Digitizing Slides from the Past

The Boyz & I motored up to Tennessee this past Saturday to visit with my parents as it had been quite some time since we had been to my hometown. At one point, my dad mentioned that, in cleaning out a closet, he had come across his old Airequipt slide projector, and six carousels of slides. A certain gloom set in because I thought we were about to be treated to a review of life in the Seventies.

No, he was just interested in getting rid of it all, and wondered if it was worth anything. I had just started a spiel about “check eBay” when the glazed look in his eyes had me re-arranging my words to say, “…Why don’t I take all this back with me and investigate further”. He was only too happy to help load everything in my truck.

eBay is an amazing place. Before I threw a hubcap of my Airstream returning home from Florida a couple of weeks ago, I thought anything could be found there. But to my surprise, there was nothing even remotely similar to what my Overlander needs. Hopefully, the alert eBay allowed me to set up will send encouraging offerings before too long about someone wanting to find a good home for a 1967 Airstream Overlander International Hubcap.

eBay is the place for old Airequipt slide projection equipment, though. There was so much of it, and listed for such low prices that I am not going to bother advertising what came home with me – The potential selling price does not warrant the effort involved to box & ship.

The dust buildup on the projector made me think Dad had probably not used the device since I repaired it 20 years ago. Oddly, although Dad remembered the slides had an irritating tendency to jam, he expressed no thoughts one way or the other about what to do with the medium itself. Between figuring he probably wouldn’t mind seeing the images again, and out of general curiosity, I decided to explore what digitizing the 567 slides would entail so the images could be revisited on a computer instead of a darkened room.

Step one was to investigate a computer accessory which scans photographic negatives into computer-ready digital images I recalled Kim buying for her scrap booking hobby some time ago, but had never used. After reading it would also work with slides, the miniature scanner was hooked up to the computer. Interesting device – It was slow, but did poor work. The slides had to be removed from the carousel and snapped three at a time into a plastic holder. In spite of calibrating the device with its built-in function, every slide fed into it came out looking washed out in the resulting jpeg file. Not the ticket; it was a waste of money in spite of good reviews.

Mr. Google’s top response from ask.com wanted me to place each slide individually on my flat-bed scanner, back-light it with a flashlight, and then scan it. Judging the amount of time & effort required, I decided the answer to someone’s question at that site had been lifted from Dante’s Inferno. The scanner was never even warmed up.

Many helpful Internet entrepreneurs offered to scan the slides for me. But it was going to cost around $200 for the total effort – too much for what I thought might be, at best, no more than casual interest to anyone.

For other reasons, I had also brought Dad’s projection screen back with me. Since Santa gave me a camera tripod last Christmas, I decided to try what amounted to a Kinescope approach to the task wherein the projector and my digital camera work together to acquire the images.


That was the ticket. After the initial setup, the six carousels worth of slides were processed so fast that I hardly had time to look at the flurry of images going past. The slide below of me feeding an elephant gave me pause. Dad had labeled it “Busch Gardens 1971”.

While I remember visiting the attraction, I had not only forgotten about feeding an elephant, I had forgotten they had a zoo.

Between dirt on both the slides and the screen, the images could have turned out a little better. But for a trip down memory lane the results were great.

Plans are to send CDs of the images to the folks, and my brother & sister. Although the Kiwanis Club pictures won’t do much for anyone other than my dad, many of the other images will probably bring back fond memories for my older siblings.

Hopefully one of them will express interest in better quality images. Everything Airequipt is boxed, and waiting for a shipping label.

Mystery Nut Harvest

Many years ago, I was weeding a garden bed, and pulled up a plant still attached to the pecan from which it grew. Thinking it would be really neat {insert flashback to my carefree youth running about the pecan groves in southern Georgia} to have a pecan tree in the yard, the three-inch tall plant was carefully re-potted and placed where it could be easily watered. But within days, the squirrel who had buried the nut in the bed reclaimed it, and I was left with nothing.

My mom told me not to worry about because she was all the time running across pecan saplings in her garden, and promised to bring me one at some point. Some period of time later, she made good on her promise, and presented me with a six-inch sapling which was promptly planted in a corner of the backyard.

