Hilltop Drive

Hilltop Drive
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel

I was blown away by finding this slide in the box that I "organized" when I was a young girl. My grandmother told me to take the slides I wanted to keep and put them aside in a box separate from their cruise and trip pictures.

How smart she was to let me do that! I put this box next to the small bureau I took from my parents house and I really thought it was lost until the spring rainstorm of 2010 this past month flooded my basement. I spied it on the floor and scooped it up.

I sat in a chair in the living room this week and with the non illuminated viewer, I took a look at each and every slide. Some of them I have prints of and some are ones (like this one) that I didn't know existed.

The house to the far left is the house my parents bought in the fall of 1947. I was born in December of 1947. I can't find any slides of my then very pregnant mother. I am not surprised. She was very figure and fashion conscious.

I knew the house was tan when they bought it but they must have painted it gray soon after I was born but it is hard to tell since all the snapshots in the photo box are black and white.

After a few mistakes, I learned to use the Epson Perfection V500 scanner with the slide attachment that I bought this past Christmas. The manual is online and is not very good. It relies on pictures to show users how to set up the scanner. At first, I didn't realize I was supposed to use the "Full Auto Mode" to get the scanner to stop and scan each of the color transparency slides. After figuring that out, I struggled to get the slide facing the correct way. I didn't want to spend my time flipping and rotating each slide.

After capturing them, posting them to my Flickr account, and backing them up to my external hard drive, I wondered how printing them to my Epson Stylus Photo R800 printer would work out. I am pleased to tell you that it was perfect. The colors are excellent for slides so very old.

I am going to mail a print to the folks who lived in the two houses next to my parents. They will be stunned to see their houses looking so new!

Next, I am going to borrow my friend's stand alone slide scanner to see if it is easier and faster than doing this 4 slides at a time. I will report on that process.

The car in the driveway is my mother's car a Ford Phaeton. A very snazzy car for its time. My father is the man standing next to it. The huge black Cadillac is my grandparent's car. My grandfather must be taking the picture. I know they moved in in September 1947 and I think this must be moving day!

If you like to use Google Maps or Google Earth, you can find these houses on Hilltop Drive in Cranston, Rhode Island. My house, which still stands is number 60.