Photo stash memories of past holidays

I feel like I got my holiday gift a few months early. Like back in July.

It was this summer that one of my cousins, Lora Ann who now has a life in Arizona, gave to all of us in the family the digital copies she made of her mother’s photo albums – thereby sharing with us decades of family images.

My grandmother hard at work at Christmas-time

INCLUDING ONE THAT is particularly relevant this time of year. It is a photograph of my maternal grandmother, Socorro Vargas, working in her kitchen. Her fingers are a complete mess, and the table she’s working at is covered in corn husks.

Because mi abuela appears to have been hard at work making a batch of tamales – as in that delicacy that will be the basis of many a Christmas holiday meal for families with a touch of Mexican-American in them.

This photo is particularly intriguing to me because my earliest memories of Christmas celebration include going to Grandma’s house in the South Shore neighborhood on Christmas Eve (they'd moved from South Chicago by that point in life), and having a dinner that centered around dozens of tamales.

My grandfather, the real chef?

Literally many dozens, because there were eight kids (including my mother) in the family, along with all the spouses and next generation of kids (my cousins) who were present. I’m sure it was many hours of hard work to prepare the meal – because tamales aren’t an easy dish to make.

JUST ONE LITTLE thing goes off in preparing the masa that is the base of the tamale, and you wind up with an inedible mess.

Looking at that photograph makes me wonder how exhausted my grandmother must have been after she was finished with that particular batch of tamales. And also that I probably didn’t truly appreciate the level of work that went into preparing that meal that now is amongst my most pleasant of childhood holiday memories.

There is one potential flaw in this story. I know my mother always insisted that when it came to Christmas tamales, it was my grandfather, Michael Vargas, who did the work.

The family to be fed (my mother at far left)

Some guys insist on perceiving themselves as master chefs during the summer when it comes to dredging up the barbecue grill and flipping a few burgers. My grandfather supposedly took charge of that holiday meal.

ALTHOUGH I DON’T doubt my grandmother put in some work too. It was her kitchen, and I don’t think she’d have easily surrendered control of it.

Anyway, a Christmas tamale meal isn’t something I have had in years. At least not of the image of a family matriarch slaving away in the kitchen for a full day just to feed us all.

One of the quirks of the complex process of making tamales is that it is something that was NOT passed along to other family members. My mother always insisted it was too much hard work, and we could always just go to a Mexican-oriented grocery around the holidays and buy a couple dozen tamales already made.

Uncle Spinx, letting loose at a past New Year celebration

Which is something my brother and I used to do so we could have a tamale taste – usually as a meal for one day, with the other day of the Christmas holiday centering around a ham or some other “American”-oriented dish.

AS FOR THIS year, I don’t know what I’m doing for a holiday meal. Particularly since there’s now a Jewish element to the family celebrations, and there are some of us who are “holiday’ed” out from Hanukkah and all the latkes – of which there are still a few dozen sitting in the refrigerator.

But going through my Aunt Connie’s photo albums at my own leisurely pace is proving to be a nice treat. Particularly when I got to the photographs of my Uncle Spinx (Lora Ann’s father) partying it up at many New Year’s celebrations past.

Returning the holiday greetings

Although the ultimate chuckle is the shot of my uncle as part of an all-“girl” dance troupe. While the ultimate sweet moments are the photos I now have of my mother, Jenny, as a young girl.

And to mi prima Lora Ann for providing me with all these images. I hope my cousin will have a Merry Christmas as well.

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What becomes of old family photos? Do we wither away into history?

It was recently that I attended a party when one of my cousins gave her brother what might appear to be an odd gift – a giant frame containing more than a dozen family photographs.

My father (right), uncles and aunt as kids at Riverview

Before one presumes this is a home-made gift with meaning, consider that the people in those photos are someone else’s family.

FOR IT SEEMS this cousin found these framed photos at a second-hand store, and she bought it because my other cousin apparently has an interest in the way people pose for those shots meant to preserve the family for posterity.

Particularly in the older days, but he also enjoys a contemporary shot or two as well.

