TR Ericsson
Ford Model T (snapshot), 2025
oil on canvas
13 x 16 inches
33 x 40.6 cm
33 x 40.6 cm
Lynn Robinson c. 1920s B-side I couldn’t understand why it meant so much to him, my uncle, my mother’s brother, when he couldn’t find this snapshot he discovered but then...
Lynn Robinson c. 1920s
B-side
I couldn’t understand why it meant so much to him, my uncle, my mother’s brother, when he couldn’t find this snapshot he discovered but then lost again. He was not a sentimental or nostalgic person but he was completely preoccupied by this missing photograph. A few days after he lost it I looked around and found it in a pile of papers on his desk. He was also not a particularly affectionate person, but when I handed him the snapshot he gratefully and warmly patted me on the shoulder, his relief was immense. He somehow knew that the tiny silhouette of the kid in the hat in the back seat of the Model T parked out in the field was his father.
The only thing my uncle really loved, like a child loves something, were cars and motorcycles. When he was a teenager he bought old cars and bikes, fixed them up and sold them. He feared more than loved his father and I think he was probably glad when my grandfather left the family, left Ohio and moved to California, which was also around the time my uncle started fixing cars and motorcycles. He credited their next door neighbor “Old Dave” with helping him first learn about motors and engines. He didn’t love his job much either, a refrigeration business he owned and operated that his father had steered him toward.
He found that photograph while he was trying to put his things in order shortly after being diagnosed with an asbestos related occupational cancer he got from working all his life in refrigeration. He closed the business and spent the last year of his life doing the thing he first and most loved doing, he bought some old motorcycles, his favorite being an old 1950 British Matchless motorcycle and he spent the last days of his life carefully restoring it down to the least detail. Maybe my uncle cared so much about this snapshot because knowing that that was his father in the Model T put him, his father, as a kid himself into something he, my uncle, really loved, maybe that counted for him in some way I couldn’t understand and he couldn’t explain
B-side
I couldn’t understand why it meant so much to him, my uncle, my mother’s brother, when he couldn’t find this snapshot he discovered but then lost again. He was not a sentimental or nostalgic person but he was completely preoccupied by this missing photograph. A few days after he lost it I looked around and found it in a pile of papers on his desk. He was also not a particularly affectionate person, but when I handed him the snapshot he gratefully and warmly patted me on the shoulder, his relief was immense. He somehow knew that the tiny silhouette of the kid in the hat in the back seat of the Model T parked out in the field was his father.
The only thing my uncle really loved, like a child loves something, were cars and motorcycles. When he was a teenager he bought old cars and bikes, fixed them up and sold them. He feared more than loved his father and I think he was probably glad when my grandfather left the family, left Ohio and moved to California, which was also around the time my uncle started fixing cars and motorcycles. He credited their next door neighbor “Old Dave” with helping him first learn about motors and engines. He didn’t love his job much either, a refrigeration business he owned and operated that his father had steered him toward.
He found that photograph while he was trying to put his things in order shortly after being diagnosed with an asbestos related occupational cancer he got from working all his life in refrigeration. He closed the business and spent the last year of his life doing the thing he first and most loved doing, he bought some old motorcycles, his favorite being an old 1950 British Matchless motorcycle and he spent the last days of his life carefully restoring it down to the least detail. Maybe my uncle cared so much about this snapshot because knowing that that was his father in the Model T put him, his father, as a kid himself into something he, my uncle, really loved, maybe that counted for him in some way I couldn’t understand and he couldn’t explain
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