Tag Archives: California

America, Children, Family, Kids, Photography

A Volcanic Week

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The Little Cake Boss doing her dance thing out in the middle of nowhere. Notice her iPhone? The Texting Princess was not too keen about having no signal.

It indeed turned out to be a volcanic week.  The end began the night before on Saturday at 10:30 pm when my son asked, “Papa, can we go to the Mojave Road tomorrow?”

Mojave Road??  In the morning??  Egads.

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The week was already in shambles… full of surprises.

My 13 year old son requested one of my apples pies so I baked one on Tuesday night…from scratch.  Crust included – never mind it looked like a clone of Shaq’s head. The pie turned out pretty darned good if you ask him.  Can you hear it sizzling as it came out of the oven?:

My 11 year old daughter has multiple dance classes every week night except Friday plus 2-1/2 hours on Saturday – right in the middle of the day.  On Thursdays, although she has a two hour window in between two classes, she chooses to stay to chat up a storm with her friends…except last week.  As I take her to her 4:30 pm class on the 4th (late again as she is never ready on time), she asks me to pick her up at 5:30 instead!  Plus, as she exits the car, she manipulatively says, “…and today’s National Cookie Day, Papa.  Can we bake some chocolate chip cookies later tonight?”  Geez.  Rushed across the street to Ralph’s to pick up more brown sugar and some walnuts then headed home…

As I was pre-mixing the dry ingredients for her cookies, Jack rushes into the kitchen at 5:15 pm all excited.  He said, “Papaaa…  I forgot to tell you but there’s an orientation night at the high school.”

“Oh…OK.  When?” I ask.

“Toooo-night…” in a shy voice…

Holy crap!!  I never got a notification of the orientation but it turns out he had taken something home to his mama; of course, she didn’t bother sharing that with me!  Then double crap!  (There’s a triple crap coming.)  I had to pick up my daughter in 15 minutes but the orientation started at 6:00!  Arrgghh!

Throw some snacks into a bag, load my son hurriedly into the car, then zip off to her dance studio.  I was a few minutes late and she was waiting outside.  I am NEVER late when it comes to the kids and especially with my little girl.  As I hand her the snacks, I tell her she has to stay because…..  😦  Boy, did she get upset at my son…from a distance!

We get to the auditorium in the nick of time.

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We transitioned to a classroom later listening to the IT department head give his presentation when… the triple darn hits.  My phone starts vibrating…  It’s 6:45 pm…  It’s my little girl calling from the dance studio.  She forgot a piece of her dance clothes for her 7:30 class.  Geez.

I couldn’t leave Jack alone so I had to pull him out of the orientation and rush back to the dance school.  I picked her up to take her home as I have NO idea what “thing” she needs.  I take her back by 7:20 only to have to pick her up at 8:30.

With all the excitement, I had forgotten how many 1/4 cups of brown sugar I had put into the cookie mix.  Criminy.  Anyways, four batches of toll house cookies emerged… And the Little Cake Boss – she’s the one who wanted to bake the cookies for National Cookie Day – didn’t help…  She said she was too tired…  Arrgghh.

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Yielded about 40 cookies.

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Ah, the volcanoes…

I had been asking Jack where he would like to go on a Sunday especially since the last two months have been Brooke’s dance, dance, dance for competitions and dance “conventions” every weekend.  Saturdays and Sundays. Get up by 5:30 am.  Criminy.  I felt bad leaving him home but I had no other choice.

So at 10:30 pm on Saturday, he brings up the Mojave Road.  He would like to go there.  I looked it up.  It was a dirt road that makes the Baja 500 look like skateboarding on a sidewalk.  Sadly, I said we couldn’t go because it’s 4 x 4 terrain; plus, the rainstorms had made some sections really rough going.

Then he says, “Papa, isn’t the Subaru 4WD?”  Gadzooks.  I had to show him photos of the road damaged by flooding and how raised monster off-road vehicles even get stuck.  Besides, the car only has cheap two-ply street tires.  He was disappointed.  I asked him to pick somewhere else…after I had said to pick a place.  He decided on “Hole-in-the-Wall” in the middle of the Mojave National Preserve.  It’s roughly 240 miles from home… One way.  Man, you should have heard my daughter moan and groan while chomping on the toll house cookies her PAPA baked for HER.  She did NOT want to go!

“Jack!!  What are you going to do when we get there! Duh!” she asked, then stormed to her room.  Oh, man.  I feel sorry for her future boy friend.  Did I write that?  Where’s the backspace…

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Believe me, I’d rather fight Godzilla rather than getting the Little Cake Boss out of bed early on a Sunday.  Braving an apocalypse, I cracked open her door at 7:30 am; I escaped with just one black eye and a broken arm.  But we all managed to get into the car by 8 am.  Drove like crazy as it gets awfully cold and DARK real quick out in the desert.  We got there a little after noon.

