THE PHOTOGRAPHY ROOM....

A man, Arthur Speer, was a photographer for the Naval War College in Newport, R.I.  and he was a friend of my mother.

Mr. Speer as we kids called him… (no child called an adult by his or her first name in my mother’s household.. unless that so chosen person told us, they referred it)  Anyway, Mr. Speer took some great pictures.. There are several of which he took of my mother on her different horses… or with me and the dog with her.. 

My mother fell in love with not only the taking of pictures BUT also developing them.  And Mr. Speer taught her.

At first it was pretty weird to see my mother and Mr. Speer disappear into the bathroom..with threats of death if we open that door.  Had I been older, I might have thought they were having an affair.. but looking back now.. …nah. Mr. Speers was an old gentleman..

A year or so later, I GOT TO GO IN… to see the mystery of life of developing pictures.. It was wild.. eye opening, mouth dropping at first.  She would do some stuff. And then she would drop this white piece of paper into this water stuff….and BAM!!!! A picture would appear.. it was AMAZING…  I helped her a couple of times. But then my brother helped her..  Don’t know why neither one of us decided to do that for a living.. as that was before all the new do dads.. And we both were totally amazed by it.   

Oh, just for the record.. yes, we did open the door a couple of times.. by accident.. I swear it was by accident.

Also this was before color developing.. I remember Mom having a small kit that had colors in it.. and she would paint them the colors she wanted.. like she knew the color of the shirt she had on, so she colored it.. or the horse color and etc.