Snapshot from long ago (10/22/2008)

"I found that postcard with you in it," my sister Linda said (or words something close to that). "Would you like to have it?"

It was something of an informal family reunion. My older brother Steve and his wife Beth were down from Minneapolis for homecoming at Earlham College.

My sister Louise was there. And we were gathered around the kitchen table of my sister Linda and her husband Stephen in Richmond.

Postcard?

I was drawing a complete blank.

The one at Conner Prairie, she explained.

And, in bits and pieces, it all started to come back.

Forty years ago this summer, I was a Conner Prairie employee.

I was a college student at the time, and it was one of those three-month jobs during their busy season and my time away from classes.

Now, keep in mind that Conner Prairie then was a far cry from Conner Prairie now. Today, it's one of the finest living history museums in America, certainly the best in the Midwest. Then, it was still trying to find its way. Eli Lilly had given it to Earlham, and the college wasn't quite sure what the heck to do with it.

There were, as I recall, eight of us on staff that summer. Four guys - Glen from Purdue, Larry from Indiana Central (now University of Indianapolis), and Randy and I from Earlham - and four girls - Sue Ellen, Rosie, Heidi, and a fourth who is lost to the veils of time.

I'm amazed that most of their names come back to me. Glen and I later crossed paths when he and my wife worked for the state on air pollution control. Heidi worked in the newspaper business for several years. Randy decided to call himself Randall and became an Earlham history professor.

The eight of us lived on the grounds, the young women in a brick building that also housed some of the mechanical and plumbing equipment, the guys in a crappy bungalow that was also the museum office.

As summer jobs go, it wasn't bad.

Some days I'd be painting fences or laying sod or arguing with Randy about how to create a wood chipped path for visitors. Other days I'd be in sort of a quasi-costume, giving tours and doing a bit of role-playing.

One of the reasons I had taken the job was that I had a fear of public speaking.

There's nothing like a stint as a museum guide to break through that barrier.

In those days, unlike today, a single guide took visitors through the grounds. We'd stop at the pioneer barn and explain things, based upon a long series of papers we were supposed to memorize, then we'd move on to the pioneer cabin and do the same thing, then go on to the pioneer trading post, and so on and so on.

I wasn't a bad guide, though my wife has accused me of making stuff up, but I was better at some locations than others.

The loom house was my worst stop. I was pretty much fudging it as I talked about frontier linens.

My best was the trading post.

For some reason I felt most comfortable there, yakking away behind the counter amid the furs and pelts and muskets.

I'm not sure I was any more historically accurate than I was at the loom house, but I was more confident in my ability to shovel what needed to be shoveled.

Maybe that's the reason I was tapped for that long-forgotten photo shoot for postcards.

At some point that summer, I was dragged away from fence painting and sod laying duties to act as a model while a professional photographer did a shoot in the trading post.

My job - wearing jeans, a linen shirt that was supposed to create a rustic look, and a buckskin jacket - was to stand in the right place while this guy took his pictures.

Trouble is, the trading post - like most log cabins - was dark and gloomy.

The photographer's response was to illuminate it with more artificial lighting than I'd ever seen. He did the same thing in the cabin, which was even gloomier.

I vaguely remember thinking that the lights had distorted reality when I saw the postcards.

There I was, my back pretty much to the camera, acting as if I'm doing something while the guy clicks the shutter.

There I was, and there I am.

My sister Linda had one of the cards, and she has passed it along.

A collector's item? I don't think so.

I checked on eBay and found another card from the same shoot listed for $3.99.

I did not make a bid.[[In-content Ad]]