Faded Pictures ... Of The Way We Were ...

It was the 60's and fashion ... well what can I say about fashion in the 60's other than it was a time of women's lib; fashions were wild, crazy and short, very short ... the shorter the better.

Photo above - Taken December 1969 of friends and family.  Notice the lady standing at the back of the group, her flamboyant dress had a 3" hem of  black fringe.  It was the fringe alone that made the length of her dress almost respectable.  But that was Gin, she liked her legs and as Flip Wilson used to say; "If ya got it,  flaunt it." 

Burrowing deep into our photo albums, rummaging amongst yellowed, grainy photos of a time long ago, old memories surfaced.

Photo above - This is the full version of the cropped photo at the top of my blog post.  Most of the ladies in the room showed a lot of thigh when seated. The 2 young men in the foreground are brothers, Steve and Terry, their mother, Patty, is seated next to them in the blue dress.  Steve is the older, taller brother; Terry, the younger was a free-spirited young man who later lost his life in a silly car race of "chicken".   Perhaps had he not been so drunk and not had that teenage sense of immortality he would be alive today; married and with a family of his own.

The year was 1969, the occasion my wedding to John, a marriage that has lasted 40 years and counting. No big fancy church, no rented hall or catered services, just a few close friends and a quiet civil ceremony performed at the courthouse by a judge. Funds were low as we had just purchased our new home and, since it was a second marriage for both of us, we decided that a lasting marriage was not built upon a formal ceremony with all the bells and whistles.

Photo above - John and I, the bride and groom; next to us, Jan and Don, our best man and maid of honor.  I always thought Don and Jan would end up together but fate had other plans.  Dig the skinny tie on my darling hubby.   I had on at least 3 inch high heels, otherwise the top of my head would barely reach John's shoulder.

Yes I have to admit that I've use photo editing to remove the yellow patina of the old photos and corrected the contrast to compensate for what time had faded but my editing program was not sophisticated enough to do much about the old grainy look.