The Greatest Gift

No, I'm not talking about some spiritual, inspirational mumbo jumbo.

I'm not even talking about Steak & Blow Job Day.

I'm talking about the coolest present I ever got.

Well, wait, I take that back.

The absolute coolest present I ever got was my Logitech Harmony H659 Universal Remote that my girlfriend got me because she loves me so much!


Oh yeah, baby!! I want to watch TV? I just press the button that says "Watch TV", shit starts coming on and I'm watching TV. I decide I want to watch a DVD? I just push the button that says "Watch a movie" and the TV shit switches off, the DVD stuff switches on and the CD drawer glides open like my ex-wife's legs at Happy Hour.

But I digress.

I was talking about what I guess is actually the Second Greatest Gift I ever got.

Many years ago my mom gave me two really cool Christmas presents. Now normally, our exchange of Christmas gifts involves a lot of whatever was in the clearance aisle at Dollar General on Christmas Eve. We eat, we swap cheap gifts and we say goodbye till next year. Whole process takes less than two hours.

So anyway, I open these two packages and this is what they contained


Two boxes of Glass Plate Negatives.

For those of you who don't know, between 1880 and as late as WWII, glass plate negatives were pretty much state of the art in photography. The plates themselves were 4" x 5" putting them in what we would call medium format today. A much larger negative surface than the 35mm negatives. That means they can capture a LOT more detail.

My mom knew I was into photography and I have my own darkroom. She found these at some old antique store/flea market in Excelsior Springs and thought I might like them.

So without even knowing what was on them, this was really fucking cool! I couldn't wait to herd the family out the door and head for the darkroom to see what was on these bad boys.

Now, my 2nd hand Omega enlarger works just fine for 35mm. But I don't have a negative carrier big enough to handle a 4x5 glass plate. So must of these images are "contact prints". That means that I just layed the 4x5 negative flat on a piece of 5x7 photo paper and exposed it. I had to really play with the exposure, contrast, filters and do a bit of burning and dodging sometimes, but I was pretty amazed by what I had.

They all seem to date from around the turn of the last century (early 1900s) and they all seem to be taken in the general Clay County area. That was verified by a gentleman at the Clay County Historical Society when he verified my suspicion that these first three photos were taken on the grounds of the old International Order of Odd Fellow (I.O.O.F.) Home for the Aged here in Liberty. That's that big old brick mansion looking place just to the east of 291 just south of 33. See if you recognize it. (click on the photos to embiggen!)





The other evidence that these were taken in the area in the early 1900s was the next five pictures which were all taken up at Watkins Mill at one of the annual fox hunts sponsored by the Missouri Vally Foxhunters Association.







One of my favorite photos of the lot was this next one. It was taken in winter, the ground was covered in icy snow, a couple of guys are cutting blocks of ice out of the pond in the background as three women dressed in black move off to the left. There is just something eerie and haunting about this image that I really like.


But a lot of them were just pictures taken of family members around a rural home.






Now, since that last image contained a lot of sheep, I should probably step in here and just let Faith know that this next picture is NOT some primitive, rural sex swing. Sometimes, Faith, a swing is just a swing.


This next picture just proves to me that people took recreational drugs in the early 1900s. Either that, or "avant garde" meant something different back then. Take a look at this.


You have a woman holding a baby next to a man with a push mower. To the right is a mother and child standing next to a man holding a guitar. Now look at the perspective. Who ever set up this bizarre pose with the musician and the groundskeeper seemed to think that the only way to capture the mood was to lie down in the leaves and dirt to take the shot.

What. The. Fuck?!?

Of all the pictures in the collection, it is the next one that haunts me the most. This young girl standing outside her home.


I can't remember exactly how I did it, but I managed to get enough of the glass plate into my negative carrier to zoom in on this girl and make a nice enlargement. This is a good example of just how much detail was captured on these old glass plates.


Click on the photo and look at the big version. You can count her freckles. You can almost read the inscription on the locket around her neck.

Who was this girl? Did she grow up and get married? Have kids? Does she have descendants who still live in the area?

I'll probably never know.

I've been looking for more of these glass plates ever since, but haven't been able to find any. I'll keep looking.