Faded Photographs

For several years now I have been contemplating scanning our old family slides.  When I get to it, this will be no small task, particularly using the scanner that I own.  Last night as I pondered the task, I randomly held up several slides and found three that I think are quite notable.

The first picture is of my brother and me marvelling at the view of the Queen Mary on a cold February morning in 1962 from the promenade deck of the Ocean Monarch.  We were just returning from a cruise to Bermuda and our ship was navigating into position to take her berth on “Luxury Liner Row” on Manhattan’s west side.  Moored in the pier to the right of the Queen Mary, you can see two funnels of another great Cunard liner which I suspect may be the Mauretania.  Although seeing these magnificent ships was a common occurrence on Manhattan’s west side at the time, the scene was not to last much longer with the first generation of jetliners rapidly rendering transatlantic ocean travel obsolete.

On that same cruise, my Dad snapped a photo of the USS Wasp passing our ship.  The Wasp was an Essex class aircraft carrier in the service of the US Navy.  One might ask what is the significance of this picture?  Just another blurry picture of an old aircraft carrier.  Well perhaps, but we were told that the Wasp at the time was part of the recovery operation for the Friendship 7, John Glenn’s spacecraft that made him the first American astronaut to orbit the earth.  Whether this is true or not I can’t verify, but the timeframe seems to match the mission.  Regardless of the circumstances of the photo, the Wasp went on to become the recovery ship for the Gemini VI, VII, IX, and XII space missions.

And finally the last picture taken in Vancouver in 1967.  Look closely and you will see that this is a Canadian Pacific Airlines DC-8 that is about to transport a spare engine somehow attached to the inboard port wing on a revenue flight from Vancouver to Honolulu.  I haven’t seen that done since.  And note the dress of my mother and her two sons.  This was a time when air travel was still a special occasion, when one dressed up, didn’t have to worry about security, boarded from the tarmac, and enjoyed a nice in-flight meal served on china while those first generation jets carried their passengers into the wild blue yonder.  A far cry from flying today.