Origins of the Forestry Forum

[Jeff]

These photos depict something that I attribute to the beginning of the Forestry Forum. Maybe it could be explained as "7 separations of the Forestry Forum" It's not that they are old photos from the Brokaw family history, but its the activities that are going on, and how those activities eventually brought about the start of the Forestry Forum. I thought it might be fun for you to guess how this possible could be explained, and then at some point, I'll tell you the "Rest of the Story" 


 
Left to right beginning in the back. My Dad's dad. Manley Brokaw. Grampa was 6'6" and taller then anyone I ever saw photographed with him. He was a huge fellow in his day. Next to him is my Grandma, Flora Brokaw. Next to her would be her mother, my great grandma Lydia Christ. I don't know the next two for sure but think they are siblings to my Grandma Brokaw. The guy with the wide brim hat is my grandma's dad. My Great Granddad, Donus Christ. The children are all of my dads brothers and sisters. The little guy clear to the right, that my Dad. 

My Grandparents all died decades before i was born.


 

[Mooseherder]

Looks like there could have been some characters in that group.
I was thinking today there should be a camera crew following you around with all the happenings and characters here on the Forestry Forum that would be one heck of a show.

[Jeff]

I can add this, as the nut didnt fall far from the tree.

[Jeff]

My Great Grampa Donus Christ.  I like this photo. one of the many old Pine Stumps my dad told me about that were long gone by the time I came around.
 

[customsawyer]

Jeff in the drawing of you on the wood are you eating a bowl of grits.

[Ron Wenrich]

Seems like we're looking at the south end of your great gramps quite a bit in the several of the upper photos.  He must be the supervisor on Saturday bath times.   

[Furby]

Food prep, eating and talking, guess I don't see any connection to the forum.

[thecfarm]

There's something going on in them last 2 pictures that involves an axe.Looks like they are sharping something.I can see shavings.

Edit alert.Ther're not making ice cream are they??? That picture with the ladder,do I see a churn???


More edit alert.Eating ice cream in the first picture.

[Gary_C]

Very nice family photo's and in that first one I thought sure that was you Jeff until I read what's under the picture. You look just like your dad.

Other than that, I haven't a clue what you are talking about.

[Mooseherder]

I think thecfarm got it.

[Gary_C]

I think thecfarm got it.

Yep, that's it.

[Jeff]

Yep, its eating and making ice cream. They are busting up ice as they need it. That might be what you see as shavings, is the ice shavings.  I wonder whatever happened to that old dinner bell in the photos?

So, Ice Cream and the making of it. Has a lot to do with the origins of the Forestry Forum...

[thecfarm]

Always was a big deal to try to find snow to make ice cream for my Grand Father's birthday in May.Some years they had ice crearm,some years they did not.No pictures.Seems like they had time to take pictures of the farm animals,but not many of the people or the events on the farm.

[SwampDonkey]

That is exactly the same life and times the family had around here. My grand father, dad and uncle, more so than my aunts and grandmother,  made ice cream like it was going out of style. Oh, I'm sure they ate it to.

The two major kinds they made were maple walnut and grapenut, they were very popular varieties around here. You ask an old timer what flavor he wants, it's either of the two. 

[Gary_C]

Where did they get the ice? From the leaves on the trees, it does not appear to be spring time where they could have gathered or stored some.

What year was that?

I recall hearing that years ago some companies cut and hauled ice from lakes and stored it in warehouses under straw for summer use.

[Jeff]

The Brokaw's always had Ice. Thats part of the Story.

The year of the photos must predate 1930 as that is the year that My Great Grandfather, Donus Christ Died.  (By the way, Christ is pronounced with a short i. Rymes with "mist")  Christ was also my Dad's middle name.

[Mooseherder]

Our Govenor for Florida is Charlie Christ pronounced the same way
and so far just about everyone likes him. (I do)
Wonder if there is any relations

[Dave Shepard]

Ice harvesting was big business years ago. Dennis Picard, who runs Storrowtown at the Big E (Eastern States Expo, known by all New Englanders  ) knows a lot about ice harvesting. There were warehouses so big they drove entire trains inside to unload, and the steam from the engines would create their own clouds and it woud snow inside. At one time ice was a major export of the US, being shipped as far as India. Product loss was near 50% sometimes.

Great pictures Jeff, I like history, even if it's someone else's.


Dave


PS, I wasn't worried for a minute that you were eating grits.

