Studio711.com – Ben Martens

This photo shows all of the cousins on the Martens side of the family at Labor Day in 1983. Does anybody know why we were wearing hats? Ryan and I have birthdays around that time so maybe we were celebrating?

Earlier this week we ate brats. I told Tyla that every time I eat brats, I think about Great Grandma Hinkle eating brats. I don’t know why it sticks in my head. I just remember her being very proper and not being sure about the brats but carefully eating them with a fork and knife. I was also recently telling Tyla one of the few memories I have of Great Grandpa. He was helping me blow bubbles and somehow I sucked in instead of blowing out. Bubble juice does not taste good!

So when I was looking back through old photos for one to post today, this seemed like a good choice. Great Grandpa Hinkle died when I was pretty young, but Great Grandma lived until I was in college. They were wonderful people!

As I flipped back through the batch of 1981 photos, I found this one which reminded me of when I leave for work. Tyla and Elijah are usually at the front window waving goodbye to me.

Elijah seems very eager to walk. As I hold his hands and walk him around the house, I think about how I learned to walk. I obviously don’t remember it, but Dad and Mom tell me that Grandpa Martens came to visit and spent most of his visit helping me learn how to walk. I wish he was here to see Elijah learning!

This was one of my favorite jobs! Dad and Mom bought this tractor the year I was born and they’re still using it today. The keen observer will notice in the background that the area between our property and the golf course hadn’t been cleared away when this photo was taken. The trees are a lot bigger now too!

Growing up, my parents usually developed their film into slides. We’d gather around the projector and share memories of our trips. It’s a fun way to experience the photos, but it’s not nearly as convenient as today’s digital format.

Mom decided to protect these memories by scanning them in. That was a monumental task. By the time it was done, she had looked through 4500-5000 slides and scanned in 3320 of them. She estimates that she put about 50 hours of work into the project. It’s not exactly exciting work either! While it’s fun to see the photos, most of your time is spent putting a new slide into the scanner and then waiting for it to scan. This is her pile of slides:

I can’t say thank you enough to Mom for doing this work! Now that they are digital (and because we back up!), these photos will be preserved forever. Imagine how neat it would be to look back at this many photos from your ancestors in the 1800s or even earlier. The family genealogy hobby is going to go through some massive changes in the next century.

To celebrate this new wealth of photos, I’m going to start “Throwback Thursday”. Every Thursday I’ll pick a photo out of the ones she scanned in and tell a little story about it. This first photo comes from my 4th birthday. One thing I remember about my birthdays is that Mom made incredible birthday cakes! As a parent, I look back on that and have no idea how she found the time. This was the first cake that I have memories of. Cake covered with candy? Brilliant!