All was well for a couple of years until both Aunt Bron and Mother both were visiting, and Aunt Bron expressed strong reservations about the tree actually being a pecan tree as the leaves didn’t look quite right. She leaned more towards it producing hickory nuts when it was old enough. I decided to not worry about it, because ultimately the idea of a nut tree, any nut tree, was okay with me.

In time, the tree started producing nuts, but never that many, and the squirrels hauled them away before I thought about looking at one closer. This year, though, the now 20 foot tall tree was all but overrun with nuts, and last week the nuts were starting to drop on the ground. So it seemed like a good weekend project to finally harvest the mystery nuts.

O’dark thirty Saturday morning, though, found me firing up the Brinkmann to smoke a 12-1/4 pound brisket to feed the company coming over for supper.

But after the sun came up, Jared and I got busy picking up nuts.

Between Google Images & Wikipedia, the tree was finally determined to be a Black Walnut. UC’s publication 8005 agreed now was the time to harvest, and advised me to remove the husks, and let the nut inside dry for a while. The publication also reminded me of what I already knew in the back of my head that walnut juice will stain hands. So after a trip to the store for rubber gloves, I got busy cutting the hulls off.

Between fiddling with the smoker, reading up on nuts, and finally moving the brisket to a 250 degree oven to finish, time was running short on getting the cornbread salad and bread made for the rest of the evening’s meal. So I took a break from hulling and returned to the kitchen.

Cornbread had been made before the brisket claimed the oven, and was cooling before the next step. Bread was next, and I chose to use milk instead of water to get a softer crust.

One nice thing about having an Airstream in the back yard is the extra oven available when different dishes need different cooking temperatures. So the bread was allowed to double in size out in the Airstream while the vintage gas oven preheated.

The Magic Chef oven does a good job with bread.

The brisket turned out looking good in spite of having to be cut in half to fit in the smoker. I’m sure some of my Texas friends could do better, but the crowd liked this one.

Before the afternoon was out, the rest of the walnuts were hulled, and left to dry in the sun.

My friend Dan advised me to pressure wash the nuts after a day or two to get rid of more hand staining chemicals. Up to this point, the nuts had been drying on an old fiberglass window screen which I knew would not stand up to a pressure washer. So a sturdier screened box was made out of 2X4s and rabbit wire.

Here’s the harvest after a go-round at the quarter car wash.

Dan also advised me to let the cleaned nuts dry for a while to allow the meat inside to pull away from the shell. So the brownies will have to wait a little longer.

By the way, I didn’t give up on having a pecan tree in the yard. About seven years ago I found another pecan attached to what I initially thought was a weed and Daniel & I transplanted it to another home. This one I kept inside the house.

The tree was subsequently moved to the front yard around the time we were building Project Big Tub, and is now around 11 feet tall.

Pecan pie & walnut brownies! If only I ate desserts.

Crabapple – The Next Generation?

The first house I lived in as a married man had a rather sickly looking crabapple tree in the front yard. As I had fond memories of growing up with a crabapple tree in the front yard, the hope was that the tree’s health would improve so I would once again have fresh crabapples to... I don’t know. The neighborhood kids & I used to eat and throw them at one another. While there’s nothing like eating an occasional crabapple, I don’t think Kim would much like getting hit by one.

My dog at the time was Buddy, a male pit bull mix, and soon after moving in, part of his routine after being let out of the backyard was to run up and pee on the crabapple tree. At first it bothered me because the tree was probably thinking, “Here I am at death’s door, and look how I’m being treated”. But as time went on, that silly tree actually started looking better. By the time we sold the place, it actually added curb appeal.

I was thrilled when our next/present house was found to have an established crabapple tree in the side yard. Although many people at the time advised me to thin the water sprouts & crossed branches, I did nothing other than trim low-hanging branches. My “do nothing” approach appeared to work well until a few years ago when the tree just did not seem as happy & healthy as it used to. Buddy was no longer with us, and our present female dog Cookie appeared disinclined to follow in his footsteps.

But this year was different. I don’t know if it was due to the unusual weather or what, but the tree both looked good, and produced the most crabapples I have ever seen it produce.


