Florida Etudes     Maple Syrup     One's Memory

In 1960, my parents, brothers and sister piled into our 1959 Plymouth station wagon and the eight of us drove from Key West to San Francisco via New York.  I was only 4-1/2 then, but it was that journey that my memory first began to capture moments of my life. And although I remember the motels and filling stations and diners and wayside parks and trains and bridges and mountains, I mostly remember a sense of closeness to my family.  It was a good time.

We made the reverse trip back to Key West in 1962 and among the many highways that we traveled on those two trans-America treks, U.S. Highway 1 stands out.  This highway ends, or perhaps begins, in Key West where my family lived for many years and is the only highway connecting Key West to the mainland.  I remember often daydreaming in class at Truman Elementary School, watching the cars lumber by along Highway 1.  Our family would often wander up the Keys for weekend picnics, hop scotching from Key to Key over the long bridges in search of a secluded beach.  We would always leave early, before sunrise, and pass through the solitude of Highway 1.

And so, I went back to Highway 1.  I went back to find and photograph things that might have been there when the eight of us passed by in our Plymouth station wagon so many years ago - searching for fragments that remind me of a wonderful and carefree time in my life.  

I used a little plastic toy camera, a Holga, to make these photographs.  And like a memory, the pictures are imperfect and not always so clear.