PART I: SCENES AND STORIES FROM WESTERN EUROPE, 1951-1954
Click to see Martha and her parents in: West Germany / Spain / Italy / Holland, Denmark & Norway
Click to read: “The blue Ford witht the round ball” and “About these 70-year-old Kodachrome images”
SPAIN, 1952
That’s me getting a shoeshine in downtown Madrid. Daddy stood protectively nearby as Mama made the photo from our hotel window, and of course she was speaking Spanish with the men shown.
Those who gathered around to watch a little American girl get her shoes shined seemed to get a big kick out of it.
Above: Daddy and I are standing alongside the reflecting pool in Alhambra, the magnificent thirteenth-century Moorish palace and fortress in Granada, Spain.
Below: We’re in the middle of the white path in the garden of the thirteenth-century “Generalife,” which was the ruling sultan’s summer palace at Alhambra in Granada, Spain.
Above: Mama made this artistic silhouette of Daddy in an archway in Alhambra in Granada, Spain. (I’m on the left but hard to see in the deep shadow.)
Below: The top photo shows me cross legged inside a multi-storied circular courtyard at Alhambra.
That’s also me in the lower photo, standing beside the fountain at the Court of the Lions.
On a return trip to Spain with Bernie in 1991, I posed in this same spot for a similar photo. (See Part II of this website for photos from that trip and many others in the ’70s and ’90s.)
Mama got a nice shot of this funeral procession in a Spanish town, complete with black-robed priests and a lavish open-air hearse.
These men sitting in the shade were workers at a “rope factory” in southern Spain. I’m sure they did their thing inside when the sun was overhead. They appeared to have a lot of fun in what seemed to me a terribly boring job.
This was a public well in southern Spain, where townspeople (mostly women) brought their donkeys, carts, and clay jugs to haul water home.
It looked and felt as primitive as the 18th or 19th centuries, but it really was the mid 20th century.
The two photos above show different angles of the same street market in southern Spain. Mama made them from a bridge that allowed views in both directions.
In the top shot, Daddy is standing in the middle of a selection of clay pots and plates. He bought a pot that he and Mama enjoyed as a souvenir in their home for the rest of their lives. I eventually gave it away when downsizing Mama’s things after Daddy died.
That’s our camera bag hanging from a strap across his chest. He always carried it to take the weight off Mama’s shoulders and leave her hands free for shooting.
Somewhere in rural Spain, Daddy pulled off the road so he and I could investigate what the Spanish call a noria: a water wheel with buckets attached to its rim for raising water from a stream into irrigation canals. In this case, a donkey was hooked up to go round and round to raise the water. That’s us walking in the lower-right corner.
That’s me in my “cowgirl outfit,” which had been a birthday gift in Sledge in 1951. (See the bottom of Mama’s family photos for a closeup.)
I’m standing by a crossing gate on the border between Spain and France. Just at that moment, the gate was being raised to allow the cars shown to pass. (That’s our blue Ford cut off on the right edge. We were heading north, out of Spain into France.)
Mama walked a good distance back from our car to make this scenic shot of Daddy engaging with a group of curious kids who had come out of nowhere to look at our car and talk with us. I was there too, somewhere in the crowd.
Fortunately, Mama spoke Spanish, so we could communicate with the locals at times like this. She also had a damn good photographic eye!
The two shots above show how people would come out of their homes and shops to stare at our Ford and talk with us. With Mama, really, since she was the only one who spoke Spanish at that point.
This happened everywhere we went, even in cities. Cars were scarce in Spain then.
Here’s Mama’s shot of Daddy, me, and our car in a rural orchard. In another place like this, we stopped to stretch and chat with a farmer who was working near the road.
As we were about to leave, he gave us a basket of “blood oranges” from his trees. We hadn’t ever seen them before but greatly enjoyed and appreciated them.
This colorful gas station was located near the border between Spain and France, hence the map. Mama photographed creatively painted local establishments like this all over Spain, but this is the best shot she got.
Apparently, they were repairing the road or sidewalk in front of it.
Jumping forward in time…
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