Greenwood Cemetery, Jackson, Mississippi

Dear Readers,

Let us return to the South with a series of Jackson and Vicksburg articles. Then we will jump back west to the Pacific Northwest and take a few stops further afield. Afterwards, I want to go through some of the family archives from various locations.

Jackson, Mississippi

Central Jackson, Mississippi, from Google Maps. Greenwood Cemetery is at the red marker.

Greenwood Cemetery is a peaceful and restful green space in downtown Jackson, Mississippi. According to the Greenwood Cemetery Association,

The members of the Greenwood Cemetery Association welcome you to historic Greenwood Cemetery. This cemetery was established by an act of the Mississippi State Legislature which was approved January 1, 1823. It has grown from the original six acres to its present twenty-two acres.

Greenwood Cemetery is downtown Jackson's largest green space. Towering oaks, magnolias, crepe myrtles, and cedars shade portions of the grounds and the sunny areas boast large collections of antique bulbs and ever blooming, own-root roses. Camellia bushes are scattered throughout the cemetery, and the wisteria is breathtaking in early May. There is something blooming every month of the year. The natural landscape and the beautiful monuments make it a calm and serene spot adjacent to the bustle of downtown.

Until the end of the 19th century, all residents of Jackson could be buried in Greenwood Cemetery and many were. The early records are incomplete and work continues on identifying those buried. 

I had driven by the cemetery many times but never stopped to walk inside. In early 2023, I finally looked around. 

Northeast part of Greenwood (Kodak Plus-X film, Leica IIIC camera, 50mm ƒ/1.8 Canon lens)

The cemetery was a bit overgrown. I recall a call for volunteers to clean brush and grass. All in all, it was not as interesting as cemeteries in south Louisiana, where many of the monuments are ornate and almost Baroque.

Just west of the cemetery is the historic Farish Street neighborhood. During the post-World War II economic boom, this was a thriving cultural and business hub for the African American community. After the 1970s, the neighborhood decayed severely. I remember 1990s attempts to encourage a comeback, but those efforts did not generate much (or any) reinvestment. This Mississippi Today article outlines the decades of disappointment, political infighting, and missteps in the attempts to revive the district. Preservation in Mississippi also posted some articles on Farish Street. 

I have posted pictures from the Farish Street area before. Here are more photographs from my archives from Lamar, Cohea, and Monument Streets, all immediately west of Greenwood Cemetery.

998 North Lamar Street (TMax 100 film, Olympus Trip 35 camera)

1107 North Lamar Street

Lamar Street runs north-south just west of the cemetery. Some (much) of the housing stock is seriously deteriorated. 

East Cohea Street view west

Empty lots in this area mean that deteriorated or abandoned houses have been razed. This is a significant cost for the city. It also means that the property no longer generates tax revenue. 

Cohea view east from near North Mill Street (Panatomic-X film, Fuji GW690II camera) 

Duplex at 146 Cohea Street

Duplex 147-149 Cohea Street

Duplex 153 Cohea Street

These modest duplexes likely once were homes for families who shopped and worked at the stores, restaurants, and jazz clubs on Farish Street. Now they are silent; the happy children are gone. 

Cottage, 155 Cohea Street

Cottage, 328 East Monument Street (no longer extant)

I took these photographs on Kodak Plus-X (2023 frames), TMax 100 (2018), and Panatomic-X (2012) films. 

This has been a quick look at central Jackson near Greenwood Cemetery. For other articles on Jackson, please see:

Jan 2010: Mississippi Basin Model
Jan 2010: Hawkins Field
Jan 2010: Naval reserve Center
Feb 2010: Hinds County Armory
Nov 2010: Jackson Municipal Library
Apr 2013: Hinds County Armory update
May 2013: Oil Mill
May 2013: Mill Street corner store
Apr 2015: Lock business, Pascagoula St.
May 2015: Mill Street
Jun 2015: West Capital Street
Jun 2015: Masonic Temple
Nov 2015: Mississippi Basin Model continuing decline
Dec 2015: West Porter Street
Jan 2016: Near the State Capital
Sep 2016: North Mill Street
Jul 2017: Grayson Court
Dec 2017: Old House Depot
Feb 2018: Basin Model update
May 2018: Fortification Street
April 2019: Woodrow Wilson Ave.
Aug 2019: Bailey Avenue restaurant

