10 minute read
Never leave your ani
My Opinion: Old photos are priceless
I’m taking welding classes and haven’t burned down the school (yet)
In this office we have an old file cabinet with four drawers packed with treasure.
No, there’s no money or jewels here, at least not the kind that you can spend or wear on your finger or around your neck or dangle from your earlobes, no, the goodies of which I speak are old photographs taken long before the “Digital Age” arrived.
Most are black and white. They were taken with ancient instruments called film cameras.
As some of you old folks recall, before digital cameras all pictures were taken with a device that held film and when you had shot your roll, you took the film to a drugstore and left it and had it developed into pictures and went back later and picked the pictures up. And no one, I mean no one, ever waited to get home to open the envelope up to see how they turned out, as that was done in the car in the drugstore parking lot where all eyes fell upon the fresh photos and the joy, sadness, excitement, or whatever they depicted was revealed for the first time.
The result of having all those pictures in your house, office, etc. was they were often put into a thing called an album or scrapbook or in our case a file cabinet for viewing as you had a refreshment and leafed through the pages or pictures you could actually hold in your hand.
However, in the case of a newspaper like this one that was operated by a succession of pack rats that didn’t like to throw pictures away (especially Dwight Frady) , the photos piled up faster than they could be run in print and so ended up being crammed in the file cabinet.
I love looking at those pictures. In some cases they are of people that have had their moment of glory and faded from the scene. In other cases they are of folks obscure and unknown to anyone but the photographer and themselves.
One thing I especially like about looking through our old photos is the change in hair and clothing styles over the years. In the pictures from the 1940s and 1950s, most of the people are nicely dressed in what would be called a conservative manner. The waistband of pants is up where it belongs not halfway to the knees. Can I get a witness? The men always wore
Alan Hodge
Banner-News Editor a hat and not a baseball hat with the logo of chewing tobaccy brand or some such on the front, but a nice fedora hat. The women can be seen wearing cotton dresses or skirts and they all look neat and clean.
Then came the 1970s and the attire seen on folks included such hilarities as polyester leisure suits, white belts, bell bottom britches, tube tops, and shoes (men included) with ‘stacked’ heels and soles.
Our photos also trace hairstyles. The older pics show guys with hair in place via the Lucky Tiger or Brylcreem method, and the women with their coiffures often aided by a Toni home permanent. My mom used the Toni concoction and the aroma was enough to give you a buzz if you got too close when it was being blended up.
Once again I shall pick on the 1970s as a time of hairstyle mayhem (mine was down to the shoulders). Looking at the photos from that era, I see the men with hair blow-dried into a devil may care, whipped crème configuration. As for the girls, the 1970s was the heyday of Big Hair. Achieving Big Hair needed a blow drier, a teasing brush, lots of vigorous stroking of the mane, and gallons of hairspray to hold the cotton candy-like mass in place. At night this atomic bomb mushroom cloud-like bouffant was often contained and preserved by being wrapped in toilet paper in a manner not unlike the way ancient Egyptians prepared folks like Tutankhamun for eternal rest. Mom wore a pair of drawers (clean) on her head.
I know lots of you still have some old photo albums gathering dust. Why don’t you take them out, or even better, find some kids to show them to and let them see what life was like in the Age of Kodak.
By Tony Marciano
One Father’s Day my wife got me a Flux Welder machine. It is an entry level machine for welding. As hard as I tried, I don’t weld; I burn holes into metal.
A friend tried to teach me to use a Mig welder. This is a step up from a Flux Welder. Again, my gift of burning holes in the metal showed up well.
Needing an instructor, I registered for welding classes at Central Piedmont Community College.
My instructor started us with oxygen/acetylene welding which uses an open flame. It’s a miracle I haven’t burned down the Harper Campus of CPCC each time I lit the flame. I learned to identify the liquid bubble and how to use it to weld two pieces of metal. I’m getting better each week.
Besides signing up for a welding class, I volunteer at a Classic Car Restoration shop. The owner, Billy, taught me to use a Mig welder. I took the skills I learned at CPCC with an oxygen/acetylene torch and began to apply it to an electric Mig welder. I was proud of the first four lines of weld I laid on the piece of metal.
