Half a lifetime ago

It used to be that the concept of an 18-year stretch of time seemed damn close to an eternity. Well, as of today, I've lived through TWO 18 year "eternities". That's the theme of my 1990 blog "Half a Lifetime Ago", featuring a re-cap of my experiences and photos from my 18th year.

On this date in Whiskey history: 18 years ago in Sweetwater, TX...

On January 7, 1990, my 18th birthday, I spent a day watching and photographing trains near Sweetwater, Texas. I remember feeling relieved that trains were still running in the year 1990. To listen to the skeptics and gloom-n-doomers during the late 1980s, one would have thought that 1990 would usher in the decade when all the railroads would finally declare bankruptcy and pull up their tracks forever. How wrong they were...

1990 would be the year that I graduated from high school and began my freshman year of college. It would be my first year of shooting photos with an SLR camera (instead of an auto-everything "point & shoot".) The timing couldn't have been better, since I did quite a bit of taveling that year -- including a nearly month-long summer trip to Washington DC, Baltimore, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kansas City. And halfway through the year, I would switch from print film to slide film. It was a year of great personal change, and a year when I really began to refine my talents as a photographer. And there was plenty of interesting stuff to shoot on the railroads that year. What I wouldn't give to see some of that stuff back on the tracks!

18 years... it seems like a lifetime ago, but even as of today it has only been half of that. Follow along at http://halfalifetimeago.blogspot.com/

WSC

np: Mark Davis and Hal Jay - WBAP morning show

nr: John Steinbeck - Grapes of Wrath