Into the Woods: Squaxin Park, Olympia, Washington (Oly 02)

Squaxin Park, formerly known as Priest Point Park, is a 314 acre oasis of big trees, mosses, and ferns just north of downtown Olympia on the east shore of Budd Inlet. The Steh-Chass (People of the Water)  settled this land for centuries, living in villages along the shores of Budd Inlet. In 1848, Catholic missionaries, the Oblate Fathers, came to the area with sponsorship or funding by the Hudson’s Bay Company. The Oblate Fathers displaced the Steh-Chass, cleared the land, and established the St. Joseph d’Olympia Mission and school. The Mission only lasted until 1860, after which the land lay idle for 45 years. In 1905, a group of land investors deeded some of the land to the City of Olympia to form a park. 

Priest Point Park, early 1910s (from City of Olympia)

The original park name was Priest Point, but the priests were only there for 12 years. Converting heathens must have proven a bit too difficult or not sufficiently lucrative.

The importance of this timeline is that the forest in the park has been largely undisturbed for about 150 years. This is not old growth forest but is as close as you will encounter near an urban area. The dense mosses, ferns, and towering tree trunks hint at what old growth forest must have looked like. Pockets of old growth or at least very old trees exist in the Olympic Peninsula, but Squaxin Park is closer and easier to reach (and it is only a 10 minute walk north of where I now live). 

Ellis Cove at low tide

Woods above Mission Creek

Dusk in Squaxin (1+ sec. exposure)

Trail to Ellis Cove

Rest area at Ellis Cove

I took these pictures with my little Fuji X-E1 digital camera and the compact 27mm ƒ/2.8 Fuji lens. I have not exercised this kit much in the last few years but need to refamiliarize myself with its functions. It is convenient and easy to use. For most of the pictures above, I used the Astia simulation and set the frame to 1:1 to resemble the square frame of a Rolleiflex. This crops off the edges, so you end up with fewer pixels in your files. One of the µ4/3 Panasonic cameras, the GH2, had a multi-aspect ratio sensor, so setting various frame sizes used different parts of the oversized sensor. But I think all current digital cameras simply chop off part of the frame. 

Digital is certainly convenient. The pictures are usually "sharp" (whatever that means), the exposure is usually decent, and the camera adjusts the white balance for many light conditions. You take pictures, go home, download the files, and you are ready to use them. I formerly would open the raw files and adjust them with software, but honestly, the jpeg files that the camera computes look fine for 8-bit web display. I never got into the use of Lightroom or developing a secret formula to manipulate the raw files.

Despite having used 4/3, µ4/3, APS, and compact digital cameras, I think the best digital files in my archives are from a 2005-vintage 10 mpixel Sony DSC R1 camera. Despite being "early" technology, the output was superb.

Athens in 1964 with an Instamatic 500 Camera

2024 New Year Note

Dear Readers, welcome to 2024. Thank you all for your support. In the upcoming year, look for a mixture of new material and more treasures (garbage?) from my archives. I also want to scan more of my father's negatives. My New Year's resolution is to sort through much of this old material and purge. 

Resolution 2: Don't buy more cameras. But a friend said he would send me his Mamiya RB67..... 

Resolution 3: Use some of the film in my freezer before buying any more new film. The 120 Panatomic-X is 35 years old. It responds perfectly so far, but its life is finite. 

The Kodak Instamatic 500

Kodak Instamatic 500 camera (photo source unknown)

My dad always took pictures. So when I was in elementary school, I wanted a camera, too. My childhood friend had an Instamatic 100 and, later, the 104 (the 4 meant it could accept flashcubes). 

In the early 1960s, Instamatics and the associated type 126 film cartridge were Eastman Kodak's marketing marvel, an astonishing sales success worldwide. Kodak introduced the one-piece film cartridge in 1963. The cameras were easy to use. Many casual photographers had endless trouble loading 35mm film into a camera, but the one-piece 126 cassette solved that complexity. All a user needed to do was place the plastic film cassette into the camera and close the back. Most Instamatics were simple cameras with a fixed aperture, but some had early-vintage auto exposure. Some even has a hand-wind spring motor to advance the film. 

Kodak sold 126 film until the early 2000s. Their last Instamatic camera was the X-15F in 1988. Mike Eckman has written a detailed summary of the film and its history. He also summarized ways to load  35mm film into recycled or brand new 126 cartridges. 

