It was a beautiful Washington D.C. summer day in the mid-1970’s. Even better, it was a Saturday; that meant Dad wasn’t away on some business trip and Mom was going to engage in her favorite Saturday activity: garage sales. That wasn’t even the best part; in the past week, I had performed some service above and beyond the expectations of kid-dom and I had not just a coin but several coins, clinking musically together in the pocket of my shorts. Garage sales were usually a careful mix of being good and begging for parental largesse; not today. Today I had My Own Money.
I was very quiet in the back seat of the car, which was no doubt appreciated. As a quite late in life child of two Great Depression-born parents, the concept of “seen and not heard” was firmly enforced into the next generation. I was no problem today; thoughts had to be thought and considerations considered very carefully. This was My Own Money after all. Two or maybe three garage sales went by, with no luck. I wasn’t going to jump at the first opportunity, after all; no sir. I could be broke when the real treasure showed itself.
I needn’t have worried. The next sale we went to, I made a beeline for the toys, as was usual, and there it sat: a very odd contraption, but obviously thought of as a toy by the family having the sale. It was black, and had two sticking-out bits, almost like it wanted to be binoculars, but was blunted at the other end. Still, the shape of it seemed like it wanted me to look through it, so I did. I tell you, five (maybe six) year old me wasn’t ready for what he saw.
It was a cowboy, dressed all in black. However, it wasn’t just the image of the cowboy; it was how real the cowboy looked, like he was standing right there in front of me. Further inspection of the gadget revealed a little brass knob on the right-hand side, and when pulled down and released, a different image appeared. The same cowboy was there, but now with a stunning white horse. Another pull and click, and the cowboy was firing his six-shooter. A total of seven different images appeared before they repeated. Pulling it away from my face, I looked at the little round yellow price sticker on the bottom and, for the princely sum of twenty-five cents, that device was coming home with me.
Later on at home, I gave my new prize a much more thorough inspection. I noticed that a cardboard piece at the top rotated as the brass button was pushed. I gave it a very hesitant tug, and it pulled free. Now my Mom, having passed on her love of reading as soon as we could hold books, I could make out a few of the words on the reel, but most of it needed explaining. Turns out I was holding View-Master reel number 955, Hopalong Cassidy and “Topper”. I had no idea how much 955 was exactly, but I knew that meant there were a lot more of those reels to find.
In hindsight, it was a View-Master Model C viewer that I bought and it, and the reel that came in it, were the very first of many that I would come to collect over the course of my life. However, it was only a tangential hobby of mine until it intersected with my life and career in a much more definitive way. You see, I inherited my love of photography from my Dad, and it was exactly that, for the both of us. He had his job that paid the bills, but he was the family shutterbug and that was what he truly enjoyed. I’d be lying if I said what he instilled in me didn’t affect my career choice. I was well into adulthood when I discovered that there was a thriving community of people who were not only collectors but also photographers who created their own stereo (“3D”) images. I have since acquired all sorts of equipment, both film and, as of late, digital that allows me to create my own stereo images. I even got my hands on a View-Master Personal camera and the film cutter that goes with it that allows me to produce my very own View-Master reels.
The community of which I mentioned also turned out to be a much more organized affair, the National Stereoscopic Association, based right here in Portland, Oregon (coincidentally the home of the late, great Sawyer’s Inc., the company behind the origin of View-Master) with a published magazine and annual conventions. I can’t travel much, so I don’t make it to the conventions, but I cherish reading the news and history every other month and take solace in the fact that there are so many people with the same unusual hobby as me.
Fun fact for you: our UK counterpart, the London Stereographic Society, has Sir Brian May as it’s president. Yes, That Brian May; apparently reading for a doctorate in astrophysics as well as being the lead guitarist of the band Queen still left him with entirely too much free time on his hands and he took up 3D photography as well. He not only is an avid photographer but also designed the OWL, a stereo print viewer. When I feel like I don’t have the strength or the ambition to go out and take pictures, the man literally shames me from afar.
Almost half a century later, now wheelchair bound and with my world traveling days firmly in the past, I can still open one of the boxes of my collection and stand on the sands of Egypt marveling at the pyramids. I can explore the wonders of Yellowstone or any of the other American National Parks, whose souvenir shops that provided so much of View-Master’s bread and butter throughout it’s first couple of decades. Recently, the passing of Queen Elizabeth II had me pulling out the reels to experience her long-ago Coronation just as if I had really been right there. I have all of these places at my fingertips and my fascination, nay obsession, all began with a quarter and a movie cowboy one sparkling Saturday in the 1970’s.
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