Today’s realization from The Great Photo Digitization Project of 2025 (inspired by the tragic California wildfires) is that I was an extremely well-dressed child. (My own kids were nowhere near as well-dressed as my sister and I were.)
And this was before the era of “fast fashion,” so my mother made many of our dresses and outfits.
We always had matching accessories too. Note the headband in this shot:
With my baby cousin Steven and Aunt Betsy, 1971
In my old photo albums, one accessory is featured more than all the others and that is color-coordinated kneesocks. I remember having a drawer full of them. Thinking back, they were pretty cool because they came in so many different colors and were way more comfortable than tights.
Knee socks and a matching purse for the first day of first gradeNovember 1972Note the “milk box” near the front door (I am old)Heading off to Town Day 1973
Facilitated by my mother and a Marshall’s opening up in my town in the late 70s (“Brand Names for Less”), I ended up being a major clothes horse right through high school. I embraced the Reagan era “preppy look” and had dozens of sweaters in every color of the rainbow. My closet looked like a Benetton store.
My high school preppy look
It wasn’t until I tried to fit all my clothes into a tiny freshman dorm closet that I realized how ridiculously many I had.
I’m continuing to selectively digitize my old photos and I bring you a comparison of the two methods: iPhone photo vs PhotoScan by Google.
iPhone photo of an old print PhotoScan by Google of the same pictureiPhone photo PhotoScan by Google
Let me know if you have thoughts about which method is better quality, because it’s too much work to do both.
Because most of these photos are stuck in the old adhesive style photo albums, I’m having to pry them out if I want to see what (if anything) is written on the back. Then I’m stuck with a loose photo that I’ve been taping back into place with painter’s tape.
The photos above were taken on my “First Communion” day in April 1973. Despite my previously described love of veils, I remember I did not like that one. It was attached to a very uncomfortable headband that squeezed my head painfully. Perhaps this was a sign of the rocky road ahead for me and the Catholic Church.
Other than the painful headband, I remember getting some religious-themed presents (a Bible locket, an angel) and being made to feel quite special with a family party after the main event at the church.
I think we look like a real mid-century Italian-American family in these photos, but my dad is no Tony Soprano. He loved his mother (my long-widowed “Grammy”) dearly and she worshipped him. He was far and away her favorite child. As the only boy in an Italian family, he was extra special and he took great care of her until her death in 1992, just a month short of her 90th birthday.
Born in the summer of 1965, I am part of the oldest GenX cohort (1965-80) and I’m discovering through my photo digitizing project, that I’m quite well documented.
My parents took a lot of pictures. Many of them were bad (“delete” was not an option back then) but there’s at least a few photos from every single year of my life through college graduation. (Whereas, we probably have five pictures in all of my father as a kid.)
It looks like the summer of 1974 was the peak of my gymnastics prowess. I remember that I worked very hard and mastered a “front walkover” as a kid and here’s the proof:
This appears to be a class performance
I don’t think I ever progressed to handsprings (too hard). And I certainly never did a walkover on a balance beam (too scary).
Two years prior, in 1972, a tiny Soviet gymnast named Olga Korbut did a backflip off the uneven bars in the Munich Summer Olympics, won three gold medals, and inspired a lot of little American girls to try some new tricks. I was one of them.
And so, for my 60th birthday this summer, I pledge to work hard to reenact this photo and perform a front walkover in front of an audience.
KIDDING!! Can you even imagine? I’ll stick to Downward Dogs.
My 9th birthday party on my parents’ porch in the summer of ‘74. My sister and I and my neighborhood friends Candy, Kim, Carolyn and Bethanne had a good time.
Thanks to blogger Dwight Roth (a wonderful poet), I’ve learned that sometimes an iPhone photo of an old print is just as good or better than a “scan.”
Today’s discovery is Rainbow—the original guinea pig.
