History Project

Slide projectors have been on my mind for the past four or five years. I remember when I was a lad I thought it would be a clever idea to take apart my parents projector and use the components to make my own, out of a shoe box. Needless to say it was a disastrous project. Reverse engineering has never been my strong suit. I inherited a collection of old slides from my folks a few years ago. They then sat in a drawer at my house for a few dozen months until I permanently borrowed a slide projector from my mother-in-law. I have the projector set up in the basement and from time to time I will go down into the bowels of the house and beam a few slides onto the wall.

A few years ago I got a projector from the mother-in-law. Last night I set it up in the basement and viewed a few of my parents slides from the 1970's. I came across a street scene in Ireland. I saw that there was a pub in the photo, "The Ensign". What a strange name for a pub.

I used Google to locate the pub and was able to get a present day photo. Turns out the pub is in Monkstown, Co. Cork. Follow this link (LINK) for a spot the difference of the street scene then and now. The limited color palette of the old days is pleasing to the eye compared to the garish tones of today.

The slides are mostly a record of their days before the arrival of multiple offspring. That is a world that I know little about so these slides are an interesting glimpse inside that world. Frozen moments of Ireland in the 1970's confirm a beauty and uniqueness that I can only hope will exist forever.