Happy Thanksgiving 2023! As I write this at 5am, it’s currently 27 degrees here in GJ and we’re expected to reach a high of 50 degrees later today. We have a high chance of rain tomorrow though. It’ll start out as showers in the morning and continue all day they say, with a steadier rain in the afternoon. We may get up to a quarter inch of rain tomorrow. Have you booked your passage on the ark yet? The rest of the month is going to be cold, like winter. It won’t even hit the low 40’s again until the very end of the month. Bundle up! And don’t forget to get up a little earlier to scrape ice if you park your car outside, as I do. My garage is an office and a storage unit, so I’ve never parked in there. John had this crazy idea once that a garage should be a garage, you know – someplace where you park your car – so he cleaned up the storage area and shuffled everything around to see if the car would fit. It did, but it was really hard to get into and out of the car. Now that we’ve done that once, we don’t have to do it again.
One of the ladies who calls me about her newspaper turns out to be an old friend and co-worker from my days working at Vicorp Restaurants; that is, back in the 90’s. She’s about 20 years older than I am, which made her seem really old to me at the time. When I worked there, I was in my 30’s and very early 40’s. I teased her relentlessly about her age, especially when she turned 60. We gave her one of those birthday parties where everything is black. She wasn’t amused.
Anyway, aside from that she was a very nice lady. We worked together for a couple of years. She sat in the cube right next to mine. She grew up in Denver and married her high school sweetheart. They bought a home in – somewhere like Northglenn or something and lived there for 20 or 25 years. Raised a family. On the weekends they took their RV out and went camping. This is what lots of people do in Colorado. She had worked for Pepsi for most of her career. I don’t know what kind of work she did there, but I imagine some type of administrative work. When the kids grew up and left home, and she and her husband reached retirement age, they sold their home in Northglenn and moved to Fruita. They’ve been out here ever since, and that was about 20 years ago.
So, when I saw her call come through this time, I asked if she used to work at Vicorp. She was very surprised, but at least she still remembered me. We talked briefly. Sadly, her husband passed away 10 days ago. She’s in deep grief. I feel so bad for her. She has spent her entire life with him. He was her life companion. I don’t know if she has any other family out here, or if they’re still along the front range. It’s strange though, how people weave in and out of your life. God bless Margie.
As we have all no doubt been reminded by now, this is the weekend in 1963 when JFK was murdered. We’ll all be sharing about where we were when it happened, if we were even alive at the time etc. But I’m going to share with you something a little different and it has a photography connection.
Today is the day that Billy the Kid was born in 1859. Actually, as with most things surrounding Billy the Kid, his actual birth date is up for debate. Some people say he was born in September of 1859, but for now, we’ll stick with November 23, 1859 as his birth date. He was born in New York City and his dad died when he was very young. His mom then moved west with Billy and his brother. She re-married a guy she met along the way and together they all moved to Colorado and then New Mexico. Unfortunately, his mom had TB and died when Billy was a teenager. His stepdad, figuring those two brats weren’t his kids anyway, returned to Colorado without them, leaving them to fend for themselves. They ended up moving into a local boarding house there in New Mexico where they got room and board for doing work around the place. One thing led to another, and Billy became one of the west’s most notorious gunfighters and outlaws. Some people said he killed as many as 21 men, but others say it’s really closer to just 10. He was caught doing crimes and put in jail a few times – he was even sentenced to be hung once – but always managed to escape, until he was killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in July of 1881. He was 21 years old.
So, here’s the photography connection:
There is only one photograph of Billy the Kid which has been verified as really him. People have looked at this photo and wondered why Billy was so weird looking. It appears that his face was not symmetrical. One ear appears larger than the other, his eyes are different shapes, and his jawline seems skewed to one side as well. Although there are some people who have these types of features because of medical conditions or whatever, it seemed odd, because people who knew him in real life described him as having a kind of boyish handsomeness about him, and he had many female admirers.
Turns out this photo was called a Dedrick Ferrotype. The only reason this ferrotype survived, is because one of Billy’s friends saved the picture after he was killed. It stayed in that friend’s family for years and was passed down for generations. It was eventually purchased by businessman William Koch for $2.3 million in June of 2011.
Ferrotypes were made by reversing the image and printing it. The image itself was re-printed several times, almost like people do with photo stacking today. In the middle 1800’s though, to get a decent image of anyone, the subject needed to hold perfectly still for several seconds or longer. This is why in many old photos you see that the mouths or other features are blurred. After a while, people weren’t allowed to smile when being photographed because they couldn’t hold that expression long enough. That’s why people all seem so somber in those early images. In this case, I don’t know if several images were created and stacked, or whether it was just that the image was copied several times to be printed in magazines and books about the old west, but in any event, the reason he looks so weird is because this copying or stacking process was less than perfect. So now you know. Billy the Kid was in fact a fairly handsome young guy except for his front teeth, which were sort of bucked out like rabbit’s teeth, according to people who knew him.
It’s been a tough couple of years, but I’m told there is always, always, ALWAYS something to be grateful for. Here’s a few things: I’m grateful that so many women throughout the world are being educated. Education means freedom. I’m grateful that so many people are working on a solution for unhoused people in my community and throughout the world. I’m grateful for all the years that Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter had together and their commitment to Habitat for Humanity. They helped create opportunity for many people to become homeowners who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to. I’m happy that we still have wild horses even though I haven’t been able to find them yet. I’m thankful for old friends.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Adventures on Earth and Beyond 