Just to piggyback on this theme...
While sorting through things at my folks' house I came across a metal box in the basement with 8 reels of 16mm black and white film. According to the labels they were taken between 1928 and 1934 by my grandfather. We gave one to a local camera shop to have converted to DVD and got it back a few days ago.
The first segment of the 15 minute movie (from 1928) shows my Dad (age 10 at the time), his slightly older brother and parents on a summer trip back to Norway, their native land. Dad was able to remember some of the names of the family and friends and a few of the places they visited. The next segment jumps back to Chicago where they lived at the time but now it's winter. A snowball fight, sledding in Humboldt Park and skating on the lake are amazingly entertaining views. Other parts show the family playing catch and shots of downtown Chicago with the elevated train and panoramas of the Buckingham Fountain and lots of the old vehicles of the day. It's truly an unbelievable look into the past and the quality of the images after 84 years is quite good.
I hope to cull clips from the movie, compress them to a smaller size and upload somewhere on the web. Once done I'll post back here so you all can enjoy it.
We still have the other reels to convert and I'm excited to see what they hold.
