“THE BLUE FORD

WITH THE ROUND BALL”

For three years, this dark-blue 1949 Ford took my parents — Truman and Margaret Alford — and me to the boot of Italy and the southern coast of Spain, on ferries across the North Sea, to the Norwegian fjords… and everywhere in between.

We’d had it for two years before shipping it to Germany, so it carried us all over the USA too. Daddy sold it in Germany before we returned to the States in ’54.

That car, which my folks taught me to identify as “the blue Ford with the round ball,” appears in the four photos on this page, all made in Spain.

Donkeys were more common than motorized vehicles in impoverished, post-Civil War Spain so—everywhere we traveled for a month—people came out to gawk at our car.

Hover your cursor over any image on this site to learn more about it.

 ABOUT THESE

70-YEAR-OLD

KODACHROME IMAGES

Throughout my childhood, my mother was our official family photographer, including the three years when we lived in Heidelberg, Germany and explored most of Western Europe. She used nothing but Kodachrome film, which wasn’t “fast” and didn’t artificially “pop” the colors but was the gold standard of its day.

Mama had a good photographic eye, and she did her best with a primitive Argus camera that dated from her college days in the ’30s. But still, many of her shots were double exposures or, in general, just duds. Every one took effort and knowledge of the basic techniques. (No auto-focus, auto-exposure, image stabilization, digital correction, interchangeable or zoom lenses, point-and-shoot or smart-phone cameras in those days.)

Also, she hand held every shot. Never even owned a tripod. And of course, she wanted me in most of them, but I wasn’t always cooperative, so my shenanigans spoiled more than a few.

We visited several major countries that I’m not showing on this site — France, for example — simply because the few images that remain aren’t good enough. I keep them for my memories only.