[Jeff]

This is Lucy Brokaw  Jan. 19, 1855 - May 14, 1909 And Abraham Brokaw  May 29, 1845 - Feb. 18, 1909, my great grand parents. They are standing in front of what would eventually become the Brokaw Ice House. Its just east of the driveway of the house that Abraham.s  son built, my Grampa. That house, which we call the old farm, still stands today and was built by my Grampa in 1904.


Below is the old Farm. My Dad is on the left, my uncle Ron on the right. My Dad started his Biography shortly before he died. He only wrote one chapter, but included a story about his relationship with his little brother Ron. I posted about that several years ago.
LINK If you read the link, My dad will help fill in part of this story where he tells about Ice and Ice Cream.

Believe it or not, I'm preparing to tell you what this all has to do with the start of the Forestry Forum.

[asy]

Hey Boss, this is FAR too cool!!!

I can't wait to hear more. It's sorta like the boy's diary. Just waiting for the next instalment.

Ice cream and all

asy

[Dave Shepard]

DanG, I forgot all about ole Plupy, I wonder what kind of trouble he's in these days.


Dave

[Bibbyman]

Dad tells about the time when he was a kid when they had a terrible hail storm.   He said the hail was a foot deep along beside the buildings, fence rows, etc.  They took it in stride and made ice cream.  Free ice back then was a real gift.

[SwampDonkey]

I think Gary never heard tell of ice houses, and where Jeff is with all that water there would be no shortage of ice and most likely some ice houses. They kept the ice in those shacks and covered it with layers of sawdust and more ice to keep it. It would be good until the end of August at least. My grandfather on mom's side hauled ice all winter for town and Catholic church on the reservation next door. They lived on the bank of the 'Rhine of the North' Saint John River and the Tobique. Gramps needed ice to keep the salmon he would angle out of the river all season.    Hydro dams spoiled everything for convenience. 

[SwampDonkey]

As far as i know there where major ice operations in Maine and New Brunswick, they shipped the stuff by boat all over the globe like sugar. 

[Gary_C]

I think Gary never heard tell of ice houses,

Ya, I can't quite remember back to the 1930's since it was more than ten years before I was born. Plus I was raised in a large town and do remember the ice man making deliveries and you could put a sign out by the front door if you wanted one or two blocks. This was back in the early forties and I do not know where they got the ice as there wern't many lakes in central Iowa.

Also one of my duties at home was to keep the stoker filled with coal. We had a basment window in the coal room along the driveway where the truck would dump the coal. Then it was my job to shovel the coal into the stoker. I still have that coal shovel. 

[Jeff]

Well, Gary, thats sorts the way this story is heading. I still have the ice saw mentioned in this exert from my Dads story.

Yes that old house has a lot of memories many that none living could recount. Eight children born in its shelter and each life holds a complete story of their own. Two girls and six boys. There was 40 acres of land that shrouded the house with its related unpainted out buildings, a hay barn which housed about six cattle on one end and room for three horses on the other end. There was a corn crib, a chicken house, and best of all the ice house where we stored ice that was cut each winter, hauled to the storage room and covered with saw dust. Dad didn’t own a ice saw until his last years, so one handle was removed from the cross cut wood saw and this was used to cut ice. Yes I have cut many a cake, the real trick in the whole process was to take a pair of tongs and haul a large cake of ice out of the water with out you going for a swim in trying to lift all that slippery weight. I can remember at least one year when we got early rains and the river rose and lifted the ice out on the bank. We cut the ice on dry land after the river receded to its right level again. This was hard work but it was rewarding for we had the means to keep our food fresh and hundreds of gallons of good home made ice cream all summer long. You might ask how could we do this, well my father worked in the Mt. Pleasant Sugar factory each Fall. He was able to buy the sugar wholesale. We raised chickens, had fresh eggs. The six cows furnished the good fresh milk, and the Raleigh man delivered the vanilla to our door, and the salt was bought by the hundred pound sack. Even with all the boys to help. Dad was always the best ice cream maker. Fresh homemade bread and butter from the old barrel churn. Oh what we miss sometimes today in our modern convinces. What a meal for a hungry family and on a Sunday afternoon when friends and people from town came out. Can you guess why the older brothers and sisters came home every weekend that they could?

Just a couple years before my Dad died, my Aunt Lena, who was the oldest of the Brokaw Children, gave my dad the "new" ice saw that his father had used in the later part of his life. In turn, my Dad gave it to me. He told me how special it was, but not why it was other then it belonged to my Grandfather. I didn't find out about the story he wrote above until after my dad had died and we discovered the story among his sermons.



