My attempts to avoid any graphical design on this blog went out the window last night when I fired up the scanner and started playing historical preservationist by running a stack of old family photos through the machine.
I came across an awesome horizontal panorama shot of Cotuit Bay taken around the turn of the century before the summer folks trashed the place and the village was a working port. This shot was taken, I assume, from the current site of Conrad Geyser’s organic garden looking east towards Osterville’s Grand Island (now some of the world’s most expensive real estate known as Oyster Harbors). The wharves and docks in the foreground are just stubs in the mud today, the old sloops and skiffs are long gone. Today this is a crowded mess of plastic boats and McMansions.
I live about 500 feet away. Here is a shot of my great uncle Thomas Fisher, a MIT civil engineer who I named my youngest son, Fisher, after. He’s sitting on what looks like an early version of the Cotuit Skiff. This shot was taken on the same beach as the panorama in the header graphic. right about where the “O” in “.com” is.
Over the years all the photo albums have been divvied up and spread to the winds. I’m issuing a challenge to all siblings and relatives that if they give me their old photos I’ll give them back a DVD stuffed with ALL of the the collection. One well meaning person, to my horror, has been trimming old photos to fit into frames. ARRRGGGGH! This stuff is priceless, at least to me and my family.
