Every time that I ride the rails homeward for a small town respite from the concrete jungle, I make time for a visit with my grandpap. He’s got a lot of great stories to tell, and he always likes to hear about what I’m up to in the big city.
And it usually seems that, with each visit, we open up an old photo album and I listen to him reminisce- usually about The War, but sometimes about a fishing trip or an old dog that he had.
He might have trouble opening a pickle jar sometimes and he can’t read the paper too well these days, but he sure can tell a story, decades old, as if it happened last week.
There are a few specific photographs that always seem to make the rounds. Two of which you can see below.
My grandmother and grandfather in Washington DC, 1943.
On my last visit, he lamented the fact that these two prints were in such poor condition, fingerprinted and folded, smudged and scratched, and that he considered taking them to Wal Mart to have them restored.
Nothing against the retouching prowess of the kind folks pushing prints at the Wal Mart photo processing counter. Heck, they might even know a few Photoshop tricks that I don’t. But I was pretty sure that they wouldn’t take quite the personal interest in restoring these images to their original condition, so I tasked myself with the project.
Below you’ll see the images as they were given to me. Hopefully I’ll have a pretty respectable before and after to show in the coming weeks.
Scott – What you wrote is so touching ;)
I can’t wait to see the end product!