Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Air Force One, Circa 1980


After I posted some pictures of Air Force One the other day, I remembered these old pictures I have from 1980. President Jimmy Carter flew through Lakeland, Florida, on a campaign stop, and Mom pulled me out of school for the occasion. I think I took these pictures with a little Kodak 110 camera, but I'm not sure. Even back then, I was smart enough to take two shots and put them together to get the picture I wanted. Heaven knows how I got so close that the whole airplane wouldn't fit into a single shot. (Pretty sure this was taken well after President Carter had left the airport.) This was in ye olden days when cameras had fixed lenses. Oh, and film, too. The shot below shows one of Lakeland's finest at the time, and that's Air Force One coming in for a landing behind him.

I figured that certain things about former presidents would be public record, but I had no idea. According to documents from Carter's Presidential Library, Air Force One landed at Lakeland Municipal Airport at 11:03 am on October 31st, 1980. I'm surprised there's no note there concerning exactly when some 10 year old kid photographed Air Force One.

4 comments:

  1. I took a closer look to figure out how you joined the two images, and then I saw that you'd placed them side by side in the scanner.

    Verrry clever.

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  2. Nope. When I pasted them into a scrapbook many, many years ago, I stuck them in side-by-side. I just scanned the whole page of the book and cropped out the other pics I didn't want. And for some reason when I shot the picture, I took it on either side of a telephone pole. Strange. But it makes for a nice transition. I think I have them a little too far apart, though. Look at the spacing on the letters...

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  3. it looks like the camera maybe wasn't held parallel from one pic to the other, the fence kinda bends and the angle change explains the spacing on the lettering.

    still, pretty impressive given the (lack of) technology and aged wisdom/experience!

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  4. Hm.... United States of Aaamerica.

    Seriously, though, it does make for a nice transition.

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