The Reverie

views of McGee Lake

the evening slide show

memories projected

My parents recently sold their house and are moving into a smaller home, which is great news, and they are excited for the change. But at the same time, moving from a home of 50+ years is a Big Deal, and has caused a lot of reflection and reminiscing, especially during a recent weekend visit. We gathered around the kitchen table, drank tea, laughed and cried, and shared so many lovely family stories. I will miss the place deeply, but things are things, and home is more than a house, and change is inevitable.

Part of the reminiscing was about ‘stuff’ and our attachment to things – this is because Mom and Dad have been going through a lot of their things, and making decisions about what to move with, and what to part with. The topic of slides came up (for the younger readers, slides are a way of taking photos on film and the film gets processed so it is produced as a positive image on a transparent base, or what I presume is the ‘slide’. You therefore need a light source to project the slide to be able to view it).

My Dad has boxes and boxes of slides, from years of photography using this method. Growing up, we would sometimes gather in the evening and Dad would put on a slide show. It was a process: putting up the screen, finding the right box of slides, and Dad would spend time sorting and putting them into a slide tray with the right orientation. I can remember the hum and sound of his slide projector, and it was always such a delight to have a slide show. Many of you will share this memory: it’s a good one.

What was especially interesting about the conversation was the idea that for some shots, Dad had multiple images (slides) of the same view – not exactly the same, because ever slide took a slightly different shot of course. This is significant because unlike today’s digital images, every slide was costly, and when taking a photo with film, you do not know if it worked or looked good until after it was processed, and that would be a multi-day process.

McGee Lake came up in conversation because my Mom commented that Dad had multiple images of this lake and we had the discussion about whether one was enough. This was fascinating and where we landed was that for my Dad, each image was different and he had a purpose for taking each separate image and even if others may see them as similar, he knows they are different. Each one was special because it was different and represented slightly different perspectives on a lake that they loved to canoe on (I loved it too as a kid – I would posit we caught many fish on McGee Lake). And even if those slides spent almost all their time in a box, they are there representing a place and time and perspective, and knowing those multiple slides of McGee lake are there is important unto itself.

Some stuff is just stuff and perhaps of little interest or value to anyone. Some stuff is valuable, whether dollar value, or value to collectors or as family heirlooms. Other stuff is valuable because it exists and represents a place and time and perhaps a process. And it just doesn’t matter if only a very few people in the world know about the existence of this kind of stuff. I personally find it comforting to know Dad took all those photos of McGee lake (and yes, they are going to move all the boxes of slides into their new house).

PS: here’s an earlier post I wrote about my parent’s home.

© Christopher M Buddle 2025