Figure 1 – Don’t sit under the Apple Tree with any one else but me.”

Hmm! On Saturdays I take my trash to the town dump. It is meant to be no more than than a mundane event, a task to be freed from. However, whenever I finish dumping the trash I go into the “Book Swap,” where all the books bear my favorite price, $Nothing! But a few weeks back I got more than just a book. There on the shelf was a little book published in 1941 by the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, N.Y. Memories flooded in and I was in a time warp, as if I was a time traveler – transported again to my youth.

My father had owned a copy of this book. My father had taught me photography, and this was the very first book about photography that I had ever read. It contained advice about everything: about cameras for the amateur, about photographing children, about color and black and white films, and it contained a formulary for the dark room.It was not as profound as, for instance, Looten’s book on enlarging. But it was the first.

Greedy for memories of my dad, I immediately and reflexively opened to the book’s frontispiece – a color image of a young woman sitting beneath an apple tree, a bushel of apples by her side, and with a partially eaten apple in her hand (Figure 1). She is, oh, so beautiful and, oh, so forties. I fell in love with her again!. And truly, the image evokes the words and sentiment of that war generation song by the Andrews Sisters:

“Don’t sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me
Till I come marching home.”

So many did not come home! Many of the images in this book recall this longing for home – so defining both the war years and the quest for normalcy that followed the nightmares. At this juncture three quarters of a century later, it connects us with that generation – the generation of my parents. I find myself regretting the loss of my father’s copy, at some point casually and indifferently given away as obsolete – failing to comprehend its deeper meaning.

Ultimately, it was Billie Holiday who said it best:

“I’ll Be Seeing You”

I’ll be seeing you
In all the old familiar places
That this heart of mine embraces
All day and through

In that small cafe
The park across the way
The children’s carousel
The chestnut trees, the wishing well

I’ll be seeing you
In every lovely summer’s day
In everything that’s light and gay
I’ll always think of you that way

I’ll find you in the morning sun
And when the night is new
I’ll be looking at the moon
But I’ll be seeing you

I’ll be seeing you
In every lovely summer’s day
In everything that’s light and gay
I’ll always think of you that way

I’ll find you in the morning sun
And when the night is new
I’ll be looking at the moon
But I’ll be seeing you