Before I get on with the story, If you don't mind, I'd like to post some about my Aunt Lena and perhaps some more about the rest of the family as they are actually your Forestry Forum foundation.

[Jeff]

This is from the older people thread. It's my story of the Day that I went to Lena's funeral.
A Visit with Aunt Lena

Lena was quite a gal and I'm lucky to have several pictures to help me know her better from when she was young, and help me to never forget her.







Below is how I always knew my Aunt Lena. She looked like this for my whole life.    This was taken in the kitchen at the old farm, probably around 1999 or so. You might notice that the last time the old place was wallpapered, was back in the 40's. It was done with old grocery bags. RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYLE!

[SwampDonkey]

When we moved into great grand dads place, this here place I'm at now, the only insulation was a sheet of news print between double boarded outside walls and plaster held together with horse hair and lath on the inside walls.  Old wall paper was on the walls here since the 40's most likely. We remodeled in the 70's and put wood on the walls and tore out several petitions down stairs.

[Jeff]

These people were poor. This next photo kinda shows you that.  I think thats why making ice cream was such a big deal. They were able to do something that people of a bit higher means even thought of as a luxury.  They had a cow, chickens for eggs, sugar, and Ice from the river that ran on the property.

Pictured is Dad's brother Manley, the little guy is my Dad, and my Aunt Myrna.  I got to know her quite well as a child and she was a wonderful person. Use to always bake bread in coffee cans. I just loved to go over there and eat fresh homemade ROUND bread.




The following picture was taken by the Little Salt River that provided the ice to fill the ice house every year. Thats my Dad right in the middle

[Brucer]

So, to recap ...

We started with ice-cream (in the summer). That led to ice (in the summer). That in turn led to ice houses, and that has led us to sawdust. A saw managed to creep in there as well. Now it seems to me that sawdust is a mighty important link to the Forestry Forum.

Going off on a slight tangent, sawdust by itself is only a moderately good insulator. What made it so important to storing ice was it's ability to wick the water from the melting ice to it's surface. There the water would evaporate, drawing heat away from the sawdust and keeping the inner layer just above freezing.

[Jeff]

That Ice Saw will be an important element to the development of the story.  

There was a lot of wood around too. I dont know if the firewood generated the sawdust for the ice house or if there was a sawmill somewhere.



Here is Manley and Myrna and my Dad as a baby in an earlier photo. Notice the piles of wood.




Looking at this photo I'm thinking these guys really worked hard. Notice the old buck saw hanging on the end of the log in the cross buck.  The little girl is my Cousin Edna. Thats my Aunt Lena's daughter. She is sitting with her Grampa Varner, My Aunt Lena's father-in-law, by the Brokaw wood pile. Thats the old Icehouse in the background.




There still working hard in this Photo. This would be Jesse Carpenter. Some how related. Not sure how at this point, but she was chopping wood at the Brokaw place.    I almost wodner if the photo was just a photo op?  Doesn't the wood laying there look like chunks of slabwood?  That wood say there was a sawmill somewhere if it is. It dont look like split wood to me.





Then I came across this photo. Things must have got easier in the wood processing department. This is a photo of my Cousin Leeland, Aunt Lena's son. The Dog is my Grampa Brokaw's dog Jiggs. Notice the flywheel engine in the background.


So far of all these people I have posted, the only ones still alive are Edna, my Uncle Ron and Me.
Should I get on with the story, or post a few more photos of the cast of old characters here?  

[Sunfield Hardwood]

More photos and background would be just fine Jeff, It's very interesting to me. I have zero pictures of my grandparents on my mothers side, your very fortunate to have so much history of your family and life in general in the old days.

[crtreedude]

Jeff, I think Jesse Carpenter is coming after the person with the camera.

[Jeff]

Cool.

I love to look at these old photos. Somehow I feel connected when I do.

This post will focus on my Great Grand Parents on my Dad's Mom's side. Donus and Lydia (Raab) Christ. Remember, Donus is the one leaning on the pine stump in an earlier post.


This is a photo of the Christ place in Geneva Township, not to awfully far from the Old Farm.



Shortly after they were married...
 



Late in life...
 


Thats Great Grampa and someone from our family named Josie on the wagon.
 

Donus Christ was born on the 24th July 1846 in Alsace-Lorainne. He died on September 11th 1930 in Midland County Mi. He was buried in Greendale Cemetary.

[Jeff]

Jeff, I think Jesse Carpenter is coming after the person with the camera.