Big, plump tasty ones too. I thought about collecting a few pounds of them, and making a jam or something. But before I could get serious about it, Kim told me she heard a strange noise one night, and looked out to see deer eating crabapples off the lower branches. Deciding that feeding wildlife was a better use of the harvest, my culinary intentions were dropped.

But what if this was the ‘calm before the storm’? The tree is obviously fairly old, and I started worrying that it might have put its energy into one last effort to produce seeds since the end might be near. I’ve read that pine trees do that. So I picked a couple of good candidate crabapples up off the ground, and planted a whole one in one cup, and a halved one in another. The cups were then planted in the front flower bed.

Not more than two days later, the fruit was gone – some varmint had looted the bed.

While annoyed, I was not necessarily surprised. For the next effort, though, I researched how Johnny Appleseed accomplished his goal, and discussed options for my next effort with a noted middle TN Master Gardener (my mom) to ensure the next planting had a reasonable chance of survival.

Five crabapples of different states of ripeness were collected for round II. One was quartered, another was halved, and the remainder left intact. The differing pieces were then buried at various depths in a terracotta pot of special mix.

A few years ago, birds ate up all the watermelon seeds I planted in the ground before the seeds had time to germinate. Deciding the best approach was to start the seeds in individual containers & transplant later, special precautions were taken to protect the seeds.

It worked, but seemed like a little overkill. So the level of physical security was lightened for this effort.

With cold weather approaching, there’s no guarantee the seeds will germinate this season. While I could move the pot inside and hope it gets regular watering, the plan is to leave it in its hole in the backyard, and keep an eye on it. The cool thing about the setup is the elevation – Cookie should be able to help the seedlings out should they appear distressed…

Headline: TVA Lowers Lakes, Tom Scrapes Yard

Glancing through the paper the other day, a filler article reminded me that TVA would lower water levels in different reservoirs on the Tennessee River after Labor Day to accommodate winter and spring flooding. The information in itself was nothing new because they’ve always done that since most people around here consider Labor Day the end of boating season. “Flooding”, though, got my attention.

Looking out the kitchen window, I remembered when this idyllic scene:

Looked even worse than this:


Starting early last year, Alabama has been getting more rain in every season for the first time since we added onto the house around three years earlier. Until early last year, I had not realized how much the house’s addition changed the rain’s existing drain path. Previously, the backyard drained down either side of the house without issue. Between the Big Tub addition and subsequent grading, the bulk of the water is now directed to the Shop side of the house.

The problem was that the runoff was accumulating near the Shop instead of draining on to the side yard. At one point, the water got so deep close to the house that it overflowed the retaining wall protecting the under-house access door, and flooded the house’s ductwork. In another prolonged monsoon, water got so high around one of the Shop’s big doors that the shop flooded. Standing out in several of the rains trying to figure out a solution did nothing more than get me wet. It was time to survey the yard’s elevation.

After laying out a grid of yellow dots in the yard spaced at two-foot intervals, Daniel and I spent some quality time surveying & recording each dot’s elevation. The transit’s relative numbers were then crunched into absolute elevations relative to the fence gate’s drain point (to Daniel’s right in the image above).

Now that I knew where to look for high spots, it was easy to see why water was not draining. To correct it, though, a wide, shallow swathe of topsoil needed to be scratched off. I thought about renting a Bobcat & doing the work myself. But since I wanted it to look good, a landscaping company, found in the Yellow Pages, was asked to come out & take a look.

“L.A.” showed up a day or two later and patiently listened as I waved my arms and talked about Daniel & me shooting elevations. Then I patiently listened after he said “sure – no problem. But…” and went on to try & talk me into a French drain installed across the half-acre backyard. When he saw I was not biting, he then tried to talk me into an outdoor patio kitchen complete with a sink & running water. After sensing no enthusiasm on my part and seeing Cookie run across the yard with her ball, he outlined plans for a glorious koi pond complete with waterfall, “the dog will love it!”

He ended up spending almost two hours at the house suggesting all sorts of supplemental work before we agreed that all he was to do on this visit was to move dirt around while not disturbing my Victory Garden. At one point, I wished I’d just decided to do the work myself. But after watching how much handwork they put into the job, I was happy it was them sweating, and not me.

To their credit, L.A. & crew ran water in all the scraped areas to make sure better drainage paths had been formed.

