My Dads ancient "Disston Big Chief" 12' tape measure. He had it for years, and he passed away at age 48 back in 77, when I was 25 years old. I have had it a long time, I usually only take it with me when I go to swap-meets, it kind of gives me the impression that he is along to see what I will buy! Thanks from Dennis.
Naval Aviator seat belts for gas tank straps. 50's leather bowling bag for jumper cables and Fix-A-Flat. 50's leather Mountain Bell telephone repairman's tool box.....for a tool box.
Hello, My earliest movie was the one I made when I was given a 16mm color movie camera that was a point and shoot model. Put in the cartridge, shut, take off the lens cap and push the button at what was in front of me. A few tries at home in the Westside of Long Beach of my mom and friends going to lunch and shopping, then tagging along with my brother in his 58 Impala to Lion’s Dragstrip. What ever movies we had watched did not compare and there was no movie that was more exciting than the films I took during our days at the drags. When I came home, I gave the film reels to my dad and he took them to the Kodak developing guy in Los Angeles the next day he went to work. The command of: “Get out and take a movie of the entrance and then the 58 Impala at the ticket booth,” was the first choice of my brother making a chronicle of his new 58 Impala in the fall of 57. By the time the films got home, it was like opening a present on my birthday. I could not wait to set up the projector and shoot it on the interior wall of our house. We did not have a roll up screen as yet, a year or so later one of those showed up at our house, when our dad’s films he took, was to be shown to his friends. Now, I had a projector, and slapped on the metal reel on it to show on a white wall. That was good enough for me and for my brother’s teenage friends that came over to watch what they saw the week before at Lion’s Dragstrip. It was one continuous reel of films I took. Jnaki Then one day, my dad brought home this tool: A full metal film cutter for 8mm and tabs for our own 16 mm film strips. Now, instead of slapping on the 8 inch metal reel on the projector and showing the rag tag films of my dad’s friends and escapades along with my own drag racing films, I could cut out his portion of the films and make a strictly drag racing film from the week previously raced or just roamed around when we did not get to the next round of eliminations. The purple strip is showing the film track and lifted metal cutters above, ready to come down to make the cut. Today, this guy is still in a drawer waiting patiently to go back into action. I spent countless hours placing the film in the small cutter and neatly cutting out the film strip portion that did not belong. Then I would prep the edges of the film and glue the remaining pieces together to have one long film showing reel of drag racing, only. This first editing tool was one of the oldest things we have left our old drag racing days and movies. The other was a hobby blow torch that almost gets thrown out at every “garage clean out day.” Those two items are the oldest items saved, other than a couple of 80 year olds that have been together since our college days. But, if I did not do a good job of prepping the film cutting edges and gluing, as we watched the films on the teenage gatherings, I took the relentless “razzing” from the captive audience, when the film broke and a strong white light was now on the wall. BOOOO! Note: Our dad had brought this larger "editor" home for me to use the small reels to cut and glue into a larger metal reel on the other end. The small yellow box cutter I had been using was the size of the cutter on the front portion of this larger viewer and editor. Finally, instead of holding up a 16mm size negative up to a bright light and trying to find the editing point, now, I could see the actual action of drag racing on the 4 inch screen in living color, as I moved the crank handles right or left. The small screen showed the color movies forward and backwards until I could get to the spot to cut and start the editing process. This was the first and last work on the long skinny filmstrip and when they were all cut and edited together, the films went on a 16 inch steel reel for longer movie showings. On the right side of the editing screen device was a larger 7-8 inch metal reel to hold all of the cut and paste edited films. On the left were the smaller 3 inch reels from the developer's dark room. As the cut and paste went on until the small reel was empty, all of the films were moving to the final resting spot on the metal reel on the right. Now, the teen gatherings were like going to a movie showing in our own living room, with food and drinks, as well as the constant teenage names and identification of the racers on the screen. The "Naki's Movie Theater" was in full function for the next several years… still using a point and shoot camera. Yes, our dad got his films all nicely edited by me and when he showed them to his own friends on their visits to our home, it was a hit to see those different family/community gatherings. The cool thing was all of the drag racing films were paid for by our dad. Since i did all of the editing of his hobby filming at family, relative, and community functions to created "his" films, our drag racing was free. He did not like using the dinky original film editor and 16mm color film put up to a light bulb to see where to make the cuts to glue together. It was my first "paid" job and I got good at it. The last thing I was in the process of coordinating was to use the reel to reel tape recording of the best drag racing LP album of 1959 with the actual racers from Lion's Dragstrip making powerful runs. But, it was difficult to have the reel to reel tape machine in one room and the movie showing with the projector in another room. I finally had my brother turn on the projector and start it, while I started the tape recorder/player with the exact sound of the exact drag racer being shown on the screen. finally, i had "sound" drag racing films to go along with my color 16mm films. YRMV Note 2: Then many years later, I learned how to digitize the whole set of early drag racing films into digital editions. the local expert film processing company took all of our metal reels and made them into flash drive versions of the 50-60s drag racing. Now, I could watch those films on my computer screen anytime. But, the last thing was to edit in "actual sound" onto the specific drag racer's film to enjoy a day in 1959 of Lion's Dragstrip racing in real live filming and SOUND. The Sidewinder racing in the Summer of 59 with real actual sound from 1959 September... (All digital drag racing films can be seen on J Naki Channel on You Tube)
The Jalopy Journal
