We posted this photo on the blog on July 17, 2006, shortly after converting our website to the WordPress blogging format, hence our first blog post. We posed for the robot camera at Point Vicente Interpretive Center in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA.
That was exactly nine years ago. At that time, I was still working in the aerospace business and Verna was a full-time home maker. Less than a week after this photo was taken, we would be in Arizona visiting The Grand Canyon.
There is a new addition to my rock and cactus garden west of the RV drive; it’s a toy replica of a Radio Flyer wagon that has been popular for many years. I put some of my cactus cuttings in pots in the wagon to see how they will do out there.
According to the Radio Flyer website, they have flourished for almost a hundred years and are still going strong:
An American Icon For 98 Years
Just like our original red wagon, the Radio Flyer brand has become an American icon. It began with a classic story of humble beginnings, where Antonio Pasin was in search for a better life, and came to America where he found his calling. Not only did he find a better life for himself, but his dreams put a smile on the face of millions of children across the nation.
For 98 years, countless voyages of childhood fantasy have been launched with Radio Flyer toys. Their beauty, simplicity, and standards of safety encourage adventure, discovery, and capture the wonders of youth. Antonio created a legacy of toys that continue to spark the imagination, as Radio Flyer is rediscovered with each new generation.
With a solid commitment to creating the best childhood experiences, we are developing tomorrow’s innovative toys with the same classic quality, and sense of outdoor, active play that have been our trademarks from the beginning.
Radio Flyer is dedicated to delivering smiles and warm memories that last a lifetime, and we are proud to be a timeless symbol of childhood freedom.
Bob gave me these old photos of him taken thirty-some years ago, so I could send them up to one of the social media sites as a ‘throwback.’ In the image above, the cowboy dude on the left was actually an urban cowboy while John Travolta was still having Saturday Night Fever.
The guy in the right side of the image was acting as pilot in command of one of a fleet of aircraft at the flight school where he instructed and did charter flights. Click on the composite image to enlarge.
We recently got a scanner for the office. It is a modern one that runs completely off of the USB port voltage without need for an additional external power source.
I had the above photo hanging in the old office in Torrance until we rescued many of the relics from the house last month. The photo was actually a color print, but the UV from sunlight streaming through the windows for years managed to fade it to a point that I had to recover it in monochrome (sepia in this case) after running it through the scanner.
The photo was taken circa 1976 around the time Nixon was resigning after I had flown a photo shoot for a local photographer. He rewarded me by taking this photo of me hovering in the Hughes 269B helicopter, tail number N9408F “Zero-Eight Foxtrot.” Click on the image to enlarge.
When we got married on Catalina Island, it was about five years before we returned for another visit. This photo was from our vacation there in September of 2004, almost ten years ago.
I was rummaging around some of the photo archives on the terabyte disk and found this one taken as we departed for the mainland. Click on the image to enlarge.
Verna and I were at the pharmacy picking up a prescription today, when an old gentleman drove into the lot in this gorgeous 1958 Chevrolet Apache pickup truck. Verna took several pictures of the truck and I discovered that I could merge two of them into this anaglyph image.
You will need your free pair of 3D glasses to view the image (click image to enlarge). As usual, I have posted the 2D version here.
