Backpacking in the National Park

In the Spring of 1971 I graduated from college. I had already been drafted and taken my physical exam and was now waiting to get called up. Along with my girlfriend, we decided to take a trip to the west coast. We ended up backpacking and were gifted a bus ride from the San Francisco area to Yosemite National Park by my generous uncle.

This article is the another in a series of articles that I’ve called About this photo to draw attention to a few of those memorable photos that may be hiding in a shoebox or on your hard drive.

Wow. To be in Yosemite. What a fantastic gift. Here’s my favorite photo from this event. My girlfriend is leaning over the rail high up at Glacier Point admiring one of the waterfalls in the valley below.
We decided to scrap suitcases for these backpacks.	All of our belongings had to fit into the backpack including clothes, cooking equipment, tent, etc. Needless to say, they were heavy.
We also made it up to the waterfall. Yes, I look fondly back on our first visit and the photo that I took of my girlfriend. She happens to be my wife since then and we’ve revisited the park several times since 1971.

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Written by: Arnie Lee
 
 
 

Time Travel
Photos that jog my memory

As long as I can remember, I’ve always been interested in planes. I recall being excited about going to the airport to pick up relatives when they flew to New York to visit us. We’d usually arrive at the airport a few minutes early so we would run up to the airport’s rooftop viewing area to watch the planes takeoff and land. It was thrilling to see the flying machines. Those who know me are also aware that I’ve been a longtime camera buff. Here’s an early photo of an aircraft that I snapped way back in the 1960s.

Aircraft such as this Boeing 707 Astrojet helped usher in the jet age. This plane was taxiing at Idewild Airport which is now called John F Kennedy International Airport (JFK). JFK is one of three major airports serving the New York City area, other two being Newark (EWR, about 25 miles away in New Jersey) and LaGuardia (LGA, about 15 miles from JFK).

I grew up in New Rochelle, a suburban city not far from New York City. Some of the older readers may remember the George M Cohan song 45 Minutes From Broadway which was a reference to New Rochelle. Others may remember this town as the home of television character Dick Van Dyke. New Rochelle is only a few miles from the New York City border.

In 2007 I traveled back to New Rochelle to attend my 40th high school reunion.

For me, this was truly time travel. I couldn’t help but feel that I was turning the clock back 40 years to the year 1967. I was anxious to renew friendships with former high school classmates with whom I graduated from New Rochelle High School.

I hadn’t flown into LaGuardia Airport for a few years and was surprised by my flight’s arrival approach. The pilot navigated our plane over some landmarks that were very familiar to me from my youth. With my camera joined to myself I was able to capture some of these landmarks.

Follow along and I’ll take you on this short time travel photo tour in the aircraft that took me over my youthful romping area.