Now that night, we were going back and forth having fun mocking this off-the-wall holiday gift, for it seems the family in the photographs is Filipino (or maybe Chinese, the captions written on the back of the photos were sort of vague). Such as the idea that when my cousin turns old and begins to suffer from dementia, he’s going to presume THESE people are his family.

Bye Bye to all of us!

BUT IT DOES have me wondering what should we really expect to happen to all of those alleged family mementos – particularly since nothing truly lasts forever. And there’s always the possibility that some knucklehead down the road will decide these “mementos” are little more than trash taking up space.

My maternal grandparents upon birth of twins (my mother's the baby on right)

That seems to be what happened to this particular family’s photographs – which were nicely framed and organized in a way that you literally could follow this woman’s story from being a Filipino immigrant to the graduation of her grandchildren.

Somebody’s life became someone else’s space-taking nuisance. Is that what is destined to happen to all of us?



My paternal grandparents in front of their (then) new home

Perhaps I’m thinking this too deeply because, with the death of my brother not long ago, I wound up becoming the family member in possession of the old family photographs.

WHICH NOT ONLY document my own childhood and that of my brother, but also contain the shots that were taken throughout the lives of my father and mother during their respective childhoods.

In fact, I know one of the things I was able to do to make my father happy in the days following the death of his other son was to give him some five dozen prints of photographs from his own childhood that had somehow passed down to us.

My father and Uncle John (my mother's twin)

I know he’s planning on taking actions meant to preserve those photographs – some of which already have had some significant fading and deterioration (what with being five or six decades old by now).

But what happens after that? What happens if the day comes when this big, clunky photo album that my now-late mother started to put together when I was a baby winds up being stray stuff.

DOES IT WIND up being put up for sale in a second-hand shop as a potential antique? Or worse yet, in one of those landfills near Pontiac where much of Chicago’s trash winds up these days!

It would be all too easy for me to see how such a scenario could happen – even though I’m sure someone is going to retort that by such a time, I would be deceased and it wouldn’t really matter to me any longer.

Me, with my Uncle Art, when I had a whole life ahead of me

So perhaps some of these old photographs ought to be seen now, what with the idea that I could at least try to pass along their significance.

Otherwise, they could all become just dusty images that wind up being someone else’s conversational piece before they move along to more “revelant” topics such as the weather or whether the Chicago Cubs will manage to go two full centuries without winning a World Series title.

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Is Chicago a tyrant for wanting to ban the taking of up-skirt images & video?

It is an argument I hear occasionally from people with conservative beliefs on social issues – the problem with government trying to regulate our lives is that every time they pass a new law, they manage to steal another piece of our freedom.

Protecting us from perversion? Or hurting our rights?

As though the theoretical version of paradise is no government, and people having the ability to do whatever they want without risk of prosecution.

OF COURSE, THE more rational of individuals realize that government serves as the balancing act, of sorts, to ensure that one person’s pleasure isn’t someone else’s horror.

That certainly is what will be at stake when the City Council meets on Wednesday and includes among their activity a measure meant to protect the women of Chicago (and those ladies who choose to visit our fair city) from having their most private parts placed on the Internet for perverts of the world to view.

It got some ridicule and derision last week when a council committee reviewed an ordinance that includes up-skirt photographs and images among the list of things that can be considered an invasion of privacy.

Some may want to think that this is political people getting worked up over a non-issue. Others may actually think it is their right to take pictures up the skirts of women who happen to catch themselves in a moment of indiscretion.

ACTUALLY, IT’S ABOUT taking into account the fact that some people who try to get these pictures are of the approach that they’re somehow entitled to make some money off of someone else’s exposure.

These are the people to whom I want to scream, “Get a Job, you Loser!!!!” Of course, they probably think the rest of us are “suckers” for working for a living.

Aldermen in recommending the measure pointed out the fact that these up-skirt pictures that will soon become a criminal act have value for the people who take them.

Sure enough, look up “Chicago upskirt” on a search engine and you’ll find a string of websites that feature video snippets and still photographs that seem to be taken by people who hang around underneath staircases (think “el” trains and the stairs leading to lower Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive) with cameras ready.

