While my Portland friend Curtis Daily was here, I told him that the only record I had of the fact that my father was a writer/journalist in the 40s in Buenos Aires was his King James Bible with half his signature. I will never know why half the page is torn out.
Thanks to Daily I showed him my many other books that were re-bound by a Frenchman called Millioud. What I found out today as I write this is that the only record of Millioud in Mexico City is my blog.
When I showed Daily one particular book, Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens I found my father’s signature complete!
I have written before that in the late 80s I went to Buenos Aires and met up with the then editor of the Buenos Aires Herald where my father had worked. The editor told me that I would not find any articles by my father in their files as journalists were not given a by-line before the 50s.
Whenever I go to my guest bathroom I always gaze on the photograph of my father as a little boy. Like him I was a blond boy but by the time I was 8 I lost it and became a dark brown one. In Argentine Spanish my eyes and hair were identified as castaño, chestnut in Spanish.
It is quite obvious that in the latter days of December I have lots of time to reflect of my past. My Rosemary always told me that I did too much of this. She is not around to further comment that as I go down and up the stairs (the walls are full of framed family photographs) and when I sit in the living room or gaze at the walls in my bedroom when I am in bed, I am hit by memories that I cannot blur. This is particularly the case as I remember the incident behind my taking those photographs.
Because I am not famous, like Millioud, what will be left of my life and his will be my blogs if my daughters find a way of making it “permanent”.
As I get older the idea of legacy becomes irrelevant.
I have to point out to photographic audience that mostly ignores me on the virtues of having a good Epson scanner. When I started blogging in 2006 (6776 of them including this one) I was able to use the scanner as a tabletop camera. The illustration for this blog is a good example.
