YOUNG LADY OF THE '20s

My sister Harriet cleaned out her home of 50+ years and invited me to look over some of the interesting things she found. When we came to this portrait of our mother, undoubtedly taken in the 1920s, we recognized an image that should be shared with the family. I was assigned to take care of having it copied.

"I don't know where to go to have it copied," I said.

"Wasem's does it," Harriet replied, referring to a local drugstore that has a photo/camera department.

Then I put it off for several months. The picture had been framed "back in the day" -- one of those frames where the back is taped on, almost impossible to undo, and once it is undone, that's that.But, members of the extended family are gathering for Thanksgiving dinner, and it seemed the perfect time to share the copies, so I decided I must get it done. I removed the picture from the frame as carefully as I could and took it to Wasem's.

Cautiously, I requested five 5x7 copies.

"How long will it take?" I asked the associate. -- "Oh, I don't know," she said. "We'll get to it this morning as soon as we can. We'll call you. But it will be this morning."

I was surprised.

"Well, how much will it cost?" I asked, sorta working backwards on this order. -- "Our 5x7s are 49 cents each," was the reply.

"Oh! Then please make eight," I said, thinking that for such a nominal price I could be a bit more generous. I also began to question in my mind what the final product would be if it only cost 49 cents. What process did they use? Just photocopies? But, for the price, I decided I could afford to wait and see.

The next day, I returned to pick up the order. The original photo had been "colorized." I expect Mother had applied the color herself. And the paper, hence the photo, had yellowed, giving it a sepia tone. The photo department manager waited on me, and he opened the envelope to show me the work. They were actual photographs on glossy paper. Clearly they had experimented with the color and made a number of copies that were quite bright in hue and also showed the grain of the original paper. Then they settled on the yellowed, softer "sepia" tone and made eight prints of that.

"Sometimes we fail to ask all the questions we should," said the manager, "and instead of bothering the customer, we just run extra prints. There are 16 in all, " he said, "for the original cost of eight prints."

If they had called, I would have suggested they proceed with the sepia tone. But I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. And now I'll go to Thanksgiving dinner with enough copies for all those who would want one. And, of course, now that I know what to expect from the process, I will go back. We have a lot of images we could share. I just didn't know we could have them copied so reasonably.

I said I liked the sepia tone, but as I take time to really look at the two images, I see definition in the more deeply colored one that also appeals to me. Suddenly it's no longer a faded vintage image but more lifelike -- the image of a vibrant young woman of the 1920s with her life ahead of her. And perhaps this is more nearly how the picture appeared when it was new.

Which one do you like? KW