely ..
By the time the football games were played on Sept. 21, something new had been added to our team's helmets ...
On the morning of Sept. 25, we had our first heavy frost ...
By Sept. 30, here's what the big maple across the street looked like ...
And life went on. But I want to show you one other picture, taken on Oct. 25. It was snowing, and I was trying to get a picture of snowflakes. That didn't work out very well, but I did capture something in this picture that you just don't see today. It might even make you a little bit nostalgic. Take a look ...
Yes, you're right. The Amoco stations are now history ... they're all under the yellow and green BP sign now.
***
I should explain that I was taking pictures at a fairly low resolution at the time--1280 x 960 pixels. I'm at 1600 x 1200 now, and it may be time to go to higher resolutions yet. Maybe that will be my new year's resolution. ;) )
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