The Never Ending Lineage Story
I'm close with one half of my family. Close ish. My mother's side. They all live within an hour away at most.
My father's side however, are out in California and god knows where else.
The old man was born in Kittery ME, but grew up in Apple Valley CA. Basically draw a diagonal line from the very toppest right of the map to the very bottomist left. He would have been born in England like a few of my many uncles I'm told, but they made it stateside before he popped out.
I still don't know how many uncles I actually have. I keep forgetting. I do know there's a Buck, a Willy, a John... and ... can't remember who else. One has been on Maury Povich. One worked as a hot dog inspector. No, that's not a clever euphemism for a gay dude, but whoa... now it is. Another built raccoon traps for a living.
I didn't meet my paternal grandparents until I was 9 years old. We flew out there to CA and were greeted by the tiny old couple standing in the doorway of the house that my father grew up in.
My grandmother is a tiny, tiny woman with light red hair and ice blue eyes and a booming voice that's almost cartoon-like in it's intensity. It's by no means shrill. Just extremely loud. Standing about 5' nothing, she's still a character even today. I talk to her every now and again on the phone. She's still loud, but doesn't seem like the woman who broke my father's hand by hitting him with a tree branch after he got busted with a joint at school.
Every few years my old grandmother gets in a van with a friend of hers and drives the country. Luckily we get visits from her on her travels and during one such visit she brought us a book that reminded me of the book from the Never Ending Story.
I talked to my old man earlier and he had the album handy. He was kind enough to take some shots and send them to me.
Here's the bigger of the two albums.
Here's a mini one.
In the email my dad captioned this picture "You should see her nudes. Miss September 1864".
I'm proud to know that somehow I'm sort of maybe related to this man.
Even though my father took the album with him to Colorado, I somehow held onto a picture of my father's mother's mother. Great grandma Parshall. I finally found a family member who has the same nose as I do. So that's where I got it. She hangs on my wall. A pretty lass in her 20's.
Back in 1998 I took a few pictures from it and painted them after seeing a Chuck Close exhibit in NYC during a highschool trip.
I tried my damndest at black and white photo-realism using one of the photos from the big album as reference.
"Walter" is in the Oils section. Let me know what you think.
www.hookermedia.com
My father's side however, are out in California and god knows where else.
The old man was born in Kittery ME, but grew up in Apple Valley CA. Basically draw a diagonal line from the very toppest right of the map to the very bottomist left. He would have been born in England like a few of my many uncles I'm told, but they made it stateside before he popped out.
I still don't know how many uncles I actually have. I keep forgetting. I do know there's a Buck, a Willy, a John... and ... can't remember who else. One has been on Maury Povich. One worked as a hot dog inspector. No, that's not a clever euphemism for a gay dude, but whoa... now it is. Another built raccoon traps for a living.
I didn't meet my paternal grandparents until I was 9 years old. We flew out there to CA and were greeted by the tiny old couple standing in the doorway of the house that my father grew up in.
My grandmother is a tiny, tiny woman with light red hair and ice blue eyes and a booming voice that's almost cartoon-like in it's intensity. It's by no means shrill. Just extremely loud. Standing about 5' nothing, she's still a character even today. I talk to her every now and again on the phone. She's still loud, but doesn't seem like the woman who broke my father's hand by hitting him with a tree branch after he got busted with a joint at school.
Every few years my old grandmother gets in a van with a friend of hers and drives the country. Luckily we get visits from her on her travels and during one such visit she brought us a book that reminded me of the book from the Never Ending Story.
I talked to my old man earlier and he had the album handy. He was kind enough to take some shots and send them to me.
Here's the bigger of the two albums.
Here's a mini one.
In the email my dad captioned this picture "You should see her nudes. Miss September 1864".
I'm proud to know that somehow I'm sort of maybe related to this man.
Even though my father took the album with him to Colorado, I somehow held onto a picture of my father's mother's mother. Great grandma Parshall. I finally found a family member who has the same nose as I do. So that's where I got it. She hangs on my wall. A pretty lass in her 20's.
Back in 1998 I took a few pictures from it and painted them after seeing a Chuck Close exhibit in NYC during a highschool trip.
I tried my damndest at black and white photo-realism using one of the photos from the big album as reference.
"Walter" is in the Oils section. Let me know what you think.
www.hookermedia.com
posted by Hooker at 7:25 PM
2 Comments:
that picture gains so much depth knowing the background. bravo.
i was never very close with my pop's side either. he and his brother had a falling out when they were younger. after working 4 jobs (among them paper boy and pinstriper) as a kid, my pop finally saved enough to buy a morgan (something close to this: http://www.morgan.at/morgan/images/Gebrauchtwagen/anniversarygreen.jpg), but the original. he raced cars and this was his pride and joy. then he got into RISD (he lived in CT at the time), and they wouldn't let you have a car first year on campus. so he left it at home..... and his brother hotwired it and managed to crash it.
they never talked much again, as far as i know. when i was younger my pop would take me into model shops and hold the model of the exact car he had and i would watch him get tears in his eyes. his brother ended up being a record exec... discovered sade and cindy lauper supposedly. i finally met him after my pop died... went to the house in CT and met my cousins and uncle and aunt, and met my grandma for the 2nd time (the first i was so young i don't remember). the gold sade singles were on the wall. the guy looked like my pop. my grandma was a major alcoholic. weird.
damn dude. that's like a novella. actually, like a tom waits song or something.
thanks for sharing.
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