Opening a 42 Year Old Time Capsule

One benefit of the 16 months in my hermitage has been the discovery of long forgotten keepsakes.

In 1978 QUBE-TV in Columbus, Ohio held a months long “Talent Search” where daily, weekly, monthly and grand prize winners were determined by votes of the judges and the TV audience who voted remotely.

My DD Jeannie and her piano partner Mimi were the grand prize winners and won a bunch of prizes including an all expenses paid trip to NYC for the girls and their mothers.

I always had photos in my well organized albums but this box of souvenirs was a surprise. 

I saved our airline tickets, stationary from the Americana hotel, brochures from the sites of the city and some very special drawings of our experiences by 8 year old Jeannie.
Reading the Playbill of Annie was fascinating.  By then Shelly Bruce had replaced Andrea McArdle in the title role, but Annie’s understudy was Sarah Jessica Parker who also played one of the orphans. 

Jeannie and Mimi met in a Yamaha group piano class of a dozen kids at age 6. 

Within a few months their teacher moved them to a class of 4. The following year she decided to teach them together at side by side pianos.
They performed around Columbus as soloists and together like a pint sized version of Ferrante and Teicher. 
They even played F & T’s “Theme from the Apartment”
At age 11 their teacher decided that it was time they went on to study separately with different teachers.

My next project is to convert to digital format all the dozens of cassette tape recordings I made from 1976 – 1990.
Fortunately, all are labeled and indexed with the repertoire on each one.
I was very organized back then.  Joe believes we should do the conversion ourselves. 
My choice is to pay a local company to do it for us.

While I was examining this 1978  time capsule, I got a text from a grandson to tell me that he was about to cross the Verrazano Bridge into Brooklyn. 
He is visiting a college friend whose family has a membership at Breezy Point Beach Club near Coney Island.

I replied that I watched that bridge being built and sent him these 60 year old photos below of my girlfriends and me exactly where he was going.

He said that his friend’s family knew exactly where those pictures were taken.
A very cool coincidence!