Rainbow was the first in a series of guinea pigs that my sister and I had as pets in the 70s. My main memories of the little fellows involve the absolute anguish we felt when they inevitably got sick and died. I can’t believe my mother spent good money taking them to see veterinarians when they stopped eating. (Maybe she lied about that and just drove around the block a few times.) I remember praying to God to save my guinea pigs. He never did.
In any case, I’ve learned that Rainbow was my class pet in kindergarten and I took him home for the summer.
I was happy to discover some good guinea pig memories in one of the old photo albums.
Good times in Kindergarten with two boys whose first and last names I still remember. (Yet, I can’t recall the name of a new person I met in church last week.)
I love how Rainbow got his own square in the class photo.
I was a wary little kindergartener. Thank goodness Rainbow didn’t die on my watch.
We hosted a neighborhood party for our guinea pig “Cookie” and another guinea pig in the summer of 1973. It looks like they had a nice little feast.
A happy memory of “Candy” roaming free in our backyard in the summer of 1974. I remember the guinea pigs loved nibbling clover and were very cute doing so. 🐹
I have just one sibling, a younger sister, and my mother loved to put us in matching outfits, many of which she sewed herself.
I’m giving my mother an A++ for the extraordinary effort it took to not only make some of our clothing, but to have the two outfits clean on the same day and get us both to agree to wear them. You must admit, we looked very cute and were a big hit when out in public.
Unless you had hippie parents, this was a common thing for girls in the late 60s and early 70s. Sisters matched. I don’t remember boys being put in matching outfits, but maybe some were.
To be honest, my sister and I are not close and have not been for many years. We are extremely different people. I don’t know if being seen as a “set” of girls from a young age had a negative impact or not. I know there was a certain expectation that I would set an example for her. And as you may have heard, oldest daughters tend towards perfectionism, which probably isn’t fun for the ones who come after.
But darn it, we were cute.
Christmas 1969
June 1971 (these may have been dance recital costumes)
November 1972 (sometimes our outfits were similar, but not identical)
Here we are with our close family friends who happened to have boys. They were never in matching outfits.
These California wildfires (and the mass evacuations) have really got me thinking about what I would grab if I were forced to leave my home with very little notice. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s the photos and the mementos that you just can’t get back.
Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a giant basement closet (plus a bin in the attic) full of old photo albums. I’m talking 30+ photo albums plus shoe boxes of old photos. There’s no way I’d be able to grab all of them in an emergency situation.
So, I think what I’m going to do is start selectively scanning them. I’m using the PhotoScan by Google app on my phone.
As a result of my first scanning session, I’ve discovered the root of my fascination with brides.
I always loved brides, bride dolls, veils, bouquets, etc. I remember sitting in my driveway as a kid watching in awe as my former babysitter emerged from her home across the street in her wedding gown. To this day, I will drop everything if I see a bride in the wild to gawk and take a photo.
Apparently it all started with my mother’s brother’s wedding. My Uncle Pete married Aunt Betsy around 1968 and I was the adorable toddler in attendance. My baby sister was too young to go (haha). They clearly made a big deal out of me.
Helping Uncle Pete with his bow tie
My nana lifting me up to see beautiful Aunt Betsy in her spectacular veil
Planting a kiss on some little thumb-sucker at the wedding (I think a photographer set this up—I was not that assertive!)
Having some ice cream with my stylish Nana, who was probably about the same age that I am now
There are so many photos of me “playing bride” after that wedding. I could turn anything into a veil, including mosquito netting. And later, I had a bride doll with a tulle dress and veil that became a favorite toy.
It was an inauspicious start for a feminist-in-the making, but I chalk it up to the tulle. I loved spinning around in fluffy white tulle. And when it came time for my own wedding, you guessed it—tulle.
Sometimes your little life overlaps with historic events.
I’ve already written about the nation’s bicentennial and how I was there to see President Ford speak at the Old North Bridge in Concord in April 1976. I was ten.