I did not know anything about cameras, so an Instamatic seemed like the logical path. I saved my allowance and, with help from the parents, requested a Kodak Instamatic 500 camera. A relative bought one in Germany and brought it home to Greece.

From The Bulletin, August 14, 1965

Unlike most of the simple box versions, the 500 let you focus manually and had a built-in Gossen selenium light meter. The 45mm ƒ/2.8 Xenar lens was a modern and coated 4-element Tessar type. Mike Eckman wrote a detailed review of the Instamatic 500 and its history, so I will not try to repeat details here. On Instamatic standards, the 500 was capable of decent negatives or slides.

I did not know what I was doing, but the instruction manual said look at the distance scale and turn the aperture scale until the light meter needle pointer was in the middle of the bar in the viewfinder. Simple even for a youngster. Here are some 1964 examples from Greece. The film was probably Verichrome Pan (which I used and liked in 2021 in 120 format). 

Athens view west from Lycabettus Hill

In the 1960s, Athens was growing furiously. Elegant turn of the century townhouses were being torn down and replaced with rectangle concrete apartment buildings of no architectural merit. Now, some 60 years later, they look like tired nondescript apartment buildings with inadequate elevators, bathrooms, and electrical supply. My 1964 photograph shows the ugly constriction.

Athens view south from Lycabettus Hill

To the south, the scene is about the same. The stadium in the middle is the site of the 1896 Olympic Games revival. The suburb beyond is Nea Smyrni, an area settled by Greek refugees from Anatolia after the disasterous 1923 war and the subsequent exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey (i.e., forced ethnic cleansing).  

Athens view east

This is the view towards Mount Hymmetus. Today, the urban sprawl extends a lot further up the slopes.  The American Embassy is the modern white building with columns in the center just beyond the green slope. Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius designed the chancery building, which was completed in 1961. I recall when you could drive right up to the building and enter the basement garage. Now, it is surrounded by tall walls and the sidewalks have truck bomb concrete barriers. The concrete ramp in the foreground is part of the ramp for a funicular. 

S.S. Hanseatic in Piraeus

A trip to see ships in Piraeus was always a treat. This was the S.S. Hanseatic of the Hamburg-Atlantic Line. Built in 1930, this was formerly the Empress of Scotland steamship. The Hamburg-Atlantic Line bought it and extensively rebuilt it, replacing her three funnels with two modern style funnels. Note the open lifeboats, a deadly way to save passengers in case of an evacuation on the open Atlantic ocean. In 1964, passengers still crossed The Atlantic via ocean liner, but the Boeing 707 airliner was in the process of crushing the traditional cross-ocean passenger ship business. 

Unknown sports car near Mount Pendeli

Update: a reader from Germany wrote that this sports car is an Auto Union 1000 Sp roadster (3 cylinders, two-stroke, front wheel drive).

Picnic somewhere near Mount Pendeli

Family friends invited me to a picnic. The stove with all the smoke was a clever Israeli folding camp stove that burned crushed newspaper. I do not know if it could handle the heat of wood or charcoal. Sitting on the rocky soil on newspaper does not look too comfortable. 

My mom and two cousins somewhere near the sea

A typical Sunday outing was to go to a taverna by the sea and eat. The adults hung about and talked, while the children were bored and ran around. Note the poofy hair in classic 1964 style.

Sitting around at a taverna

Yes indeed, here are the adults sitting around at the taverna. The kid looks bored. Don't forget the high-heeled shoes for the Sunday casual outing.

This ends out short look back at 1964 through a Kodak Instamatic 500 camera. As you can see, for internet display, the quality is quite acceptable. I could not find any companies that sell new 126 film, but some adapter kits exist to reload perforated 135 film into 126 cartridges. The Film Photography Project may be trying to reintroduce 126, but I have not kept up with their progress. 

I used my 500 for about 5 years and then progressed to a Nikkormat FTn camera in December of 1968. This was a much more sophisticated camera and used the dreaded "complicated" 135 cartridges. The Instamatic stayed in a drawer until a friend borrowed it to use while rock climbing. It disappeared at some stage, but I did not plan to use it again. If you have an Instamatic at home, buy a reloaded 126 cassette and test it - have some 1960s fun.