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Photo Tour of New York area
The aircraft chart for the New York City area shows the path of our arrival at LaGuardia Airport. Our plane traveled on a long downwind leg northeastward, past LaGuardia and over Long Island Sound about 16 miles. The base leg was short and the extended final leg brought us directly to Runway 22. The numbers on the chart roughly correspond to the photos below.
Excuse the quality of these following photos taken on an overcast day.
	1. This mini tour begins as the 737 flies past LaGuardia Airport as we begin a long extended downwind leg. You can see that Runway 22 extends into Flushing Bay. We’ll be flying northeast over Long Island Sound.
	2. This photo shows City Island, a picturesque and vibrant neighborhood located in the eastern Bronx. The restaurants in City Island are noted for fresh and tasty seafood.
	3. Here we are passing by New Rochelle, my childhood home. We’re now flying over Long Island Sound, an extension of the Atlantic Ocean. The island to the left was known as Fort Slocum. It used to be an army base. In the background, you can see another body of water. This is the Hudson River and is about 7 miles from the New Rochelle shoreline.
	4. On the aircraft chart, this location is referred to as “amusement park”. Its name is Playland. As a youth, we spent many evenings there. Enlarge the photo and you’ll see the ferris wheel, roller coaster and mini-railroad (my favorite).
	5. Playland is also known as Rye Beach. With its large white sand beach and adjacent boating area, it is a popular recreation area. It is located just to the west of the Connecticut state line.
	6. Here’s a view of City Island again as we continue the approach southwestward toward LaGuardia. It is a small island. In my younger days, I dined often at the seafood restaurants that line the narrow streets.
	7. New York City is composed of five boroughs: Manhattan, Staten Island, Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens. This is the Throggs Neck Bridge which connects the two boroughs of the Bronx and Queens.
	8. The Whitestone Bridge also connects the Bronx with Queens. LaGuardia Airport is situated on the northeastern shore of Queens along Flushing Bay. The Whitestone Bridge is very near the entrance to LaGuardia.
	Touchdown. After landing at LaGuardia, we’re greeted by a familiar sign.
The Reunion and Time Travel
	Here is another place that I used to hang around when I was younger. You can see its location in Photo # 3. From my childhood home, I would walk four blocks to Hudson Park where we would go to the beach.
	This is New Rochelle High School. With its castle-like towers, it is one of the prettiest high schools in the U.S. I graduated in 1967 and the following year NRHS suffered from the nation’s biggest fire. For the next few years, students attended classes in portable classrooms. The high school has since been rebuilt to pre-fire condition and as you can see it is very attractive.
	This is another photo of New Rochelle High School. The school entrance is flanked by two lakes making the campus magnificent. Thanks to classmate Stu Soloway for this photo.
	My visit to New Rochelle lasted only two days. Upon departing New York, I snapped this photos of a squadron of F/A-18s. These military aircraft were positioned on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport, most likely to provide for the security of the New York’s air space.
	Final Thoughts My time travel turned out to be very enjoyable. I reconnected with most everyone that I expected; there were only a few faces from the past that I would have liked to have seen. But the reunion gathering was great. And so was the time afterwards when I was able to spend more time with so many friends. To the left are some of the happy classmates that attended our 40th high school reunion. With the advent of email – something that wasn’t available to us in 1967 – I am now staying in contact with many of these friends.
What I have learned is this: time travel really does exist. Written by: Arnie Lee

A Miscue Turns a Photo Into a Favorite

During the 60’s my favorite pastime was photography.

Having only an after school part time job, I used used many techniques to make an expensive hobby more affordable.

I remember buying 100-foot long “bulk film” to reload 35mm cartridges into shorter five foot 36-exposure lengths. This was enough for 18 cartridges of film – enough for the summer season for about the same cost as buying 6 individual rolls of Kodak or Ansco film.

Next I learned how to develop my own film. I constructed a small darkroom in my parents’ basement where I would hang the still-wet film on a clothesline to dry. Not long after I earned enough to buy an enlarger. Wow, I was in photo heaven. The enlarger let me make my own prints and I would patiently watch the image slowly appear (under a safelight) in the developing solution. I was having all of this fun for a fraction of the cost of sending the spent film to my local photofinisher.

Mine was a hobby was like that of many others where you just seem to keep spending your earning for the latest gadgets – easel for holding photographic paper, new developing trays for bigger enlargements, paper dryers for drying prints, color drum for making color prints, etc. 

Perhaps you can now see that my association with photography goes back a very long time.

From all of those years spent in the darkroom in the 60s and 70’s there is one event that I remember well. It was a darkroom miscue that had a happy result.

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But first a quick intro to how to develop a roll of 35mm black and white film:

In a dark, lightproof room, you remove the exposed film from its cartridge and slide it onto a metal reel. The reel is placed into a stainless steel tank with a specially designed top which lets you complete the development in normal room light. Pour the  developer solution into the tank for a designated time – usually 6 to 8 minutes and then pour the developer solution out of the tank . Next pour plain water into the tank for one minute to halt the film development and discard the water. Then pour in the final solution called fixer for 5 minutes. This desensitizes the film from light and makes the image permanent. Now it’s safe to remove the film from the tank and give it a final rinse wash in water for ten minutes.

These operations are done with all of the liquids – developer, water and fixer – at a temperature of 68 degrees F. On one occasion, I inadvertently washed a developed roll at a colder temperature. I wasn’t paying attention and unknown to me at the time the final rinse water must have been a lot colder. 

I removed the film from the reel and hung it on a line to dry. But when I finally looked, several of the frames looked very weird. 

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The meshlike pattern that was imbedded into the film surface is called reticulation. Although this was result of an error in development I think that the resulting image of our first dog Candy is a winner.

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Sometimes a mistake turns into a favorite.

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Written by: Arnie Lee

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