Photographic Record

I was looking through some pictures to include on the last few pages of my book and I came across what it probably the earliest photo of Jilda and me. We were standing knee deep in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico in Panama City, Florida. It was the summer of 1969. Her family always went down in June and spent a few weeks at the Quinn Cottages which was just behind the old Seahorse.
Our first date was the night I graduated - May 24th 1968. I started to college and to work later that year and bought my first real car.
The next summer, I drove to the beach to join she and her family for the weekend.
In the photo, both of us together probably didn't weight much more than a bushel of potatoes. Had the sun been directly behind us, I have not doubt you could have seen right through us.
We have a plastic tub that we store under our bed and it contains the photographic record of our life together. I'm guessing there is a hundred thousand photographs in there.
Most of the photos are snapshots of our friends, our pets, our family and the places we've been.
Flipping through the photographs brought a smile to my face but there was also a tinge of sadness. We've lost a lot of friends and family through the years. You never realize when you're with someone that it may be the last chance you have to tell them how much they mean to you.