January 20 was my father’s birthday. He would have been 98 years old.
I have his baby picture.
Richard Funk
Rural Ohio, 1922Ohio
Well, it seems I have almost all his pictures — hundreds, if not thousands of photos. And a part of me feels I need to save them all. The semi-sensible part knows that’s not going to happen. Why? Because scanning photographs takes a lot of time.
I didn't realize how much time until I actually started doing the work. After several months of scanning negatives, transparencies, and entire photo albums I've barely scratched the surface. I am talking thousands and thousands of photographs. And these are the good ones — the ones with meaning, the ones someone thought enough about to choose to be included in THE photo album (with a caption).
Any normal person would look at the task I had given myself only to describe it as "crazy-work". Who's going to look at those old photos? And why?
Those are fair questions, honey.
Louis W. Funk mowing lawn in Ohio.
I started thinking about this after my father died in 2016 when I realized the Funk line-up is about to run its course.
I’m about to turn 66 and I have no grandkids, yet. And even if grandkids were to appear in the next few years would I be around when they asked the tough questions: “Who’s that skinny man pushing the lawn mower in his Sunday best: sweater, tie, and cigar?”
I’d answer, “That’s my grandpa. Cigars and mowing seem to run in the family.”
My wife’s father once said that he wished he’d listened more attentively to his mother’s tales about the Irish rebellion and the family’s connections to the Dublin cooper trade which not only supplied the barrels for both Guinness and Jamison but lead directly to the birth of his family. He was in his middle 80s at the time and was acknowledging the arrogance of youth and his version of “OK, Boomer” which allowed him to tune out mom. I mean, how many times is mom gonna tell that story? Right?
While my own side of the family had nothing to do with the Irish Rebellion, I since learned that my German mother’s family tree also had bunghole makers on it. And why is that not surprising? The barrel was the Amazon Box of its day and the reason stuff could be shipped anywhere in the world. And making barrels paid well enough.
Did he say bunghole? Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh.
But I digress.
In the end, I decided to take a page from Ken Burn’s book by approaching the images stored in my closet with a documentarian’s point of view. In other words, these photographs aren’t just family photos at the holidays or random untitled shots of what they ate for breakfast in 1923, these images represent more than a century of history and photography which includes life on a farm, life in the city, life during war, life after war, family, friends, fashion, cars, pets, etc.
Dad and son 1923-24.
By approaching my inheritance as a documentarian, I hope that I can tell a story that even my fantasy 60-year-old grandchildren one day would enjoy when their kids get curious about such things.
At the very least, maybe they’ll just get a kick out of seeing that their family tree is full of kooks just like them. Maybe after seeing their grandpa 3-times removed mowing the grass in his Sunday best they’ll utter the family motto: “Who’s up for a mow?”