I think yer right!

[Jeff]

I just noticed something. They must have had electricity. Look at the wires going to the outbuilding.

I know the old farm was wired way after it was built.

[Kevin]

Looks like a pole line beyond the building, probably out at the road.

[Jeff]

I'll post a few photos of my Dads parents, then of Dad, then on with the tale.

[olyman]

garyc--ice was taken off the rivers in iowa---at cedar falls,ia, on the corner of 57 & ?, used to be 218--is a ROUND ice house--and its listed on the national register of historic places--and many antiques inside--and photos depicting how they used to ice harvest---

[SwampDonkey]

Could be telephone Jeff. We had telephone long before power even if you lived in town. Our local village had some of the first power in NB, back in the early 20's I think, maybe sooner. I know when pulp mills started we sure had power to run them and that began in the 20's. Good heavens, even old rail way lines here had telegraph poles and the rail road came up the valley in the 1860's when old Boss Gibson built it.

[Kevin]

Donk, those poles look too high for phone and I don't see any crossarms.
There could be pins on those poles for the open wire though.
I would also expect to see a metal fuse protector outside if it was phone.

[SwampDonkey]

Never had any cross arms on them until power. Most had a glass insulator mounted with a brachet on top of the pole. The local poles where quite a bit shorter than todays hydro poles, usually cedar which is not a tall tree up here much beyond 60 feet to the last leaf. Telephone to this day are not on cross arms around here and are mounted below the hydro wires on the pole. Those old glass insulators are a antique collectors dream. I seen really old lines in some remote camps and they only had those porcelain insulators you had on fence posts. They stung the lines up along the rivers to fishing and logging camps. Man the history.  That's going back a few years boy.

[thecfarm]

He's right Kevin.We did not get power up here until 1986 and than it was just like kicking an ant hill.People every wheres.My Grandparents had a phone and that was it.
Really enjoy the history and pictures.I have alot of hunting pictures.Nothing to brag about in size or amount.Just deer,rabbits and birds.

[Jeff]

Here is my Gramma and Grampa Brokaw.  Manley and Flora.

 




I can't help but love this photo.  My Grampa always look so stern and gaunt and tired and over worked. Even in this photo. But What I see is a man with a sense of humor who just before the picture was snapped, plopped his hat on grandmas head. 

[Jeff]

Back to the story.

After being given my Grampa Brokaw's ice saw I decided I would like to have a picture of the old farm painted on it. This would have been around 1997.  After inquiring several places about this, I found it would cost way more then I wanted to pay, or afford to pay for that matter. I decided that perhaps I would try it myself. After all, it was only metal and I could always scrape it off. So, I asked Tammy to go down to the local Ben Franklin store and get me one of these blank canvases I saw down there and some of the cheap paints they had in a rack so I could at least practice first. 

 Knowing I had never had an art class or ever painted anything before, Tammy looked at me like I was crazy and laughed. However she indulged me, as she knew I wouldn't be satisfied until I actually attempted it and failed, so she went down and picked up the stuff just before the store closed for the day.  Well, I forgot to tell her to get some sort of brushes. DRAT! Now the store is closed, so, I decided I would make my own. I made them from some Q-tips, chewed up toothpicks, popsicle sticks and a couple of little old foam brushes and proceeded to put paint on the canvas.   

Tammy still has that first Painting. She won't let me get rid of it although when I look at it now all I see is trees and mountains that look like upside down ice cream cones. Man, that ice cream keeps coming into play.     Back then though, the results to me were encouraging enough to try and practice some more. The practice turned into several hundred paintings that have ended up as far away as England and are scattered all over Michigan and beyond. Within 6 months of painting that first painting I was asked to do a one man show at the Healing Arts Gallery in Midland Michigan. Midland is quite the uppity town around here. Full of money and art buying people.  I sold almost every painting I ever did and gave a few away during the time I was painting.

Here is a picture of that first test painting.



Examples of some of the paintings that came after that one.







So, we go from my family sawing ice out of the river to make ice cream, to my getting the saw, to the point where I am now painting and have a business called "Places for your Thoughts"  doing commission paintings.   The name of that came from where people would say "I've been there before" when looking at my paintings. Truth was, 99.9% of my paintings were from my mind. Never of a real place. I rarely sat down to paint knowing what I was going to paint. I usually sat down thinking for example, I'll start with red and see where it goes. 

Where do we go from here?

[Corley5]

  paintings    I happen to know exactly where one's hanging 

[SwampDonkey]

I know where 4 are and what they look like now.

