Close Shaved Iranian Boy

Boy, Tehran September 1972

 

 

 

 

From September 1972, an Iranian boy wonders where his hair has gone.  I was traveling back home to New Zealand with my father and grandfather after having spent almost three months in the UK with my grandfather.  While this was a great vacation for me and I got to miss some school, I think it was a cunning plan by my parents that relieved my mother of having to deal with three boys all by herself while my father went to summer school at Cornell.     

 
Originally posted February 3, 2012

Milan Cathedral 1961

Milan Cathedral August 1961

The PND seniors went to Milan and Florence for their honeymoon and this is one of the images from that trip.  Unfortunately, when I visited Milan in 2004 I didn't know this image existed in our archive otherwise I would have my own more recent image.  However, if memory serves from that trip the building is now far cleaner and the area in front of the cathedral is less like a bus depot and more like a pedestrian precinct.

Originally posted December 16, 2011

The PND (Cairns) Photo Archive Vol 1: 1960-1980

As frequent visitors to PND will know, I have been posting images out of my family archive for about two years now. As it turns out, I've mixed images that were taken early on - that is, they are truly from the family archive versus some I've taken as an adult relatively recently. For most of you, I suspect that distinction has been missed but for me I've been really interested in the images my father and grandfather took between 1960 and 1980.  In addition to the images I've posted on Flickr and those I've periodically posted on PND, I have now produced a Blurb book of some of the images I really thought were special.  In the Blurb viewer below you can see the entire book and I hope you like it.  You can even buy it although it is expensive and I really don't expect anyone to do so.  I am thinking of creating a smaller (cheaper) format so let me know if you are interested.

From The Archive: 1960 - 1980 by James T., Michael A. and Michael P. Cairns

In our attic at PND Mansions (UK) I came across a large box containing almost all the slide images taken between 1960 and 1980.  While a few were still in their original boxes most were all in a jumble having been removed out of carousels after some long ago family slide show.  So, I gathered all these images together and at first tried to select only the ones that looked interesting.  Quickly, I decided to take the entire collection and have them all scanned.  I was tempted to purchase a slide scanner and do this myself but my practical side quickly convinced me this would be a time consuming nightmare.

After one false start, I found an online site named ScanCafe where I sent all the images (in several batches) and had them scanned.  This works really well and I would recommend ScanCafe if you are looking to do something like this with a lot of images.

If you are like me and like organization I can't underestimate how long it can take to reorganize a mass of images that have been thrown together.  Remember, in my case all my images were a jumble but I quickly learned the better organized these were in advance of sending the faster I was able to put them into better order when they came back.

I am very happy with the way this book turned out.  I plan on doing three or four more over the next few years as patience dictates.  I think I have selected the best images from this period (not including any family photos you might notice) and as a set of images that describes my first 20 yrs I think it's a pretty decent representation.  And that's a pretty awesome cover.

Images from 2011

View this in the full view mode (bottom right).  There are also comments on each image.  As always visit my flickr page to see lots more.

Melbourne Cup 1973

Another weekly image from my archive. Click on it to make it larger.

It was race day in Melbourne this past week and the annual big race produced the closest finish in history.  I am not 100% certain this is the actual race from 1973 but it was taken in the right month and there would have been little other reason to visit the track.  I bet that skyline looks a little different now.

I'm not a big horse racing fan, but I did place my first bet - I didn't do it someone else did it for me because I was too young - a few years after this.  I think it was in something called the Cheltenham Cup and the horse was "How Now" which came in a close second.  I had him to place and I think I won about $6.  I quit while the going was good.

In addition to the images I've posted on Flickr and those I've periodically posted on PND, I have now produced a Big Blurb Book: From the Archive 1960 -1980 of some of the images I really thought were special.

I now have an iPad version of this book for sale ($4.99) on the Blurb site which you can find here: STORE

I have to say, even on the iPad the book looks pretty good.

