Pixel Darkroom Photography

Joshua’s skateboard broke. I think he dropped it on the stairs. He was kind enough to let me photograph it. Actually, I didn’t even ask, but he saw me do it and he didn’t mind. He came closer to take a look. He then showed me his new shoes his mom got for him. He’s such a sweet little boy. I think he’s 4 or 5. He’s my neighbor.

No post.

There are so many things that have changed in your life time and my life time. I have seen technology change on so many levels and I am sure there are bigger changes yet to come. I have seen people come and people go, I have seen countries change, presidents change, dictators go (I am too young to have seen them come, but I’m sure there are some), I have seen regimes change.

One of the things that this cart reminds me of, is a similar cart my grandparents had in Iasi, Romania, where people had to buy propane by the tank to run their stoves. The rest of the house was heated with wood, but the cooking was done with propane. (I think it was propane; I know it was dangerous and we couldn’t play around those tanks). My grandfather had a hard time in his life. After having fought in WWII and living under Communism, life didn’t offer him many possibilities back in Romania. I remember to this day stories he told us about his combat experience, about growing up under an oppressive regime, about moving from the country to a city, stories about my parents.

One thing I remember was from back when he did not have a place to live. I don’t remember all the details, where my grandparents were living and how he came to accomplish this, but he told me he once saw a bird with a straw in its beak. He realized that she was going to build a home for herself and he said “I’m going to do the same.” So he started building a house. It was amazing to see old photographs of the house and the area in the times when it was built. There wasn’t even a road back there, only empty fields and dirt. When I grew up, there was on one side the Botanical Gardens which is basically an amazingly beautiful park and on the other side a full size soccer field for practice, where he had made a gate in the fence and my brothers and I could go and play soccer and run in the sprinklers or run with the dogs. The first house he built, was sort of temporary and was made of some special kind of home made bricks. They lived there for quite some time until they had finished the other house. This other house was the one where the cooking was now done using propane. What a big change from using wood in a stove. The propane came in tanks that were brought by a truck down the road, outside a small shack that served as a convenience store. Some people would line up there and wait for the truck to come. There was this sort of word of mouth announcement that the truck had come and the rest of the people could send someone (kids or grandkids) with a cart and some money to exchange the tanks. I don’t even remember how often this was. It might have been every two weeks, every week, I don’t know. I do remember that we used to carry each other in this two wheeled cart and run in the street with it. It was a fun toy. We fell a lot since it was not meant to carry people, but that didn’t stop us from playing with it. We didn’t have helmets and there wasn’t any big “warning!” sign on it to “keep away from children”.

Then at some point some neighbors had gas pipes installed and there was no more need for them to go exchange tanks. Technology was advancing.

tank cart

gears

Strobist info: 580 EX II CL zoomed 50mm at 1/128 via ST-E2.