Hole-in-the-Wall is an area where volcanoes spewed lava over millions of years.  Geologists theorize that uneven cooling of the layers of lava aided in creating pockets of trapped gasses within.  Through the eons, time had eroded away the lava layers, exposing these “holes”.  The plateaus surrounding the area were what remains of the tops of the original lava flows millions of years ago. It has also been rumored to have been a hideout for outlaws in the days of the Wild West.  Their saddles must have had built-in GPS to have been able to come back to this forsaken place.  If it weren’t for Sparklett’s making door-to-door deliveries, they wouldn’t have had water, either.

As this story is getting too long, some snaps by my son and I from Hole-in-the-Wall:

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Avoiding cacti and other thorny stuff… as well as tarantulas that wouldn’t fit in a dog cage.
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Some petroglyphs.

I encouraged Jack to take photos as there is an art show at his school early next year:

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Me bending down is out of the question so I encouraged Jack to take a photo of this dead plant.

This is his result:

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Jack’s photograph. Pretty darn cool!

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A billion cacti meant a gadzillion thorns.
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On the three mile desert hike that nearly killed me.
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Canon, baby.
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Another one of my son’s photos.
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There must be a zillion people smarter than me as we didn’t see a single car for over 20 minutes… but then we were trying avoid potholes the size of the Meteor Crater. Taken by Jack.
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Natural cotton gin.

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A last one from my son.

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Art, Children, Family, Kids, Nisei, Photography

Passing the Baton

42 Comments

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My twelve year old son Jack at the Seal Beach Pier.  He just began taking pictures at this time and I wanted to capture that moment.  I guess that’s the photographer in me.

With all the researching, translating and documenting I’ve done on our family history during the past several years, I’ve come to the realization I was living in the past.  And as time marched by, I wanted more time…but now, that time has gone.

I reflected on the near future; in the past month, things have changed.  Things that cannot be undone.  And I realized, too, that in addition to passing on what I’ve learned about our family history through these blogs, I need to pass the baton on as well for tomorrow.  Small things.

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve held a camera in my hand… from the time I was perhaps eight years old.  I vividly recall looking down on the ground glass of my dad’s Rolleiflex TLR.  And I know it was my grandmother or aunt who sent me a “Fujipet” 120 film camera from Japan as a gift.  It had a plastic lens.  There were two levers, one on either side of the lens; you pressed one down with your left finger to cock the shutter.  Then with your right finger, you pressed the other lever “to take the shot”.  I took a bazillion shots during our 1964 road trip to Chicago and burned through a lot of 120 film.  I don’t think mom was too happy.

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I’m in the center; dangling from my neck is the Fujipet 120 film camera. The “model” on the left is my cousin Jane.  Chicago, circa 1964.

When I was twelve, I spent a summer in Tokyo; I was born there.  My Aunt Eiko got me my first “real” camera: a Canon Demi-S.  It shot 35mm film but in “half-frame”.  In other words, if you had a 36-shot roll of film, you would get 72 shots – plus about four or five more at the end.  I loved it.  It even had a built in light meter, a soft case and a wrist strap.  It went everywhere I went.  I even bought yellow and red filters.  I used it to take photos of the TV set when Armstrong landed walked on the moon…but none of the images came out because I wanted to use my new fancy-schmancy electric strobe with a DC cord.  I got great pictures of our RCA color TV, though.  LOTS of great pictures of our TV set.  But on one – just one – you can BARELY make out Armstrong as he stepped of the Lunar Module.

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The Canon Demi-S, complete with the soft case. Under the lens, there is even a filter that enhances skin tones when shooting color.

While I did take one class in photography, everything else was self-taught through the years.  Trial and error.  That means lots of moolah down the drain…literally.  I had a full darkroom in my parent’s house at one time.  I must have developed and processed over a thousand rolls and printed thousands of pictures.  While I did win a few contests in sports photography, I never learned the critical things that define a pro…like my bud Alan Miyatake (but I did best him in ONE contest. LOL).

Since becoming a young adult, I’ve always been the “photographer”…  taking pictures at events, parties, of this and that…  I don’t know if I was any good at it but people always seemed to ask me to take photos.  Perhaps because I took them for free.  But finally, I took snapshots at my own daughter’s wedding…and not someone else’s daughter for a change.

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As I was taking my kids back to their mother’s two weeks ago, my twelve year old son surprised me by asking if he can have a “real” camera.  Totally out of the blue but I was happy.  He wanted to take pictures like his old man.

So yesterday, we headed towards the nearby beach; he wanted to take pictures of the sunset!  I handed him my (getting old) Canon DSLR and monopod and while in the car, I gave him a crash course on shutter speed, f/stops,  and ISO.

But he asked, “But don’t you just push the button, Papa?”

So with temps in the high 50’s (cold for us here) and a chilling wind, I gave him some basic instructions and I left him pretty much alone.

He took on his own challenge.

Here are a few of his photos; sure, I edited them a bit but he did darn well for his first time.

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Must be in his genes.

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As I watched Jack from a distance in that chilling wind, feelings of being alone and lament swirled.  Sadness that time has surged by with tomorrows dwindling.  It felt as if I was looking at myself…  fifty years ago… with that Fujipet camera with a plastic lens dangling from my neck.

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My son Jack must be thinking of his next shot…

I hope he continues.  The family needs a photographer.