Going back in time ... to a weekendin 1996 Dallas, San Antonio

A lot has happened in my photography hemisphere in the past two weeks, and none of it has to do with taking new pictures.

I recently opened and accessed several heretofore unpacked boxes sitting around from the move to North Carolina in 2017. They had been stored in our detached garage in that interim, and I guess because of the fact that the garage is "detached" from our normal living quarters, I'd had little motivation to go over there and rummage through them all these months. But I do so two weeks ago.

A big reason for not dealing with the unpacked stuff in the detached garage is that we wanted to move a large portion of the stuff we'd put there -- on the main level -- to the attic space above it. But to do that, we had to bat-proof the attic; bats had been getting in through unprotected vents during summer months.

So in spring, once we took care of that, we started going through boxes. Along the way, I came across a couple boxes with some of my "old" photography gear (more on this in a future post). In a few other boxes, I came across packages of "old" photo prints I had made with a compact film camera, a Kodak Star 335. Some of those photos are what this post is about.

For much of my 20-plus year "I've got to focus on raising my kids" hiatus from photography, which ran roughly from the late 1970s until almost 2000, my ex and I had used the quick-and-easy Star 335 for our family photos, but I did no outside photography for personal enjoyment. (Quick aside: I had never invested in a 35mm camera after putting down the company-owned Minolta 35mm that I used covering news and sports for the Columbus (Wis.) Journal-Republican weekly newspaper from 1974-75. That changed in the late 1990s, but that, too, is for that other blog post).

In the past two years here in North Carolina, I have been slowly, and intermittently, converting as many of my old family prints taken with the Star 335 into digital files and storing them where my kids hopefully will be able to access them years from now, if they so wish. These were old prints that had been packed in a box that actually DID make it into the main house and into my office.

Back to the detached garage: In a plastic bag in one of the previously unpacked boxes there, I found a dozen or so packages of prints I'd taken to an Osco drugstore (later acquired by CVS) in Indianapolis. All of the photos were taken in the mid-1990s. Most of the packages contained family shots I hadn't seen in a long while. But there also were prints from two trips outside Indiana that I took in the 1990s. There were a handful (sadly, that's all) from a whirlwind trip to Dallas and San Antonio on Thanksgiving weekend 1996, and almost two dozen that I'd taken in Cooperstown, N.Y., when I made a solo trip to visit the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in October 1994.

The prints of photos from those two trips -- because they had been largely untouched and forgotten for so many years -- were in very good condition. When I digitized them, the work I had to do with my Photoshop Elements' healing tool was minimal; I have rarely been as lucky when digitizing family prints.

So for this blog, I present the photos from the Texas trip. I'll present the Cooperstown photos in the next post.

You might ask why I was in Texas? My oldest son, then 17, had won a raffle (I think it was held by Finish Line) that earned him game admission tickets, airfare and lodging for two people to attend Chicago Bulls road games in those cities that weekend. The Bulls played in Dallas on the Friday night after Thanksgiving, and the Spurs on Saturday night.

Because my son, Joey, was still a minor, he had to be accompanied by an adult. Both my sons were Michael Jordan fans by then already, so I paid for a third air flight and game tickets so younger son Ben could come along. We were rushed in Texas because the games were on consecutive nights, but both flights landed in Dallas and San Antonio early enough to allow us a few hours of daylight to squeeze in some sight-seeing.

In 1996, the Mavericks played their home games at Reunion Arena, which was not far from Dealy Plaza, the site of the John F. Kennedy assassination in 1963. So the boys and I went there after we settled into our room. We saw the infamous scene with our own two eyes (the pictures I took there were taken from the grassy knoll) and then explored the nearby Sixth Floor Museum, which is what the former Texas School Book Depository is today. We got to look out the sniper's window, and I took a picture of that window's original pane and glass, which the museum removed and encased in an exhibit. We had dinner at a Planet Hollywood (which would close in 2001) then attended the game that night.

In San Antonio the next day, we visited the Alamo and walked the storied River Walk along the San Antonio River before dining in a Hard Rock Cafe and heading to the Alamodome, where the Spurs played their home games at the time. The Bulls won both games handily, by the way; unfortunately, Spurs' star David Robinson was injured most of that season, and we didn't get to see him play.

I'll use this post to show you the handful of pictures from the Texas trip, leading off with one of two I took from the grassy knoll (the other is the first photo below). The lead-off shot looks across Elm Street out onto the expanse of the plaza, a familiar vantage point with anyone who has seen the Zapruder film of the assassination.

The first photo below was taken a little south of that point but also on the knoll. It looks toward Houston Street, where the Kennedy motorcade turned left onto Elm Street moments before the shots rang out in 1963. The former Texas Book Depository would be just outside the upper left margin of the photo. Both photos were taken in the late afternoon, hence the dramatic shade you see spilling onto Elm Street.

The next post will be devoted to the Cooperstown trip.

Inside the Sixth Floor Museum, the original window and pane used by the assassination sniper has been pulled out and set aside as a separate exhibit (above). That's what you see here. Below is just a view out the window of our room in the Hyatt Regency (near the arena) where we stayed Friday night. Those are railroad tracks in the foreground, and Dealy Plaza is the green area just above it. You can make out the two familiar sets of white columns along the south end of Houston Street just east of Elm.   

Above and below: Two shots of the Alamo, which is part of the downtown district of San Antonio. 

Above is a portion of the River Walk along the San Antonio River as seen from an overlook, and below is a ground level view, showing a couple of pontoons carrying people along the river. It's an excursion I would have loved taking while I was there, but there was no time. 

Above: Our view from the hotel room in San Antonio. As I recall, we could eventually reach the River Walk through that building (a shopping mall-like enclosure) in the foreground.