Family Album | Melanie Anne Phillips

NOTES:

In 1972 we took a second road trip across the country, this time all the way to New York City and back to L.A. Bill was going to come on the trip, but we had a car accident and had to postpone a couple weeks for repairs, but he had other plans for that part of the summer.

This trip included my mom’s home town of Chicago and visiting relatives there, as well as seeing where my dad grew up in New York state.

NOTES:

In 1971 I was given my first 35mm camera by my parents as a high school graduation present. I put it to immediate use, joyfully! Took picture of the family, of visits to various places, friends, pets, and landscapes.

That year, we took a road trip vacation out to Colorado and back and my friend, Bill Krasner came along, so a lot of these pictures are from that trip.

Here are some specific notes from the top of the gallery on down.

Darlene is a cousin some degrees removed. The Sklenars are one branch of the family, down through my grandfather’s aunt, I believe. I’m still in touch with her today on Facebook. She and I are almost the same age and after last seeing each other just about when these pictures were taken, we reconnected some 40 years later online. Both our families are into our Slovak/Polish heritage, so we share the family receipe for Kolachi – that wonderful spiral pastry filled with nuts or poppy seed paste, most often. In fact, she wrote down the family recipe for my mom, who had it laminated that year. I still remember my grandmother making it around the holidays – a very special treat.

My Aunt Toots was my grandmother’s sister. They all hailed from Chicago and all came out after WWII to California. My grandparents had been married in Chicago back in 1926 and my mom was born in 1927. Aunt Toots had a previous marriage, but when she came out with my grandparents, she was married to Uncle Bunn (Bernard, though nobody called him that). Aunt Toots’ actual name was Henrietta, but nobody called her that either. She was a great wit, full of energy, and my mom’s best friend back in Chicago. Many tales I could tell that were told to me, and I will, in time, as time permits.

I can’t recall how Bill Krasner and I met. In high school? In Scouts? Dunno. But he and I quickly became best friends, and, after losing track of each other for a couple of decades, have reconnected a year and change ago on Facebook and still share the same chemistry we had back in the day. Much more to say here too, but I’ll save it for other pictures to be posted at other times.

The Millers were old family friends of my mom and my natural father, John Phillips. Seven years after their divorce right after I was born, my mom remarried my step-dad, Bob, who she met in little theater here in Burbank. At that time, the friendship with the Millers continued and we saw them every few months for an outing or a camping trip. Matt, the dad, was a biology teacher in high school during the school year, and a ranger in the national parks over the summer. In 1971 he had been in Rocky Mountain National Park for several years, and we visited them there on our road trip vacation. Steve was just a year older than me, and as little kids we had kicked around whenever our families got together. We didn’t have much chemistry, though, and yet it was through him I heard about Ansel Adams, became really interested in camping out and in the history of the Sierra and John Muir, and even heard Simon and Garfunkel’s album, Bridge over Troubled Water, for the first time on the Miller’s new speed-fine tuning turntable that used a stroboscopic light to get the dots on the side of the turn table in sync for the perfect speed for playing back. I don’t have many pictures of him, so I’ll be a little longer here, knowing I wont have much of a chance later. He introduced me to the music of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and his music composition on the guitar and his whole John Denver approach to life inspired me to take up the instrument myself, in addition to the piano. He had quality replicas of old hand muskets on the walls of his room, and build a model of a fort with his dad out of sugar cubes. I was always a bit envious of how well he knew the history of the mountains and embraced the outdoors. And his mom was always involved in some social organization such a church charity group or the PTA. There. That’s a bit about Steve. Oh, and he also formed a Man From U.N.C.L.E. club based on the TV series. I as big time into it. Robert Vaughn played Napoleon Solo, so Steve’s club spy name was Duke Quartet, and I was Caesar Quintet.

The rest of the pictures are rather self-explanatory, and though I have a lot of stories I could tell about many of them, that also is for another time when I’ll post individual pictures from this gallery with more extensive commentary, should I live long enough to do so. Meanwhile, this is all you get.