Jim Linderman sent me a nice email about yesterday's post. I will write back to him today and encourage him to continue to collect this menagerie of strangeness that should not be lost. It is part of the heritage, the makeup of a culture pushed further and further into the back drawers of our social memory. It is not something I embrace, you understand, having come too close to it too many times in my own life. It gives me the chills. But I can't help but stare at it, either. I just want to be on the other side of the bars most of the time. 
And, perhaps, I'd like to sanitize it, too, give it the Pat Boone once over (though in one of the weirdest turn-arounds imaginable, at the age of 64, Pat made an album called "In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy" that got him in all sorts of trouble with the Gospel League).
Look for my take on this in future photos--I hope. And when you get that strange feeling after watching reruns of "The Brady Bunch" or "Happy Days," open one of Mr. Linderman's sites and find the fuel that drove the engines.
Thank goodness we don't have to embrace it in order to stare. I'm with you...I'm mesmerized and admire those photographers who have preserved it for us. I will look forward to your interpretation, hoping you won't oversanitize. Pat Boone is probably weird too!
ReplyDeletePat Boone is definitely weird.
ReplyDeleteI know, I was being kind by adding the 'probably'
ReplyDelete