- That's my mom. Oh.
Then it's just so many memories.
- (FBE) So, we've done this episode a few times before,
but recently you've provided us with some throwback pictures
of yourself when you were younger. - Oh God.
- Yes, I did. I gave pictures of my family
going all the way back into the late 1800s,
early 1900s.
- (FBE) Today, we're gonna have you go through some of them,
but they may look a little different than when
you sent these pictures in. - Okay.
- (FBE) So, here is your first picture.
- Oh, that's my mom and dad's wedding picture
and that's them on the bottom. He was drafted
and had to go to Korea and so they got married.
- (FBE) Here is the same pic but you'll see it has now
been altered. - Wow.
Oh, that's so cool. And her dress was blue, too.
I still have it. It's funny, 'cause it's
not that different, but they look so different.
It looks more modern, I guess.
- That's me as a two year old. Oh, what a tan.
That kid's got some fat cheeks, doesn't he?
It looks terrific. In those days, they did
have colored photographs, but they were not as reliable
and they kinda washed out and more expensive probably.
Like everybody else, we were trying to--
during World War 2, you couldn't buy a lot of things
that you could today.
- Oh boy. That's the kid.
Wow. Okay.
It's a big difference. Color really brings it to life.
- Oh God, it's the war. This is probably 1944.
Look at my father's eyes. My mother is beautiful
and that's my sister, Susan, who's passed away.
The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
My father was in Chicago at Michael Reese Hospital.
My father comes home, tells my mother,
now they're Canadians still, tells her, "I'm going down to the--"
and my father's a doctor, a physician.
"I'm going down tomorrow morning and I'm enlisting."
So this Master sergeant said, "You'd like to be
a US citizen, Doctor Fine?" My dad said, "Yes."
He said, "Step over here, Doc, and I'm gonna make you
an American right now." Two weeks later,
my mother was a citizen and my father went off
to the South Pacific to fight. Well, to save lives
of the boys there.
- That's my mom. I think she was only
16 or 17 then. Oh.
I was 24 when my mom died, so we didn't really get
to have-- I wasn't an adult, you know,
with her, so it makes me sad when I think about her.
She grew up really poor. She had to move into town
when she was-- she had to drop out of school
and move into town. They lived out in the countryside
and moved into town to work to send money
back to her family. That was when she was on her own.
- Oh, there's a fine looking group. Now this is me,
the one with the round head, not the bullet head.
This is one of my fine relatives. These are my fine siblings.
Wow. You notice how we had
our pant cuffs rolled up. You buy pants for kids
that were two or three sizes too big so they can grow into them.
I look about five or six. Right after World War 2.
It was just a great place, just great memories of growing up.
- Oh, that's the gang there. I remember one guy's name.
The guy next to me. I almost think his name
was Bebe. The rest of them,
I don't remember their names. Wow, that's nice.
Those are my classmates. Going to school and having fun,
being a kid and working on the farm,
'cause we had a farm. We could go behind the house
and climb the cherry tree, peach tree, apple tree,
sit there and eat all I want,
go eat berries all day. I grew up very blessed.
- Wow, my grandfather, an uncle and aunt
and this was taken in a little town in Belarus
called Gleboka. Oh my God.
Whoa. My grandpa, the first child
he sent over twelve years old in 1888, was my grandmother, Esther.
It was never safe living in Belarus.
When the second world war broke out, in the small town,
about a thousand Jews, most of that thousand
were taken to the death camp Treblinka.
They did not survive. My whole family on that side,
wiped out. If you didn't get out,
the door got shut. She lived 'til she was 99.
She hadn't come, we'd be nothing. - (FBE) No FBE.
- There wouldn't be anything.
- Oh, oh, I can't wait to see this one.
Yeah, that's my mom. So that's my mom on the left,
Evelyn. That's how poor they were.
This was in Minnesota. Can you imagine
winters in Minnesota? They didn't have indoor plumbing,
they just had an outhouse. Oh, that's so cool.
I see it being dirty in black and white,
'cause that's just all I remember of seeing those old pictures,
but of course it wasn't. It was green and there was
things growing. It makes them look more real,
I guess. Yeah, not just this thing
from history. And they're all gone,
all passed. My mom, all her brothers
and sisters and all their husbands and wives.
