From 1954 to 1959 my family lived in a house on Darling Avenue in New Rochelle, New York, about as 50's and as suburban of a neighborhood as you could wish for. My folks had a 16mm home movie camera which they did not use much or well. Over the course of nearly a decade a grand sum of 35 minutes of film was shot intermittently with little cinematic skill. In particular, my mother had a habit of decapitating people with the viewfinder. Nevertheless for me it is a precious window back into time where I can see my parents and grandparents, all younger then than I am today and all gone now, and I can revisit my youth.
I returned to the neighborhood to have a look in 2007 when I was on the East Coast. I went with some trepidation. Fifty years had made quite a difference. Trees had grown and so had the houses and no one had ever heard of the McDonalds or anyone else from back in the day. But my heart was warmed to see how nice the place had become and the ghosts were kind.
7 май 2011
