Sailor Mike and his lady, younger and older
By: usermattw
Tags: antiques, photography, vintage photography
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Call me sentimental, but when I see an assortment of loose photos in an antique store that obviously belong together, I’ll tend to buy them all to keep them from getting separated, whether they’re all gems or not. Such was the case with these photos recently. It was the lovely photo above that caught my attention first, featuring an attractive couple that is easily spotted in a bunch of other photos, even when the photos include other people, and even though they age over a couple of decades. Below is one of the later photos of them, taken at, and inserted into a souvenir cardboard frame from, The Circus Room at John Ascuaga’s Nugget casino in Sparks, Nevada. (I don’t know who the guy in the middle is. Their son, maybe?) One of the treats of having all the photos is seeing them over time. The photos all show them out and about, typically having dinners with friends, plus a whole set of them showing the man (identified once as “Mike”) competing in multiple golf tournaments at the California Golf Club. They seem to have led fun, active lives, and at least from the images in this handful of photos, they seem to have enjoyed each other’s company, which makes me happy. [Click on the photo below to enlarge.]
Pics of Then 
It’s too bad they don’t seem to have descendents around, since the photos ended up for sale, but at least we strangers can appreciate them.
That’s something I often think about with this collection. How did these photos end up in my hands? Was there no family that wanted them? That’s especially true of newer ones, as opposed to the century-old unidentified ones. Maybe there are no heirs, or the heirs weren’t on good terms with the deceased. Maybe the heirs already had duplicates. (I have two copies of the “younger” photo in this post, for instance.) Etc. It may seem silly to some people, but I feel a certain obligation to honor the intention of these photos, and I’m glad there are people like you to continue to appreciate them, even out of their original context.