I was reminded of another historic event while watching President Carter’s funeral this week—the Iranian hostage crisis (1979-81). American GenXers will remember this because it was such a BIG deal. Everyone knew about it. Yellow ribbons were everywhere.
In a nutshell: In November 1979, Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage, including Bill Keough, a former school superintendent in my town. The hostage takers were mad at the U.S. for supporting the deposed “Shah” of Iran.
They kept those poor people captive for 444(!) days—in very harsh conditions—led by the evil “Ayatollah Khomeini.” (Every GenXer knows how to say that guy’s name because it was on the news every single night.) Diplomatic efforts failed, and a U.S. military rescue mission, Operation Eagle Claw, ended in disaster in April 1980, killing eight servicemen. This severely damaged President Jimmy Carter’s administration and contributed to his loss in the 1980 election. The hostages were released on January 20, 1981, just minutes after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, following the signing of the Algiers Accords (for which the Carter administration did all the legwork).
When the hostages were finally released, everyone watched with bated breath and there was widespread jubilation, especially in my town where we knew one of them! My high school marching band was invited to participate in a massive homecoming parade for Mr. Keough.
As one of the “goose-fleshed majorettes,” I mainly remember how COLD it was. I was 16, with not an ounce of fat on me, wearing a short little dress and holding a cold metal stick — in Massachusetts in FEBRUARY. Having recently compared notes with one of the “rosy-cheeked trumpeters,” I was reminded that our band director Mr. Toland made a last-minute decision to nix “The Empire Strikes Back” (one of our favorite numbers to perform) as we approached the grandstand. I guess he “read the room” and realized Darth Vader’s theme song was not the thing to play when celebrating triumph over the actual Evil Empire (Iran).
I was not political in high school. My parents didn’t talk much about politics (possibly because they were on opposite sides of the fence) and I cared way more about my hair than inflation or gas prices. But watching President Carter’s moving funeral, I was struck by how little credit he got for the hostage release. In The Boston Globe article above, Mr. Keough gave President Carter and his team full credit and gratitude for getting him home:
“Keough took the occasion, as he would again at a ceremony after the parade, to praise the handling of the hostage crisis by former President Jimmy Carter and his negotiating team “even in the face of personal disasters in their own careers.” “We are thankful that our President made the right decisions all along the way.” he said, adding his “eternal gratitude to the eight young men who died trying to rescue us and who will live in my memory and I hope in yours.”
GenX, if you didn’t get a chance to watch President Carter’s funeral and have time for only one clip, I suggest you watch President Ford’s eulogy, delivered by his son Steve. It’s hard to imagine that this level of grace and humility in politics existed in our lifetime.
Here I am in my skinny majorette days practicing with the marching band.
Below is a ChatGPT description of “Peter Pan Syndrome.”
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Peter Pan Syndrome refers to individuals who struggle with accepting adult responsibilities, often exhibiting emotional immaturity. While it’s not an official psychological diagnosis, the concept identifies key behavioral traits. The six main signs often associated with Peter Pan Syndrome are:
1. Avoidance of Responsibility
Difficulty committing to long-term goals, careers, or relationships, and a tendency to avoid adult obligations such as financial independence or household management.
2. Emotional Immaturity
Difficulty handling criticism, conflict, or stress, often reacting in a childlike or overly defensive manner.
3. Fear of Commitment
Reluctance to commit to relationships, work, or life plans, often prioritizing short-term pleasure over stability.
4. Dependency
Relying heavily on parents, partners, or others for financial or emotional support instead of fostering independence.
5. Escapism
Seeking constant distraction or entertainment, such as video games, social media, or partying, to avoid facing responsibilities.
6. Narcissistic Tendencies
A self-centered outlook, prioritizing personal desires over the needs of others, with difficulty showing empathy or maintaining healthy relationships.
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Do you have an adult in your life who acts like they never grew up? It may be Peter Pan Syndrome. My advice is to set boundaries early and stick to them.
And parents: don’t raise a Peter Pan. It can (and most likely will) damage your relationship with your other children.
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