Cookie enjoyed the king size bed feeling of all the new straw.

While it had not rained in the days prior to the guys coming over, it rained right after they left, and I ended up doing a little shoveling of my own the next day to correct some minor problem areas. Getting grass to grow was now the priority especially before the next rain. The problem was that just about every day has had a temperature of ninety-something degrees, and grass seed requires a much lower temperature in which to germinate.

L.A. had thrown out some generic grass seed before he left, and a lot of it washed out of position during that first night’s rain. Having heard that Pennington Seed’s “Dense Shade Mix” actually grows in dense shade, I bought a bag of it for the shaded areas, a bag of Kentucky-31 fescue for the open areas, and a couple bales of straw to re-seed & re-straw the effort.

Remember the Victory Garden? At first, I thought it was a cucumber plant. Then the fruit started growing in the shape of a watermelon. After a week or so of daily watering to get the grass to grow, then skins of the two remaining fruits started striating like they were going to split. But they didn’t.

Unfortunately, a day or two later, worm holes were found on both fruits. Cutting one open, it appeared to be some sort of melon even though it smelled like a cucumber.

Maybe the bird that left the seed will leave a genus-species tag next time.

Several yards of really good topsoil had to be removed from the flood plain, and I asked L.A. to spread it in two different places where I was having trouble growing grass due to substandard soil. After over a week of daily watering, the good soil spread on the west side of the house has yet to yield a single blade of grass. It’s just too hot, and most of that area is in full sun.

The east side of the lot, though, got covered with much of the first scrape of established grass, and looks pretty good.

In spite of how hot it has been, there is a decent amount of grass growing near the house

…and downstream of the Shop’s big doors.

Between the extra helping of straw and the grass that has grown, the scraped area should be able to handle a gentle rain.

The almanac says summer officially ended yesterday. Today’s high was 94. But, as Yogi would say, “It’s not over till it’s over”. My yard’s ready for cooler weather, though.

I’m glad we’re headed to Disney World next week to give me a break from agitating over growing grass. But if nothing else, I hope I’m now done with standing in the rain watching everything flood.

I love the smell of rubber in the mornin'

Well, that's not exactly what Robert Duvall said, but it's close.

The Mighty Suburban got new Michelins today in preparation of the Disney World trip scheduled for less than two weeks away. As I did before the last set of new tires seven years ago, the appliance-white wheels were repainted.

We be ready now.

Oddly, I really do like the smell of new rubber.

Disney: Here we come!

Smoky Mountains

We spent Labor Day weekend enjoying the Smoky Mountains around Townsend, Tennessee. If I had a Lumex something something 10 camera like my buddy Frank, I probably could have shared a more breath-taking image of the surroundings. But you can get the idea from this one:


Since we were scheduled to hit the campground around supper time, Kim and Jared spent the evening before we left cooking the meat for the evening’s meal beef tacos.

I’m sure the Townsend KOA will win the President’s Award for 2010 when the votes are counted. The place was staffed by friendly people, and was incredibly clean, and well maintained.

In what I thought was a nice gesture, they gave us two bags of popcorn after we checked in. Unfortunately, our Airstream does not have a microwave, and since the bags had no oven directions we opted to bring them home with us.

Our campsite was great in that it had, I believe, the biggest concrete patio area we have ever had. As an added bonus it was only two sites away from both the playground and a bathhouse.

Jared got some serious use out of the playground. The Monkey Bars and Log Roll were particular hits this trip.

We spent part of one day doing touristy stuff taking in the natural beauty of the area. We even saw a black bear at one point.

The bear impressed Daniel until I told him it was a ringer hired by the Park Service to wander around and pose for people like us. He thought about it for a split-second before saying, “Daaad!” Then we all had a good laugh.

There was a creek running behind the campground complete with tadpoles.

Daniel preferred the wonder of electronic games.

The pool was great. It reminded me of when I was in the Swim Club, though, because the water was colder than no one’s business. But the Boyz seemed to enjoy it.

Kim enjoyed catching up on her reading while the Boyz swam.

