Photographs and Memories

July 22, 2026 (Vol. 20 No. 27) - Jim Croce's melancholy Photographs and Memories (above) was first released as the B-side of his April 1972 mega-hit You Don't Mess Around With Jim. It became the title song of his first greatest hits album released in September 1974, one year following the singer's tragic death in a plane crash. The popularity of this song reflected the public's longing over what-could-have-been and a recognition of how bright his star had ever-so-briefly shone.

Croce's ballad recently came to mind as I was trying to discard clutter that had accumulated in a laundry room drawer. Everyone has that kind of drawer, a place where you put the stuff that either is potentially useful in an undefined manner or has some sentimental value. The latter was the case when I came across a forgotten pair of glasses that belonged to my late wife, Jan. That brought back a flood of memories of my marriage to her and how we raised our daughter, Susan. Those were the days of dance recitals, marching band rehearsals, the Girl Scouts, Tupperware parties, braces, the church choir and a pilgrimage to Rome. Even as I write this, other images of those times come flooding to mind. However, there is also a bittersweet tinge to those memories, one that comes from the knowledge of Jan's untimely death in 2007.

Next, I poured through a file box filled with cancelled checks and bank books dating back to my days in high school. Yes, I had a savings account at the Easton, Maryland, branch of Loyola Federal Savings and Loan, which no longer exists. My account, fed by earnings from summer jobs, actually reached more than $500 - more than $3,300 in today's dollars. I have no idea where that money went, probably whittled down by the day-to-day needs of a teenage college student.

Speaking of college, I also found my bank book from Suburban Bank and Trust, a Hyattsville, Maryland, institution that also no longer exists. I took note of a an entry on November 23, 1972, a $54 check to pay off a parking ticket. I remember it, issued on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C. where I was working part time in the film lab of WMAL-TV, which also no longer exists under those call letters. Since I was driving a beat-up VW bug at the time, you would have thought the police would take mercy on a poor fool. But that was my mistake: There is no pity to be found in Washington, D.C.

There were also cancelled checks and a bank book from the Hancock Bank and Trust Company which, you guessed it, was acquired by another banking company and no longer exists under that name. That was where I deposited my meager earnings from my first real post-college job, as an announcer and advertising salesperson for a daytime country music radio station, WKCM-AM. It still exists, but operates on a different frequency under different ownership and in a different location. Oddly enough, Hancock Bank was the place where this young bachelor purchased his first dishes - a promotion the bank ran encouraging deposits. Fifty years later, a few of those dishes remain.

It is well known how music can transport us to a certain time and place and help us revisit old emotions. In the case of Croce's Photographs and Memories, the song does a sort of double-duty. It not only describes how random artifacts can evoke in us the past, but it also carries a specific memory for me. As a reporter on the University of Maryland's student newspaper The Diamondback, I had been scheduled to interview Croce when he came to campus for a summer 1973 concert. That concert was postponed to a later date. I would have to wait for my interview. Because of the plane crash, it never happened.

As we get older, I suppose it is only natural for people to become more nostalgic. I can't be certain of that - this is the first time I've been old. But I can say that it is a healthy thing to revisit our past, just so long as we don't wallow in it. I may not know when my own clock will run out. But when it does, I hope I am looking ahead, not backwards. That's it for now. Fear the Turtle.