Kodachrome

KODACHROME | POPPY | PHOTOGRAPHS

I recently went to my grandparent’s house in Dungannon, Virginia, and stumbled upon an old metal box of Kodachrome slides. Introduced by Eastman Kodak in 1935 and discontinued in the early 2000s, Kodachrome film was one of the first available for color photography. Many argue it still ranks in the top for best picture, as far as color photography goes. It was available in multiple different formats and was, at the time, somewhat difficult to process. Perhaps shot with an Argus A, these 35mm (2” by 2”) transparencies were predominately used in the 1960s and 1970s.

Luckily, @MohsinKazmiTakesPictures is a photographer and had a device that would take the old slides and convert them to digital files. Glory unfolded. We sat on the couch, giggling in awe as we “developed” each picture.

It was giving me a glimpse of a man and a time period I didn’t recognize, could have only imagined. These photos told a story of my grandfather in his 20s and 30s. Images power understanding and draw perspective to what your imagination creates. Here are a few of the photos we developed that day:

My dad’s dad, Poppy, took all of these pictures.

Poppy and I spent some time on his and Nana’s 100-acre farm when I was younger. We picked blackberries each Summer and wiggled into caves I know we shouldn't have been in. I learned about native plants and their uses. We skipped pebbles in the Clinch, a local river that meets up with the property in, what we affectionately call, ‘the bent.‘ “Tastes Like Hard Love” by Ben Gilmer (available on Spotify) makes reference to this river. We often walked until he had to carry me. He’s one of the reasons I love to be outside. Maybe THE reason I love to be outside.

He also taught me how to drive stick. We would take off down back roads in his old Ford truck, long before I was old enough to drive, leaving behind a house full of canning steam. I would stall almost every minute or two. He never fussed, made me keep trying. “It’ll be all right,” he’d say, “you gotta learn somehow.”

Telling stories was Poppy’s forte. You could wash two loads of clothes and cook dinner by the time a story was finished BUT after it was over, you’d probably say, “Now Poppy, there’s no way that’s true.” From world travel stories in the Navy, to hitchhiking from Florida, to getting robbed in New York City, to almost getting the biggest buck Southwest Virginia has ever seen, these tall tales are what made Poppy, Poppy.

I gave my grandfather’s eulogy in January of 2016. We found this box of pictures in 2018. Maybe these tales weren’t so tall after all?

These stories were most certainly real in the mind of a young girl who would grow up loving the mountains, developing an understanding of Southwest Virginia that only someone from here can truly understand, grasping hard realities made seemingly simple, and watching as people showed me time and time again just what this forgotten place could do.