Your way behind on your painting young feller.

[Jeff]

Yea, I've sort of lost the time to paint in the last several years.

I never took typing in school. I was never going to need it. We never had computers when I was in school either, and I wasn't going to need one of those either. Tammy and the kids kept after me and I said no. Finally I was made to realize in about the same year I started painting, 1997, that the kids really needed a computer like every other kid in school. I finally relented and let one come into the house. We bought a gateway computer. In that year I learned what the heck the internet was and what a website was.

 I finally realized that the computer was a tool, not a toy and something I was determined to use since it was sitting here anyhow. I decided that I needed to build a website in order to further my art sales. So, I taught myself html. I built my first webpage using nothing but M.S. notepad.  I viewed the computer as nothing more then an electric filing cabinet morphed with a calculator. It was nothing to be feared, and I figured if I broke it, it could be fixed. So I had no fear of the thing and dove into it head first.  My first website, although pretty primitive by todays standards was cutting edge 11 years ago and as it turned out, the design of the website, ot at least the ability to make one drew more attention then the art that was in it.

I still have the original files at www.forestryforum.com/jeff  Much of it doesnt work any longer and its really kind of retarded looking now, but I guess its history so I keep it around.

Shortly after building the website, someone found it using the old search engine "webcrawler"  Anyone remember that?  That someone was the President of a now defunct grocery store chain here in Michigan called Carters Foods. He was looking for someone to build a website for their company and wanted to know if I would be interested. Well, I didnt know a thing about the sort of things he wanted to do, or even how to go about finding out, so I said, SURE, I can do it. 

So, were now from icecream to the internet.

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah I remember all the initial internet stuff. Even the dialing in with a TeleTerm program to login to a shell unix account. And having to prepaid by time blocks to access the internet and get charged double if you exceed the time block.    Anyone know mget, msend, mail, I think those commands are still embedded in the operating system that run the internet. Under the hood, out of site of the average modern internet user. Never had internet at University other than a network within the campus, which was primarily access to a library search program called Pheonix. Some computer geekzoids had internet access in the Computer Science department via Unix.

[Warbird]

Yeah, I remember webcrawler.  It's still around today.  And SwampDonkey, I know all of those commands.  mget and msend are actually part of FTP.  Today, there is something even better in *nix called wget.  It is available right at the command line, no need to go into FTP.

The Internet access I had at my first college was on old VAX systems.  I had a lot of 'fun' with those systems and all the users who were on vt100 terminals.  Technology has come a long way in ~20 years.

Jeff, thanks for sharing all these stories.  This is great stuff.

[SwampDonkey]

mget and msend are actually part of FTP.

Warbird, yup.

[Faron]

I wish my first attempt at anything could turn out as well as that first painting.  Talent must ooze out your pores. 

[Jeff]

Now I am going to cheat for the rest of this story. I've wrote aboutit before, so I'll just quote it from a previous thread found here:
History of the Forum--how long have you been around the neighborhood?

So, to summarize before you read the final part 

The Forestry Forum exists because my Grandfather used to cut ice and make ice cream during the depression. This led to me inheriting his Ice saw which led to my short career/hobby as an artist which led to getting on the computer and building a website which led to building  forest product industry websites from which came the Forestry Forum. 

The forum's roots go back to one day that I still remember quite clearly. It was a week or so before Christmas in 1999.

We had a visitor to the sawmill that day. A landowners whose timber that was cut by a logger that we buy from.  He was Irate, he thought he was being taken to the cleaners and the guy was not paying for what he hauled. His information had come from another logger that said "you better watch that guy". The land owner was looking for gate receipts and information to prove that more wood had been taken then paid for.  I was not part of the conversation but stood silently listening.

The logger that he was questioning's credentials are impeccable. That year he had EARNED the logger of the year award from the Michigan Association of Timbermen. He was know by us and others as probably the number one recommendation to someone wishing to have their timber harvested.  The Landowner was calmed down and set straight. He was asked who it was that told him to "watch this guy".  He told us and we all laughed. The guy doing the warning was what we considered the number one timber pimp (thief) that we knew.

Anyways, I came home thinking that day, How does a landowner know? What is to keep him from being taken? Where could he find information?

I sat down at the computer with the premise that I had 40 acres of timber and I wanted to find someone on the internet to help me manage it. I typed in "timber buyer".  Guess what I found right a way, and the ONLY thing I found?  That same Timber Pimp from our area who had bad mouthed the logger that was out there doing a good job.

