Uploaded August 2023 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
There's a moment in life when most of us realize we're not a kid anymore. For some, this moment is very clear, very distinct. For some of us, this moment is only known in hindsight. This was the case with me... But by some fortuitous luck, I have this moment on film.
My father got a home movie camera in 1955, when I was 2 years old. He shot many films with it over the years, and we would have little family movie nights from time to time, where we set up the screen and watched our collective memories. With popcorn. Another highlight of my childhood in the 1960s.. was that we.., my father, that is, had a 1930 Model A Ford. In those days, a car like that wasn't just old, it was ancient,.. and it turned heads everywhere we went. The last film my father ever shot with that movie camera was of that car,... in 1967,...the day he sold it, and filmed it driving away. With that last film, he documented the end of my childhood on that day, but neither he nor I knew it at the time. He was documenting a momentous occasion of his own. Having that car at that time was a 'maverick' thing for him to do. But both his marriage and his career were demanding that he set aside that unorthodox part of his nature, and conform. Letting that car go was one of his attempts to comply with those demands. And so in filming it one last time, he was trying to create a memory--at least--that he could hold on to. There were big changes on his horizon and I think he both knew it, and felt powerless to hold those changes back. Selling that car would prove to be... not enough. Within four years both his marriage and his career were no more.
But that's his story, and why he sold the car, and why he filmed it going away. What was not known then, but only became apparent later, was how much that car, and that day, meant to my own story, and that of my brother. And so here is that short film, from 1967, with my brother and I talking about it.
There's a moment in life when most of us realize we're not a kid anymore. For some, this moment is very clear, very distinct. For some of us, this moment is only known in hindsight. This was the case with me... But by some fortuitous luck, I have this moment on film.
My father got a home movie camera in 1955, when I was 2 years old. He shot many films with it over the years, and we would have little family movie nights from time to time, where we set up the screen and watched our collective memories. With popcorn. Another highlight of my childhood in the 1960s.. was that we.., my father, that is, had a 1930 Model A Ford. In those days, a car like that wasn't just old, it was ancient,.. and it turned heads everywhere we went. The last film my father ever shot with that movie camera was of that car,... in 1967,...the day he sold it, and filmed it driving away. With that last film, he documented the end of my childhood on that day, but neither he nor I knew it at the time. He was documenting a momentous occasion of his own. Having that car at that time was a 'maverick' thing for him to do. But both his marriage and his career were demanding that he set aside that unorthodox part of his nature, and conform. Letting that car go was one of his attempts to comply with those demands. And so in filming it one last time, he was trying to create a memory--at least--that he could hold on to. There were big changes on his horizon and I think he both knew it, and felt powerless to hold those changes back. Selling that car would prove to be... not enough. Within four years both his marriage and his career were no more.
But that's his story, and why he sold the car, and why he filmed it going away. What was not known then, but only became apparent later, was how much that car, and that day, meant to my own story, and that of my brother. And so here is that short film, from 1967, with my brother and I talking about it.
