I love looking at old photos even if I don’t know the people in them. The greeting card industry has figured out that a lot of us like to see old photos and they have used them to get people like me to buy a bunch of their cards.

With all of this in mind, I urge everyone to buy a scanner for their photos. Scanners are finally very inexpensive and easy to use. Please go through your family photos and scan them and preserve them for your children’s enjoyment. Plus, if you scan your photos and your house burns down, you will still have all of your treasured family memories. I use a couple of sites to save my digital photos — Picasa and also Shutterfly. With Picasa you can save your photos on your computer and you also have the ability to save them out in cyberspace.

Daddy Ray took about 10,000 slides. I need to take the time to digitally scan what I consider the most relevant slides. Men tend to take photos of sunsets & landscapes.  I will only scan the slides that contain family and friends.

I’ve copied some free sites below where you can look at old photos.  I especially like the old humorous ones.

http://www.ancientfaces.com/vintage_photos

http://www.deadfred.com/

http://www.shorpy.com/

http://www.whatwasthere.com/

On Shorpy, check out the quintessential Christmas photos http://www.shorpy.com/vintage-christmas-photos

Please go to this site to see an enlarged version of this spectacular Christmas party photo.  The hair styles are amazing.  And you can imagine who will get a little tipsy later on and who is the most popular woman in the office, etc.  A picture is worth 1,000 words.

G.E. Christmas Party, 1925

Below is a photo of a Christmas party at Daddy Ray’s employer, Brown & Ginzel in Wichita, Kansas. I don’t know the date of this photo, but it looks like the 1960’s. I doubt that their parties that included the wives were that all lively, but Daddy Ray does look like he is choking back a big guffaw. Their company owned a lake house (at Grand Lake, Oklahoma) but that was another story. Hubba, Hubba. I wish I presently owned any of the girly pin-up lamps, photos, mosaics, etc. that decorated that lake house. When we got to use our week of vacation at Grand Lake as a company perk, Mom (Harriett) would make us wait in the car until she went inside and slid all girly “art work” under the beds (like we couldn’t get it out later). It was an amazing 1950’s and 1960’s totally tacky Mid-Western man cave complete with a wooden speed boat and a “yacht club”. And also a completely stocked bar.  In those days the I.R.S. allowed all sorts of deductions for office perks.  Even country club memberships.

Daddy Ray Page’s Christmas Party at Brown & Ginzel