About mid way through my kindergarten year, my family moved from Dallas, Texas back to where I had started life, and to where all of my family was still living. At that time, 1976, Newport Beach wasn’t the “O.C.” that recently became whored out to the likes of MTV and Fox. It was a quiet beach town more akin to Mayberry than J.R.’s Dallas or wherever the hell it was Dynasty or Falcon Crest took place.

I may be hopelessly nostalgic, but growing up in Newport and Corona del Mar was idyllic. My memories of those years are some of my most cherished, and a lot of them are tied up to the elementary school I attended from kindergarten through the fifth grade. Corona del Mar Elementary was, and again this might just be me romanticizing things, just about as perfect a place for a kid to go to school as one could wish for.

Living in Boston, I make it a point whenever I go “home,” to visit all the old haunts, to re-connect, to re-live, and to make a mental note of how it’s changed. One of the places I can’t do that with is CdM Elementary, as it’s now a few blocks of condos. The school closed down after my fifth grade year and was torn down. Before the demolition, a few of my friends and I broke in to the school, in essence, to say goodbye.

I remember standing in the room that served as my fourth grade class, Mr. Crockerd was the teacher, and feeling very nostalgic, for what was probably the very first time. There was debris strewn about, desks were scattered and toppled, the chalk boards were a mess. We cleaned one of them off and wrote, “We were here.” And then walked outside, home, and began our summer vacation.

Looking at the image I’m posting today brings all that back, I hadn’t planned on getting sentimental on you, and at the time I took this shot, those memories were the farthest thing from my mind. At the time I was just geeking out on line and shadow, composition. But something about the expired film and the Holga conspired to bring about those old ghosts of CdM, and if for only that, the 22 bucks I paid for the little plastic camera was money pretty well spent.

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