Billy turned the metal over to show me if the weld was effective. I could see a blue circle where I had welded and felt good about myself. Billy wanted more weld on side two of the metal. We increased voltage and adjusted
Letter to the Editor...
Ephesians 4:26 KJV - Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down on your wrath.
It was Tuesday, May 24, 2020, I began my morning with my Bible Scripture Devotional! Next, I turned on the television and started watching “CBS This Morning”. I would witness Gayle King, broadcast journalist, become emotional on air Tuesday morning discussing “two racially charged incidents involving black men that transpired on Monday”.
Quoting from Ms. King, as she speaks to viewers “I am speechless. I am really, really speechless about what we’re seeing on television this morning. It feels to me like open season … and that sometimes it’s not a safe place to be in this country for black men.”
Quoting from an added news source, it was reported that “Ms. King was responding to ‘CBS This Morning’s’ report on the disturbing case involving a white woman in Central Park who was recorded on cell phone video by a black man as she calls in a false accusation to 911 that the man is threatening her life. The video has stirred widespread outrage as it evokes the long history of false accusations against black men that have led to death, imprisonment and other grave consequences for the wrongly accused.”
Let me go further and note. earlier in the broadcast, it shows “CBS This Morning” reporting “on a case unfolding in Minneapolis in which a black man died after being arrested on suspicion of forgery. A video of part of the incident shows the suspect being held down on the street by a police officer who had his knee pressing down on the man’s neck. The man can be heard on the video clip telling police “I can’t breathe” and pleading for relief. In the video captured by a passerby, other bystanders can be heard urging the police to ease up on the man’s neck.” This man died shortly after arriving at the hospital,
Whereas Ms. King was moved to tears and audibly expressed sorrow, I was moved to ANGER, personified! In the midst of my being brought back to remember the Rosewood Massacre (1923); Emmett Till’s murder (1955); Central Park Five (1989); Susan Smith,/falsely accusing black men (1995); Trayvon Martin’s death (2012). Ahmaud Arbery’s death (2020) and, perhaps, so much more up to where we are at this time; I had to ask…HOW LONG, LORD! HOW LONG!
In closing, as I was having my car serviced on this past Wednesday, May 26 at a local dealership, I ran across an article titled “This Is Our World Transformed by Human Action, How Will You Respond?” in the magazine titled “Real Leaders Inspire the Future”. I quote:
“We are one human race living on one planet. We aspire for the same things: food, water, good health, and, most of all dignity and loving relationships We yearn for opportunity, voice, and resources to develop our potential. We want to raise our children in a safe and healthy environment. We want to experience the earth’s beauty and natural bounty.” By way of prayer, I thank God for restoration! the speed of the wire but there was no change. Again we increased voltage and began to see a little pile of weld on the other side. More voltage produced more steel on the other side. One final adjustment of the voltage and wire speed and there was equal steel on both sides of the piece of flat metal. It was so different than the first Mig weld I applied where the steel was on side one of the metal but not on side two.
Welding on side one but not on side two does not securely weld two pieces of steel. As Billy explained to me how to adjust voltage and wire speed, it reminded me how I used to build wooden model airplanes. I was notorious for not putting enough glue between two pieces of wood and thought glue, spread across the joint, would secure the two pieces of wood together. It didn’t work. The same was true for welding steel. I was melting two pieces of metal, whether it was with a torch or an electric arc, I had to identify the liquid bubble. Once I created that, I would maneuver it across the metal with the correct amount of heat to join two pieces of metal through their core. If done properly, I would create a secure weld.
I think the same can be true a b o u t Christ i a n i t y . It’s too easy to Tony Marciano apply a thin veneer of faith to the surface of our lives similar to a weld being on the surface without it penetrating to our very core. Just as the weld has to go through both sides of the metal to secure the pieces together, I think Christianity has to go past the surface of our head and penetrate every cell in our being until it comes out our fingertips. When that happens, it changes us from the inside out. It’s real. It’s genuine. It’s our faith. Rather than believe so we can belong to a group, we believe because it’s in our very being.
I’m having a blast learning welding from two very patient leaders. I’m also enjoying watching God move deeper and deeper into my person.
I’ll be back in two weeks. Until then, live well my friend.
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