Thursday, September 23, 2010

When It Rains, It Pours...Slide Projectors

It seems like whenever I finally buy something for which I've been looking a long time, I suddenly find it at every turn.

Walking through a local antique mall, I saw a slide projector in the box. Turns out it's a Carousel 800, just like the one I just bought a couple weeks back. It was priced at $6 ($2 less than I paid at the garage sale, I might add), but was also labeled "as is". I have found that "as is" always means "broke". It never means, "I'm not sure if this works or not." But, upon opening the box that holds the carousel, I discovered it contained slides. The box was marked "1970 Grand Canyon" and "Family". I looked at a few and most appeared to be scenery, but I also saw some vintage shots featuring the family. So I bought it, of course.

Opening it up at home and testing it, I found that it had a working bulb which was worth the $6 alone, but the carousel would not advance. Just makes that buzzing noise that says "stuck motor" and "I'm not going anywhere".

So I set the non-working projector aside and loaded up the carousel with the slides , just 7 short of filling my 80-slide carousel. As I had noted, most were of scenery in and around the Grand Canyon. Taken a full year the before the Brady's visited the Grand Canyon, there are some great shots of the family decked out in 70's attire -- a 30-ish couple and older relatives(?).

Excuse the quality of the photos, they're pictures taken of the projection -- I don't have a slide-capable scanner.

There's the obligatory shots from the road:


Note the St. Louis inspection sticker in the right lower corner of the window.




A brief stop at Meteor Crater in Flagstaff, Arizona.  I'll forever associate this with the 1980's movie Starman: "Yellow light, go very fast."


Canyonside :




Mr. Surly's expression doesn't change in any of the slides I have.

Orange pickin' . California? Watch out, don't drop your cigarette:





There's this great scene of some downtown area. I've looked for clues to identify it and the best I can see is a sign that says, "Over There". Not sure if it's for a gas station, motel, or what. Any clues?


There were also some shots around home. Lounging with the dog in the rich, wood paneled living room:




Out by the garage:


If I had access to Missouri license plate registrations for 1970, I could find out who this is.

By the way, that's a 1968 Pontiac Catalina the couple with dog are standing in front of. Not sure what the blue car in the garage is.

There was one commercial slide in the lot featuring a wheel of fortune. Not sure where this is, but I'm guessing Las Vegas given the proximity to the Grand Canyon:
 The older couples are certainly gone now, but the younger couple would probably be in their 70's. Wonder why they gave up their slides? Divorce? Bad memories of that miserable trip to the Grand Canyon when "Don" was so surly? Who knows.

1 comment:

  1. that spired building could be a clue, it's so distinctive. is it salt lake city? it's far north of the route if they went to vegas and LA (i presume from the orange picking...).

    i've been dreaming of finding a large cache of vintage slides just like this, but i'm afraid that i wasn't going to hang onto them....i've been planning on making a lampshade out of vintage slides forever. if you ever want to part with some, ahem... : )

    and maybe they got rid of the slides in a junk purge. you know how it is!

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