While wandering through a thrift shop I spotted an interesting looking metal box. The box contained a dozen slide carriers, each of the slide carriers was mostly full of Kodachrome slides. The images looked like they were taken yesterday. There were some around-the-house family shots in the collection, but what caught my attention were the travel slides. So, I decided to buy someone else’s old vacations slides for ten bucks.
Other than getting a small glimpse inside of an upper-middle class mid-century home, there was little of interest in the family photos. The travel photos, however, were of places which still draw visitors from around the world. The collection contains photos from Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California.
Click on an image to see the full slide.
I found the slide collection in Ohio, but the family photos suggested that they may have actually came from Michigan. The family had a well-stocked bar in the basement of their flat-roofed midcentury modern home. In one photo there is a sign near the bar which says, “The Michigan Liquor Control Commission has suspended the license of this establishment.” In another there is a sign in the shape of a Dachshund with Frankenmuth written on it. The sign depicts Frankie the Dachshund from the Frankenmuth Brewery.
It looked as if these slides belonged to a retirement aged couple who may have been on the roadtrip with another couple. I tried to determine the camera on which the slides were shot, but there was nothing to help identify it. There is one photo of the photographer’s friend holding an Argus Match-Matic C3. It’s a long shot, but maybe they both had Michigan made cameras.