While there were people out tubing on the creek, we decided they were hardier souls than us because the weather that weekend had been unusually cool at night, and the water seemed to mirror the mid-forty degree temperature my thermometer read the next morning. Since the Boyz still remembered tubing on a different river last year we didn’t feel we were robbing them of a new experience.

We had Tom’s famous chicken roll-ups the night before we left.

It was a great vacation capped with an uneventful ride home. I could wrap it up with that, but I’m sure my Aunt Shirley would be distressed if I were to not give the Burb Report.

You may recall that I’ve had several air conditioning issues lately. Fortunately, the Mighty Suburban’s air conditioner held up during the trip, and still appears to be doing well. I did have something else odd happen with the antique truck that put us on alert for a mile or so. Even as old as it is, the truck’s gas tank has a check-valve to let air in, but keep fumes from getting out. Most of the time, the check-valve does not work because gas can be smelt on occasion when walking near the tank. On long hot trips towing the Airstream, the incredible heat generated by the big engine is strong enough to heat the tank and force the check-valve closed as evidenced by the fill-cap being under pressure when we pull into gas stations. Up till now the annoyance of an occasional whiff of gas has not out-weighed the incredible amount of work required to replace the check-valve.

On the way to Townsend, the weather was in the nineties until we drove into a tremendous downpour. It rained so hard we had to slow down to 45 mph or so for a time. It had been raining for around five minutes when I remarked to Kim that the rain was nice in that it cooled the floor down. A few minutes later, we were within sight of our exit when the Mighty Burb started having trouble. “Fuel issue” popped into my head. I didn’t think it was the fuel pump, though, because we were on relatively level ground and the position of the gas pedal did not seem to influence the issue. As I was sorting the clues, I remembered when my best friend from high school and I would take the Geek Boat out (the name is another story). We had to run on portable, marine fuel cells because the onboard fuel cell rusted out years ago. Invariably, we would launch the boat, fire up the Mercury 80-hp outboard, and blast off only to have the engine sputter & quit after less than a minute of enjoyment. We had forgotten to open the fuel cell vent.

The Burb was acting the same way. But by the time we got off the interstate, the problem cleared itself. But I went ahead and topped-off the over-half-full tank & checked under the hood at the closest gas station. I think the truck’s check-valve stuck shut under the heat load, and the rapid cooling of the tank by the rain created a vacuum which prevented the pump from supplying fuel to the motor. Regardless, we continued the trip without further mechanical incident. “Ride quality”, on the other hand, plagued us the entire way there.

Near the end of last camping season, the Suburban’s steering was acting funny enough for me to take the truck to the tire shop who installed the tires seven years ago. Since the front tires were found to be cupped, I had the guys balance & rotate all four tires in addition to aligning the front end. Other than the cupped tires making more road noise in their new location, the problem was fixed. I later replaced all four shock absorbers.

Over this summer’s course of camping, all had been well until returning from our trip to Stone Mountain a low speed vibration was noticed. Since the tire shop had warned me cupped tires would need more frequent balancing as the cupping wore, so I was not overly concerned.

Leaving the tire shop, while everything was better, unfortunately it was not totally fixed. Knowing the root cause was cupped tires, I continued on home. As I was still in the process of validating the latest air conditioning repair, enough miles were accrued at various speeds without incident to make me think the Mighty Burb was ready for the Smoky Mountain trip - even with nine ounces (over a half-pound) lead weights on the LR wheel.

Unfortunately, due to the weight distributing hitch, the Suburban rides differently with the Airstream in tow, and a vibration showed up at 65 mph – our normal cruising speed. I think the issue bothered Daniel the most because he was in charge of constantly adjusting the camping gear stowed in the back of the truck to keep it from rattling. Before we left the campground, the wheel-of-many-weights was swapped with the spare tire, and we were able to return home with no additional wear & tear on Number 1 son.

I took the wheel back to the tire shop hoping their balancing machine had just had a bad day on the last visit. No such luck – I was standing at the machine when it read out “0.0 ounce needed”. Oh for the days when tire shaving (or “truing”) was common. I called around and could find no one who still had that equipment.

We’ve got a trip planned to Disney World at the start of next month, and the tires will have to be replaced before then instead of at the start of next camping season like I had hoped for. Maybe Michelin will hear about this and send me new tires as a goodwill gesture…