A Minor Mystery (or, My Awesome Uncle)
Many years ago, around the time my parents got married, my dad took slides on his old Minolta SLR of some old photographs that were in the possession of my great-grandparents (the Duttons, my mom's grandparents). These pictures have long since been lost, if they're still in existence. But several years ago, my Uncle Bob (my dad's brother) scanned these slides for us on his transparency scanner, and we got very clear results.
Recently Uncle Bob was transferring some files, and he happened upon these images. There was one of my great-great-grandfather James M. Minor, my Grandma Dutton's father, holding a Bible. And Uncle Bob noticed something.
Uncle Bob is one of the most interesting people I know. He is very astute, and notices things that no one else notices. He thinks deep thoughts about things no one else thinks about. Every time I see him, he has some new musing about life or history or art or faith. He is always asking my dad questions about vague, half-memories from his childhood, or about toys they had when they were young (in the 60s) that are still very much alive in his memory, and he tries to revive those memories, often going to eBay to buy such an old toy or book. Growing up, he always told us the best stories. In vivid detail and a storyteller's charm he recounted to us the plots of comic books he'd read thirty years prior, of Superman and Batman and Spider-Man. He once told us the story of the movie Vertigo (many years before it was out on video or DVD), all full of mystery and suspense, and to this day I enjoy the memory of his story as much as the movie itself. He would lead us in the paths of creative thinking and writing. He's tried his hand at writing fiction and creating art. He has won contests in both painting and sculpting, and his greatest works, in my opinion, are four true-to-life sculptures of his grandparents (his parents' parents) that captured their every facial expression, their postures, the way they carried themselves and the way he remembers them. Seeing them makes my grandmother cry; makes me cry, they seem so alive, and I never even knew them. He is a master photographer, in the tradition of his father, and has more cameras than I have shirts. He has a degree in music education, and worked for several years as a band director, but most recently has been a TV producer. He has a huge heart and a huge mind.
What Uncle Bob noticed is that the image was reversed. The buttons were on the wrong side of his coat! Who but Uncle Bob would ever have noticed such a thing? I don't even know, thinking about it, what side the buttons are supposed to be on. Here, I'll let you read the e-mail.
Tommy (and Donny)-- [My dad and other uncle]
I was in the process of transferring some of the data from my old Zip disks when I ran across this old picture labeled "Minor with Bible." When I looked closely at the picture, I realized that it was reversed (left-right).
I noticed this because the buttons on his coat were on the wrong side. Attached is the what the picture looks like when it is corrected. (The picture is slightly cropped and greatly reduced in size from the original.) The reversal might have had something to do with the original being a tintype (assuming that it was a tintype).
When the picture is corrected, you can almost read the title of the book, which doesn't seem to be a Bible, but it still might be. The attached close-up has NOT been reduced in quality. It appears that the title of the book is two words that start with "T" and "P." In a religious frame of mind, I think the title might be "Tutorial on Pentecost" or something like that, but that might be a stretch. Maybe you'll see something else.
Anyway, I just wanted you to know that the picture was reversed.
--Bobby.
The image:
But Uncle Bob couldn't leave it at that. The wheels in his mind kept turning. The timestamp on that e-mail is 12:36 p.m. (Wednesday). Six minutes later:
If the first word starts with a "P" (instead of a "T") it looks like it might be "Pilgrim's Progress."
--Bobby
He's also a wizard with Photoshop. I have no idea what he did to alter the angle of the book in the photograph:
He still couldn't let it go. He had found a mystery, and was determined to see it through to its solution. A few hours later (3:48 p.m.):
Tommy & Donny--
While I was unable to locate a picture of the exact book, a Google image search turned up the two editions on the left. While they are not the same book, the similarities in design tend to suggest that the book in the Minor photo might have been another edition by the same publisher.
At any rate, seeing the books aligned like that convinces me that the title of the book is "Pilgrim's Progress." As you know, back then it was common in photography studios to have the subject hold some kind of prop that suggested a certain sophistication. Or, to be fair to Minor, maybe he just happened to be reading the book on his way to the studio--you know, the same reason that guy in the other tintype was holding a whisky bottle.
Anyway, so much for that.
--Bobby
I have no doubt that he's right about the book. And we never would have seen it hadn't been for him. We simply assumed that it was a Bible and left it at that.
The "other tintype" was passed down in the Richardson family, presumably one of my illustrious ancestors:
Now you see where I get it.