I recently wrote and posted a video about my grandfather's collection of slides, home movies and film projection and editing equipment that my cousins gave me (see November 24, 2021, "Grandpa's Film Archive: Opening Scene"). Today I will provide a a more detailed look at the trove.
Looking through the items, the first thing I learned about my grandfather, Al Bogert, that I didn't already know was that he was damn good at record keeping. He was my mother's father, and he died in 1986 when I was 21 years old. I only saw him a few times a year at best, as my grandparents lived in New Jersey, and I grew up in Connecticut.
The first item I looked at more closely was the small filing cabinet drawer, which is jam-packed with index cards.
"Is there a card for each film reel in the collection?!" I wondered out loud. I thumbed through the cards filed behind the BASEBALL heading. There's one for my great-uncle, Bill Lohrman, who pitched nine seasons in the big leagues, on teams including the Philadelphia Phillies, the New York Giants, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds.
There's also one for Carl Hubbell, a Hall of Fame pitcher who wheeled and dealed alongside my great-uncle for the Giants from 1928 to 1943.
"Am I sitting on lost footage that could have some value to hardcore baseball fans?" I thought to myself.
There were plenty of other headings that intrigued me. RODEO + THRILL CIRCUS, for instance.
I've been to one rodeo -- during my honeymoon in Jackson Hole in 1997 -- and had a great time. I've been to a few circuses, and always had fun. I also thoroughly enjoyed the Joie Chitwood Thrill Show when I was a teenager, at the Big E in West Springfield, Mass. I love that my grandfather was into that same kind of stuff!
There are dozens of reels of film, of varying sizes, in the crates that my cousin gave me. I realized I needed to prioritize things to get digitized, in order to share with friends and family. Looking more closely at the trove of films, I realized that, contrary to what I initially thought, they're not all things my grandfather shot with his camera. For instance, there is official NASA footage of the Apollo 11 mission.
I've love to see that moon-landing footage! More important, though, is the reel labeled, "1955 VACATION TRIP WITH JOAN." I believe that's the trip that my mother took with my grandparents out West. There is also a reel indicating that my sister, Beth, and my cousin Gail (who handed over all of these great treasures), are featured. There is also one labled "BEHMS," which is the name of a farm my mother and her parents used to visit during summer vacations in upstate New York.
(There are actually two reels of that Western vacation.)
In addition to the old movie reels, there is a box of my grandfather's slides.
My cousin Wayne's daughter, Rachel, had some slides digitized a number of years ago. I have copies of some of those on a thumb drive. I'm guessing that at least some of the ones in this box, however, are ones I don't have.
Other items include a projector and a film editing/splicing rig. The thing that has really captivated me, though, is a Steno pad in which my grandfather chronicled his day-to-day life from 1978, when he was 74 years old, until shortly before he died in 1986.
His entries are short and to the point, talking about outings to go bowling or fishing, taking neighbors to doctor appointments, eating out at restaurants, taking vacations. Each one is accompanied by the mileage on his car for that given day. Looking through these journals, I had an epiphany: I had been thinking about transcribing my pandemic diaries, but figured people would find them long-winded and boring. But I realized that I could include my grandfather's diaries with my own, as well as those of my other grandfather, George Brigham, Sr., whom I never met. He wrote his in the 1920s.
And so a new project was launched....
Make sure to check back as I try to figure out how to look at the footage on these old reels.