I thought then and there, that someone needed to find a way to put good information out there, and somehow I felt that I was the one to do it. At the time I knew no one. My world was that of a head sawyer in a commercial mill. About 4 foot by 4 foot square.  I did know of a few organizations and I started calling them, telling them what I aimed to do and how I aimed to do it and that I needed resources for GOOD SOLID information that I could represent to landowners looking for information. To find a way to help educate them on how to manage their timber resources and at the same time protect them. I knew that the internet was probably where the younger people who were beginning to take over the timberlands from their fathers and grandfathers would look first. I knew that someone other then the timber pimps had to be there first.

Anyways, I guess it was a calling. The Timber Buyers Network was born. An informational site aimed at people on the internet looking for a "timber Buyer" or a "Michigan Logger".  (try these search terms in any search engine, I am proud to say that I was able to find a way to "be there first".

My idea was to give the landowner the tools to educate themselves, then armed with that information, have a list of companies that had very good reputations to help them out.  I also wanted to have some tools for these member companies to communicate, and help each other out. I thought a forum, where they could exchange ideas would be a good thing. So, a forum was created. It was simply a link on the www.timberbuyer.net site. So make a long story short, the forum took a different direction then I originally envisioned, but it was still good. Eventually it was clear that the Forum was much bigger then just a little Michigan thing and deserved to have an identity of its own. So, the Forestry Forum came to be.

Since that day in December 1999, and that evening when I sat down to the computer my little head sawyer world has expanded to take me down many roads.

[SwampDonkey]

Appreciate you sharing your family story Jeff, and the story behind the birth of the forum. 

[isawlogs]

Thanks Jeff , that was really nice to read . I am happy to know a little more about your family .

   Would you tell me/us, for those that it is of any interest , how you and Tom and the other admi/ mod got to know one another 

[SwampDonkey]

You been around longer than me Marcel, where did they find you?

[Jeff]

Thanks Jeff , that was really nice to read . I am happy to know a little more about your family .

   Would you tell me/us, for those that it is of any interest , how you and Tom and the other admi/ mod got to know one another 

Marcel, if you read the link I posted in the first part of reply# 52, I think that contains most of it. If it doesn't cover all the admins, figure out which ones didn't spill the beans and tell em you want them to make a post and explain themselves!

[isawlogs]

 Oh ... !!!!  Thanks . I clicked the link , three minutes later    I get a page that tells me I am on page one of six .     


 Swamp , I haven't read the six pages yet , I will read through it , but you know ... they could of known each other prior to the forum .. for all I know they could be cousins from a lost aunt .  They could of been work colleagues
 If anybody else is interested .. its all in there in six pages 

 

[Gary_C]

This is a very interesting story. I enjoy seeing those old family pictures and did go back and read all six pages. Really got a laugh at post # 107 near the end. A senior member must not have read that or I am certain he would have had some reply.   

I'll let you figgure out who I am talking about.   

[Dave Shepard]

Ha! That's funny right there, I don't care who you are!


Dave

[isawlogs]

 dats a long haul ta page six ............................ I am on page two of . 
             I may be slow , but I am ahead of some . 

[SwampDonkey]

Yup, your way ahead of me. 

[Gary_C]

Jeff

What's your method of converting old pictures to digital photos?

I have tried with my camera and always had problems with lighting and color. I even have a slide and negative copying adapter and can set the camera to reverse the negatives, but the color is just awful and I can never figure out how to correct it.

[Jeff]

Scanner or camera.  You can get slide viewers to use with scanners to scan negatives, then invert them with a good photo editing program.

[Jeff]

Gary, if you take your time and understand your programs, you can do some pretty good restoration to old photos as well. I just spent about an hour on my Grandma Flora Brokaw's photo.  The original is badly damaged and probably will continue to get worse. I think the hour I spent on it was worth it.  Here is a side by side.

 

[asy]

Cool restoration!

Hey, I had a wander around your original site, it's cool. I especially like the page that gives your bio. I'd like to stay 37 forever, too   

It's a fabulous story...  I want to hear more.

asy

[Jeff]

A newly discovered picture of my Dad. My cousin found some old negatives in a box in his mom's basement. This was among them. 

 

[WDH]

He would be proud of what you have created.

[mad murdock]

Looks Like yer dad was either riding a motorbike or flying a plane.  Thanks for the old photos, and most of all thanks for building the Forestry Forum!   

[Jeff]

That would be his b17 flight suit.