Day 29: Photos Taken In and Around the House

There are a lot more party photos to come; here are a few taken around the house in the previous century.

1984: I am wearing my mom's wedding dress; I used to wear it out a lot. Anyone who has been in the downstairs bathroom can attest that it looks pretty much the same; the faucets were replaced at one point, but that's about all.

Standing in front of the house on 19th Street in 1982. I can date that because I bought the ghillies I am wearing in the spring of that year. I still have those trousers; just put them in the Goodwill pile yesterday. The car is a '63 Ford Fairlane which belonged to my grandfather; I inherited it after my Nova was totalled. I called it The Klunk because it liked to stall suddenly in the fast lane or if you were starting to make a left turn.

 Standing by the pool in the mid 70s. I still have that satin jacket. Every time I wore it Rodney Bingenheimer would tell me he used to have one exactly like it.

 Yeah, I used to take selfies, when they used to be called self-portraits. You used a mirror and no flash. I think this is late 1979 or maybe sometime in 1980, in the upstairs bathroom. I had four tails with fishbones on them I had got at an African fair.

Here's another shot of the wedding dress; I'm sitting in the family room. I can't remember what we did with the bumper pool table at that time; the couch is now gone and that's where the pool table is now. The lamp is still there though!

 Lest you think I've gone all solipsistic, here are some other people. That's my dad and Helen in the living room at Christmas. Helen was a family friend; her parents were my mom's parents' best friends and neighbors. We didn't have many blood relatives in California so she was like an aunt, and my parents would invite these "fake relatives" to join us on holidays.

 I think this was the same Christmas, which would have been 1980. Mikey had just rejoined my band. He had spent the night on that sofabed and I was just about to take him to his mom's, after I finished my Falling Spiders video game, in which I was engrossed. This is downstairs in the family room. I believe that same sleeping bag fell off a shelf in the garage the other day.

 This was a party, but it would have been one that my parents threw; I can tell by the food and punchbowl. They often had an Open House thing around the holidays. This is Jim Allan stroking Zoe, our cat, in the dining room. The fancy flocked wallpaper and shutters are all still there; I am sitting in almost exactly the same spot right now at that very table.

 

In the living room; a later Christmas, 1985. I was home from Leeds, visiting. I think I still have that outfit in my storage unit in London, though I may have donated it in recent years. It's crushed velvet and was made by my friend Cleo.