I looked through three closets, two trunks and assorted boxes; I found love letters I’d forgotten and folders to support taxes filed in the ’70s. I found my first bolo tie and the softball glove that caught stinging line drives in 7th grade. I came back to the search the next day and thought of a plastic bin stored in a crawl space and after a tricky reach from a ladder there it was at last, my collection of stereo cards with viewer, and my dear View-Master with reels. It is my treasure, a quiet sit with alternative realities at my own pace. I find focus again.
The Sawyer brown hard plastic viewer came to my hands as a child and it might be how I first met the Grand Canyon—kerchunk—pressing the small lever to make the round reels of pictures cycle through “Canyon Pinnacles from Tourist Lodge” and “Spectacular Sunset” and “Brahma Temple, Named for Hindu God.” The riders on the Kaibab Trail rest their mules below Tip-Off where in the distance is the line of trail that I would later memorize with my feet, becoming a happy hiker in and out of the Canyon each decade of my life without fail. As a child I contentedly stared through the viewer’s eyepieces, feeling my focus creep toward synchronization with the 3D effect. Like having an idea go from confused to perfect sense, it was a sensation that thrilled me. Look at that suspension bridge! Doesn’t a red plaid shirt look good against a blue sky? How dizzying to look down on switchbacks and see the beetle shapes of hikers in a line.
Meanwhile, men in jumpsuits with white hard hats tended rockets. The “21 three dimension official U.S. Air Force photographs” introduced me to the Atlas ICBM, the Navaho and Bomarc in “actual launchings at Cape Canaveral.” With 3D grace, the point of the Navaho missile seemed to point through the viewer into my left eyeball. Thrilling! I could tell the surface of the moon was something like the dirt lot behind our house in Phoenix where we raised dust playing neighborhood baseball games. See the ridges in Neil Armstrong’s boot prints on Apollo Moon Landing Reel C?! Like my rubber thong prints in rained-on dirt in August.
The reels look so low tech, thin cardboard with 14 dabs of fragile film attached, that I don’t expect to be wowed after decades of digital miracles on Mac screens. But I am holding my breath with the View-Master in my hands, feeling myself on the scene while “Aldrin sets up sensor to record moon quakes.” My pulse quickens to feel how I am steps away from the lunar module. I am THERE.
It is embarrassing how willing I am to be thrilled. I did once pack away those round reels as childish. But memory of View-Master thrills caused me to buy an Underwood Stereoscopic Viewer for $10 at a junk shop in Kansas on one of my cross-country drives. I needed my money for gasoline that day and so didn’t spend another $10 for the black case of Keystone Stereoscopic slides, 120 in all, an astonishing price for all those views of the world. To make up for skipping over that bargain, for years I have bought the cards one or two at a time in a 100 different shops and flea markets. It’s not a collector’s collection, but it is a delightful pile of places and faces. One of my favorites shows a girl sitting with ease on the surface of a pond. I love her Shirley Temple-ish face, black lace boots and giant leaves all around. “Gigantic lily leaf used as a raft—in charming Como Park, St. Paul, Minn.” A photo bought for 50 cents 50 years after it was printed, made by Underwood and Underwood Publishers of New York, London, Toronto, Canada, Ottawa and Kansas.
Unlike the ’50s View-Master with set eyepiece, my early 1900’s Sun Sculpture stereo viewer needs one to move the card forward or back a bit to bring focus, which gives a most satisfying moment of aha when the scene changes from two to three dimensions. A girl, sitting on a lily pad, looks like she is about to speak. And there’s the natives of Punjab who have inflated a cow hide to make a shiny boat to straddle so they can cross a river. Four men in turbans, four bloated boats by a shore that could be downstream from Bright Angel Creek. How big the world seems, so startling in its details.
In an effort to make my stereo card collection historically interesting, I’ve bought slides that show World War I doughboys on troopships, wounded soldiers in a Civil War tent, and American soldiers strolling a street in China. And there are campy set-up depictions meant to entertain or tug at heart strings: Father stealing a kiss with a maid while Mother hovers, rolling pin in hand. A sweetheart left behind in Ireland holds a letter in her lap from America. But mostly I’ve collected what delights my eye. American scenes are too expensive now, over my $5 limit for a card, but there’s plenty else left to peer at, puzzle through, chuckle over.
Like these unconventional girls so dear to my heart, seated on a branch over a river, one with pole in hand, both with hats. Barefoot and at ease. Hand-tinted color added makes the red skirt look invitingly soft below a yellow blouse. Is it possible I’ve come across a scene from one of my previous lives? And who is that with me and where is she now? Maybe she became the gal sitting on the edge of the Grand Canyon with her picnic and her dogs. I look and look into a stereo world magical with quiet presence. Near to me a dog wags its tail flicking flies away; far from me a canyon narrows and a trail beckons, a rim holds its secrets. My focus shifts, I breathe again.
