Summer of Photos from the 1970s: Blue Photo Albums and Backyard Bliss

It's the Collective Experience....

Ever since I started blogging about Generation X in 2011, I deeply hoped to make my way back to the photos of my early childhood. It took a long time to find my way back to them. Posting pictures of your growing up years illuminates the collective experience you have with your generation in a very real way. It's the details, the pop culture things that are framed in the picture, the album in the background by some one hit wonder band you forgot and then lovingly remembered once again, it's that kitchen with the avocado green General Electric stove in the background and the comforting smell of dinner baking inside. You see some detail in one of your photos, or in someone else's photo, and a flood of emotions goes over you. If you are Gen X, the things in your childhood photos, like the toys you played with, or the books that were on your shelf are a part of my story, too - I would have played with some of those same toys as a tot, I would have read some of those same books as a child.

The Eclipse

Last spring, I went to Texas to visit my father. He invited me to go see the April eclipse, and I had this intuitive feeling that something lost would be found during that visit. I was shocked and overjoyed when old 1970's photo albums emerged from a shelf in a closet - I spent an afternoon opening the pages and taking digital photos of analog ones. Emotion came over me like a hard desert rain. I hadn't seen some of the photos since the 1980s, I hadn't seen some of the pictures since the 1970s, and some I had never seen. We will remember 2024 as a year of a big eclipse in America, and it's incredible the way that sometimes what was lost can somehow be found, yet that's how eclipses work - there is a darkness, and then parts of the universe are brought out into the light. So while the sun shines, this will be my summer of posting 1970's pictures that are from my childhood. And we will begin with a picture from summer, and a checklist of official funny things 1970's tots did.... 

While the above list mentions a few things floating around in the pool, like my Fisher Price Little People car - the red one I am holding in my hand in this picture - I should also mention a few more things that are worth noticing just for the humor of it all:

1) The random blue metal barrel in the background my father brought home from work as a backyard toy: a tunnel for me to crawl through or hide in

2) If you look closely, you'll see white styrofoam peanuts that I was borrowing form a neighborhood friend - these are drifting across the water because I needed to check if they could float!

3) My slowly emerging chipmunk teeth really add to the photo.

4) The kiddie pool, which was purchased at the same store as the pink sparkly ball (Grand Central - which was later bought out by another retail chain) and the funny, random mix of animals on my pool: fish and elephants?

Fresh Cut Green Grass and Blue Sky

And while there is so much to laugh at in this picture, there is something so beautiful and sacred about it - I loved that backyard so much, it was my little paradise - the sun, the puffy clouds moving gently above me, the sweet simplicity of being young and life being easy for a while. I am one of those rare people whose memory goes back to being a baby. I remember this moment of toddlerhood well, my father took the photo, smiling and laughing my desire to drink up every fun moment life could offer. How incredibly sleepy, and happy, I felt in that moment. I didn't want to miss a thing - the cool water on my toes, the New Mexico sun warming my back as it hung there in the bluest sky. There was the sweetest of smells: fresh cut green grass mowed by my father, the wafting scents of the flowers planted by my mother, and that extraordinary, electrical, earthy smell of a desert summer rainstorm slowly rolling in over the horizon. I loved that backyard. 

There was the orange of the marigolds in our yard, there was the pink of the desert sunsets. There were the open, starry nights. Bend the sunlight toward me and let it warm my shoulders, send me a New Mexico thunderstorm to give my soul the strength it needs to go on, give me a moment to feel that bliss once again, when life was new, when hope was full.  

Here's to believing what was lost can be found again, here's to dusty old blue photo albums of the 1970s that hold our collective memories. When I have seen others Gen Xer's pictures from the 1970s, not knowing that I would ever find my own 70s pictures again, I would look for myself in their pictures - my old toys, my old books, my own story. Now that I finally have made my way back to my old pictures, if you want to, you can look for your story in mine. 

                                                              (c) 2024 by Chloe Koffas - all rights reserved

The More You See of Someone's Heart

Back in the days when I lived in Kansas, there was a certain peace I would feel when looking out over an open prairie. I believe a prairie shows its beauty the most at dusk on a warm day - the tall grass venerating the dry earth, the gold outline of sun on the drifting clouds, the barometric pressure falling heavy and thick.

Sometimes the radiating heat of a paper coffee cup warms my hand on a chilly, overcast Oregon morning, and as I walk down the street, I might think for a moment of the sun arching over the Kansas prairie....

I sometimes think of this one night all those years ago when a group of friends got together - how we walked out on the prairie past the grazing horses just before sunset to a small, empty cabin so that several of us could share our art, music and writing with each other. By the light of a lantern flame, I held a short story I had written and I read it to the glowing faces around me. Others shared their work, and then my friend Alicia showed us a pencil sketch she had made of cream diffusing into a cup of coffee. Some people see beauty in the things that others might not even notice. She knew I really liked the sketch, and much later, when I was going through a hard time, she gave it to me. While I kept it for many years, the many moves of my nomadic life eventually separated this and many other mementos from me. To thank her for that picture, or maybe to bring it back alive in some way, I recently took this photo for her....

Alicia is the inspiration for this blog.

She and I broke bread many times together in my college years. It was through many of our after-church lunchtime conversations that I started to realize how fascinated I was with Generation X. In those conversations we had about life, there was something I discovered - even though she and I had grown up about a thousand miles away from each other, our formative years had a thousand things in common.  It wasn't until many years later that I began to read about the collective experience of Gen X online and in books, but this journey all started for me through face-to-face conversation with a fellow Gen Xer. As those conversations continued, she and I began to realize that there a thousand pop culture references we could both relate to, and there were a thousand tiny details that were similar about our childhoods.  We found that we had played the same games with our friends on our elementary school playgrounds, and even meticulously folded our notes to pass to our friends in middle school the same way. And I realized that if our formative years had been that similar in spite of growing up so far away from each other, there must be a Gen X collective experience after all. Growing up, I had constantly seen (and had even felt overshadowed by) the collective experience of older generations. I had not yet begun to see the collective experience of my own generation until I met her.

Often the people who see beauty in the things that others might not even notice are the ones who carry with them a deep and intrinsic wisdom. Often the people who  don't demand a lot of attention are the ones who have the most to offer. Some people carry a light with them that causes others to be ignited and inspired. I am grateful that all these years later Alicia and I have reconnected. I am fortunate to have met her on my nomadic journey. Even though she has been through much of the suffering that our generation is known for, she remains profoundly kind and full of God's light.  

The more I have seen of your heart, Alicia, the more I have been inspired.  

All my love to you.

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(c) 2013 writing/photography by Chloe - all rights reserved - except for Alicia - she can do anything she wants with it!