- That's a Christmas photo. There's a Christmas tree
in the back. I think that's my cousin
on the right. Wow.
Christmas tree came alive. In Michigan, it snows,
so we would get sleds. I got a sled.
It's not in the picture here. You go out and run
and flop down on your sled and just guide
and stuff like that. It really brings it to life.
Amazing what you guys did.
- Oh, there, the top-- you notice the pants again.
Everybody, check the pants. I'm ten, eleven, twelve years old.
We're still buying the pants too long, so I grew into them.
Everybody had to play an instrument in my family.
Everybody had to play an instrument.
One of my sisters played the piano, one played the violin,
I played the trombone, and my brother played
the trumpet. Oh wow.
The cabinets, the wall, the floors look good.
The things I did when I was a kid, swimming every day
and trombone every day and I played all the way through
until I got to high school. When I got to high school,
I went into competitive sports and I dropped the damn thing,
but I later picked it up again in college.
I worked my way through college in a rock and roll band.
We played a little trombone but I picked up the bass guitar.
Bass guitar is easier, four strings.
Phil Painter and the Knockabouts.
You've probably heard of us. We were big.
- That's her. Look at me.
That's me and my sister. I must be four or five.
Ooh, that's incredible. That looks like something--
a cell out of a movie. This was the place where
I first discovered television and Howdy Doody
that the neighbors down that street, they got a television,
they plug it in and after school,
all the kids would come and they'd turn it on,
this magical thing. Take a while for those tubes
to warm up and it's Howdy Doody time.
Early '50s. It was a magical time to grow up.
- Oh, that's me at Christmas. Wow, it looks so different.
I remember those drapes. They had big birds on them.
I think about kids today, everything is--
we get a picture a year at school.
We get one picture and this, we had to--
you take a picture and then you take it in
and get it developed. I didn't even have
snapshot pictures. We just had slides.
- Okay, so here I am. Can you tell which one's me, first?
Okay, right in the front. That's me, yeah.
That's me. Now remember, this was
in Vietnam. I spent two years in Vietnam
on a ship and this was at a break.
They let us off once in a while to go into town.
We might have one or two days off and then we go
back to sea for 40 or 50 days. Look at that.
The guy right over me there, his name was Bruce Kirk.
You have buddies, they kinda take--
you watch his back, he watches mine,
cover for each other, do that.
This was my buddy. There's really no way
to keep in touch. There was no social media.
There's no phones. He went off on the ship
and I went back. Got discharged
and went back to my real world,
but I'll never forget the guy, so Bruce,
if you're out there, from Muskegon, Michigan,
Bruce Kirk, let me know.
-Yeah, I think we took a trip and we're going to church,
so I got my Sunday best on. Yeah, dapper Dan right there.
I think I probably just got to camp,
'cause it was in Cassopolis, Michigan.
I went to camp every year. My whole life has been
a happy life, so fun and happy.
Can I get some of these?
- Oh, hey. Couple of my students
and this is in the Ukiah Daily Journal,
which was a newspaper. Oh, look how young I am.
Oh my God. That beard is rad, man.
I remember that sweater and we're inside--
this is the second year of the school.
The first year of the school happened out of my
Volkswagen bus. These kids were by and large
kids that had been thrown out of school, runaways,
throwaways, living out in communes
and weird places. My job is to find them
and the motto of our school was "This isn't the way out.
This is the way in." I'm glad I saved all this stuff.
- It's nice to look back, but then it just
is all my memories and everything changes
and people pass on and it's kinda hard to.
- I'm pretty damn lucky. Damn lucky to see things
and live the things I've done. I can look back and be happy
and had wonderful times and think about that.
I don't wanna live like that. I wanna look ahead
and see the great things I'm still gonna do
and have and experience.
- I love this. This is so important.
Where you come from shapes your life
and as the father, I made sure I gave away
everything that I wanted my kids to have,
other than my will, while I was still alive,
so we can talk about what these pictures were
and who's who and what and where and how.
Go find the boxes with the pictures and pull them out
and bring them to the dinner table
and maybe around Christmas time when the relatives
or cousins are showing, and get the stories.
It'll change your life.
♪ (ragtime outro) ♪