PERSONALLY, I FELT a tad sleazy looking at these images, which seem to grasp the attention of those amongst us who get a rise out of a few seconds glimpse of panties – or no panties in some cases.

Then again, being in the news-gathering business, most of the up-skirt shots I have seen in my lifetime were those taken by photographers at basketball games who happened to be positioned near the cheerleaders. The pursuit of the perfect view of a player stuffing a ball also produces the occasional shot of a cheerleader with her skirt flopping up over her waist.

Those, of course, become images that never actually make the newspaper.

Personally, I feel a bit stupid that our City Council is compelled to have to pass an ordinance on this issue. It ought to be a common-sense idea that taking pictures up a woman’s skirt without her consent is downright creepy.

THEN AGAIN, WE have a society with some fairly creepy elements. Let’s hope we’re able to get this particular measure approved by the aldermen without anyone making some sort of stink that claims supporting the would-be photographers amounts to “freedom” and the “American way.”

But I’m also realistic enough to know that some people will try to find a loophole to try to get around it.

What happens on windy days when a sudden gust blows a woman’s skirt up in public and we get the perfect glimpse of her panties? Will we now get would-be photographers whipping out their camera-equipped phones in search of the “money shot?”

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And here I just got a new smart phone that supposedly has a quality camera

On the one hand, I happen to believe that anybody who feels the need to whip out their portable phone to use the built-in camera to take pictures of anything that happens to capture their fancy is engaging in pretty insipid behavior.

My new 'toy,' and soon I'll have a restriction



Then again, I do believe people have a right to act in ways that are stupid. It’s their choice.

WHICH IS WHY I can’t help but think that a bill now pending before Gov. Pat Quinn is such a gross overreaction. I don’t see the need to codify the fact that anybody who feels the need to pull out their portable camera and take pictures of an accident scene is being insipid.

The bill in question got its final vote of approval in the General Assembly on Monday. The Illinois House backed a measure making it illegal for any automobile driver to make a call with their portable phone within 500 feet of an auto accident scene where emergency vehicles have flashing lights.

It also would be illegal for people to send pictures and video messages while driving their cars – regardless of whether there’s an auto accident occurring nearby.

In theory, there is an exemption that allows someone in a car to pull out their cell phone and make a call to report the emergency situation. But I can’t help but think that if there are ambulances and police squad cars around the area with their lights flashing, it means they’re already aware of the accident.

SO WHERE’S THE real exemption?

Personally, I would never feel compelled to whip out my phone to snap a picture of an auto accident I happened to drive past – even though the Nokia Lumia smart phone I got just last week (my old Blackberry completely died) supposedly has as one of its selling points a higher-quality camera than most hand-held phones have.

Whenever I see people walking down the street feeling the need to suddenly snap a picture of something that they randomly encountered in life, all too often I can’t help but think it’s such a waste of time.

I usually don’t think to say anything, figuring it’s their business what they do – or what they choose to clutter up their phones’ memory with. So I can sort of see the idea of a law addressing these situations.

IT’S JUST THAT this bill seems like such overkill – even if its backers claim their concern is reducing the chance of someone causing yet a second accident because they were paying too much attention to the first one they were trying to shoot pictures of.

Besides, a part of me can’t help but wonder if this is someone trying to come up with yet another law making it a sordid act to take pictures of police in action.

We already have those laws that make video without police permission a potential felony, and it is a good thing that the courts have shown themselves to be hostile toward the idea of enforcing the letter of that law!

Does somebody really fear that somebody is going to capture a moment on digital that might make law enforcement conduct at an accident scene look less than honorable? An embarrassing moment caught for posterity (or at least until the camera owner gets bored with the shot and deletes it)!

WE HAVE SERIOUS problems confronting our state Legislature. I’d like to see some effort put by our politicians into addressing them.

So while I understand that our legislators are capable of addressing many issues at once, I can’t help but wonder how much brain matter that could have gone into balancing a budget or properly funding Medicaid or pensions got put into addressing the “scourge” of those handheld phone cameras snapping shots of police milling around an accident scene?

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