Camera Obscura, Reminiscences of Robert Hodge – Story 2 of 10
Robert Hodge was born in 1929 in Lawrence and lived there until 1947. Bob was an honorary board member for many years with the Greenwood County Historical Society. This is the second in a series of stories that Hodge wrote in the 1980s about his childhood experiences growing up in Lawrence. The term “Camera Obscura” is a term for an old-fashioned camera of the early type, in the form of a big box with a pin-hole instead of a lens. Lenses were later incorporated in their construction.
“ In 1936, when I was seven years old and in the second grade, my parents bought a house and four acres of land very near my paternal grandparents.’ We moved from a house with all modern facilities in a crowded residential neighborhood to one completely devoid of internal conveniences and rather isolated—not a house within an acre’s distance in any direction.
“There was a pitcher pump on the back porch which drew water from a cistern under the house. The cistern was filled with water collected as run-off from the roof during rains and snow-melts. While this water passed through a charcoal filter, it still had a yellow tint and had a slight odor (The source of the color and odor may have been the many toads and frogs living therein and discovered when we once pumped the cistern dry and cleaned it out). This cistern water was “soft” and used only for bathing and washing when suds were wanted when using soap. Our drinking water came from a long-handled pump located about thirty feet away from the backdoor. That well produced “hard” water, no suds, but it was clear, cold and good, coming from sand beds deep below the surface. It took about ten good stokes of the handle to fill a two-gallon water bucket, a task which had to be done several times a day, and one which I was frequently called upon to perform.
“Beyond the pump, about ten feet or so, was a building called a garage. Now, since we had no car at the time and there was no evidence that the previous occupants had ever parked a car within the building, that title was an affectation. In truth, the building had been used as a goat stable. The wires threaded through the walls to which the goats were tied on the outside are still there, though a half-century has elapsed.
“Just beyond, and slightly behind the front edge of the garage, out of line-of-sight from the house, was the outdoor toilet. It was built high off the ground, one having to ascend two steps to enter. It was, as near as I can recall, a two-holer (Some were three-holers, and some had lower and smaller seat openings for children, but I think ours was not so elaborate). It was well ventilated— a welcome trail during warm weather, but oh—how the winter winds chilled one’s exposed areas when nature called. It was this less-desirable and very chilling condition that led to my understanding of the camera obscura!
“My father worked in a paper mill which produced the brown paper used to make corrugated cardboard boxes. The box factory was adjacent to the paper mill and he was able to acquire sufficient cardboard sheets to “panel” or insulate the walls of the johnny house. I do not know why, but for some reason the door did not get covered. The door panels had many nail holes (again I do not know why) and when one was seated on the throne, one could look through the nail holes and see the entire yard out front. It was truly amazing what a big field of view could be had through such a tiny opening.
“One very bright sunny day after the remodeling had taken place, I was inside the building and my sister and a couple of playmates were playing around out front. Some motion on the smooth clean surface of the cardboard beside and behind me caught my eye. I looked more carefully and there, on the wall, was a full color motion picture of the scene I had been watching through the nail holes. It was odd though, for it was all upside down. Still, by tilting my head, I could see everything as clear as a movie screen (or if it had been now, I would have said T.V. screen).
“Excited over this fascinating and curious phenomenon, I “cleaned up” as quickly as practical (we did use roll toilet tissue, though there were still some who were using newspaper or pulp magazines. The traditional “catalog was really too slick a paper to be efficient.) I went outside to tell the others.
“Taking turns, some stayed outside to run and jump in the bright sun while the others went into the toilet, closed the door so it would be dark inside, and once their eyes adjusted to the dark, they too admired and enjoyed the full colored movies. The novelty (maybe influenced by the environmental conditions) soon wore off and we went to other things, but I did not forget, as I later read in “experiment” books on making pin-hole cameras and seeing in LIFE magazine a feature on the whole-room camera obscura used to study the sea lions on the Pacific coast, how I was first introduced to this optical experience.
“Having learned later in life that there are twelve cranial nerves, and that the first two are generally considered the “earliest” developed connections to main sensory areas of the brain, it is intriguing that the second of these is the “optic” for sight sensations, but that the first one was “more important” in stimulating the brain into action. And that first one’s name? Olfactory, naturally, for the sense of smell.
