| | I came home for lunch yesterday and couldn't get online.  I also couldn't get a dial tone on my phone. So upon returning to work I called the phone company and arranged for someone to come out after work today. After work yesterday, I poked my head out my covered patio window to see if I could see anything obviously wrong with my box where the phone line taps into my house. I was surprised to find the box gone! I soon spotted it, along with the phone line that leads to it, all neatly bundled up and attached to the telephone wires high above the sidewalk across the street! I came home after work today to find two trucks and a couple guys working on my phone line. As I approached them, one of them said, "I've got one question for you." I told them I bet it was the same question I had for them! They had no clue why my phone line was up there and obviously neither did I. They were both very nice and I soon had my phone working again. One of the guys thought that either the power company was doing work around there and needed the phone line out of the way, or somebody was moving something big (like a house) down my street. Now to the subject of unscrupulous eBay sellers...or at least one seller in particular. I spotted an old photo up for bid on Ebay a month or two ago from the seller's "late gay uncle's photo albums". It showed two men making adobe bricks and the story behind it was very sweet. These two men had been in the navy together in WWII, fell in love and went to live together in the desert in New Mexico without running water or power...but they had each other. They built this adobe brick home and lived there together as a couple for years before Uncle helped them get settled in the L.A. area. Lots of people sell photos of "affectionate men" (usually brothers, cousins, or just friends), or label their auctions "gay interest" if they show cute young guys, but old photos of gay couples are scarce and to have a story like this behind them is fantastic. Unfortunately, when I got looking at this seller's auctions (past and present), I grew suspicious as I found photo after photo spanning decades all of cute young guys, almost all from his gay uncle's photo albums and all with these fantastic stories like THIS or THIS or THIS or even THIS. Now maybe these stories are a harmless way of spicing up some otherwise ordinary photos, but if the buyers believe these stories and are paying more for the photos because of it, I think it borders on fraud. The back of one of the photos from uncle's collection had obvious recent writing on the back (no doubt from a dealer at an antique store or show) identifying the location. It is pretty easy for me to tell the difference between old writing, or even recent notes by family members, and that of dealer writing which is usually neatly and lightly printed in pencil. There was another photo that was supposed to show Uncles friends...a gay couple (Bob and Rick) that bought a home together in the 1950's and lived together in domestic bliss. It showed two men with their arms around each other along side a house. Written on the back was something to the effect, "Bob and Rick - Our home in San Diego". If that really were Bob and Rick's home, the note would certainly say "Bob and Me", or "Me and Rick", along with "Our home". If the photo were taken by someone else (like uncle), it would say "Bob and Rick - Their home...". I suspect Bob and Rick were brothers, or close friends and the note written by Bob or Rick's wife. Call me uptight or over-analytical, but things like this really piss me off. Especially when so many gay men are desperate for happy stories like these. The other thing that makes me very skeptical is the fact that all these photos from his uncle's albums are of different shapes and sizes. Albums and photo collections are generally mostly made up of photos taken by the album owner and the photos are usually quite consistent in size, shape and quality. Also, it seems to me that uncle would have had more recent photos of all these life-long gay friends. In all the auctions I looked at of his (over a hundred I'm sure), they never once showed photos of these supposed couples or gay friends at different times. Okay, that's enough of that. I had a nice 6 or 7 mile run last night and after a day of rest today, I hope to attempt a 12 mile run tomorrow.  |
| | Posted 4/14/2007 10:56 PM - 1 view - 3 comments
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