Pam Am Real and Imagined

Out the window of a 707

Pam Am the TV show may fail just like the airline but for nostalgia fiends the show has been widely anticipated and, in the first viewing it didn't disappoint for anyone who flew with Pan Am in the 1960s.  Which of course is the point: To capture the spirit and glamour of the Mad Men phenomenon when flying really was glamorous.  The dress code for example was decidedly business suits and ties and smart clothes for the kids just as the TV passengers dressed.

Whether the writers of Pan Am have pulled it off as well as Mad Men is debatable but, at least from my memory, they did get a lot of the ambiance right.  My first flight would have been on one of the 707s that this first batch of TV passengers flew on.  London to Beirut in August 1968.  My father was about to take up his first position with Intercontinental Hotels which, at the time, was a subsidiary of Pan Am.  From this point on we flew Pan Am almost exclusively until the early 1990s and, while we didn't fly first class on that first flight, we were lucky enough as 'employees' to get upgraded almost always thereafter.

PAA first class grapes.

One thing I remember of the first class cabin on the 707s was the little seating area where you (not the kids) could sit casually with other passengers and have a cocktail.  Later, on the 747, Pan Am tried to create a dinning room in the air in the upstairs cabin.  I am fairly certain this failed since I always remember the upstairs being completely empty.

Of course this being TV, the writers had to add the requisite sex and intrigue story lines.  One of the characters - a stewardess - is recruited as a pseudo-spy for what we expect will be future adventures. As ridiculous as this story line seems, it was widely assumed in the 1960-70s that American multinational companies had CIA or intelligence officers on their pay rolls.  Whether they were hired at the direction of the intelligence services or subsequently recruited isn't clear to me although a combination may be likely.  The improbable story line in Pan Am reminded me of a story my father had told a few times about a colleague at Intercontinental (IHC).

On board with Ms. PanAm Sydney

This fellow was a VP of Business Development at IHC and thus traveled all over the world looking for hotel sites.  He happened to be in Melbourne where we were living at the time and received a phone call from someone asking that he go over to the Hilton hotel and spend some time eating in their coffee shop.  Apparently the coffee shop was frequented by staff from the Russian embassy.  As a fluent Russian speaker, our hero sat in the booth next to some Russians and spent afternoons listening in to their conversations.  Who knows whether he reported back any more than news one guy had a pastrami and the other a hot dog but my father was convinced our hero was a spy.

The first Pan Am episode reminded me of this very tenuous evidence of collaboration between the intelligence community and big business, and I looked up our hero. (He has a distinctive name which I remembered after all these years).  Sure enough, he has contributed to an oral history of the intelligence services and he served in military intelligence in the 1950s and his service record was the CIA.  There was no mention of IHC.  So perhaps truth is stranger than fiction.

PND on the tarmac in Tehran

In our family the Pan Am years were glamorous and exciting for all kinds of reasons.  Not least because Pan Am carried us around the world from one adventure to another as the photos from the archive prove.  I'm also hoping that Pan Am the TV show becomes popular since we have a fair amount of Pan Am branded items in the attic that we could sell on EBAY and after all these years it's about time we got rid of them.


In addition to the images I've posted on Flickr and those I've periodically posted on PND, I have now produced a Big Blurb Book: From the Archive 1960 -1980 of some of the images I really thought were special.

I now have an iPad version of this book for sale ($4.99) on the Blurb site which you can find here: STORE

I have to say, even on the iPad the book looks pretty good.

Ithaca McDonalds 1968

Ithaca McDonald's, August 1968

Another weekly image from the family archive. Click on it to make it larger.

My father attended summer school at Cornell's Hotel Management school in 1968 and one of his professors worked for Intercontinental. Long story short he suggested they hire him and later in 1968 the family left for the first assignment in Thailand.

In my first family trip to the US (Los Angeles) in 1976, I remember distinctly the itemized number of hamburgers served on the golden arches. I wish I had a comparison photo but I am certain it was ten times this number by then.

Flickr Set

In addition to the images I've posted on Flickr and those I've periodically posted on PND, I have now produced a Big Blurb Book: From the Archive 1960 -1980 of some of the images I really thought were special.

I now have an iPad version of this book for sale ($4.99) on the Blurb site which you can find here: STORE

I have to say, even on the iPad the book looks pretty good.