I wrote this on January 19, 2006!
I first want to say, I am so sorry to have waited so long!
But here we are 12 years later and I am finally able to share my father’s images with the world by creating this website www.MillbrookMemories.com!
Here’s how I was able to do it!
Please enjoy and share!
Snapshots by John Kading
By Diane Kading Schoessow
Tonight, January 19, 2006, my father will be doing a slide presentation at Lyall Memorial Federated Church, which is our family’s church.
My father has all his life had a passion for his pictures, and he will tonight be able to share that passion with an audience.
I can remember all through my life vividly the flashing of that flash or the distinct clicking sound of a picture being taken by him.
Now, after all these years, of his dedication in capturing the many images of his life experiences in his hometown in and around the small village of Millbrook, New York, he will be able to share his precious pictures and slide collection.
My father has always throughout his life had a camera with him, or should I say, attached to him.
It was like he had a magical way, to be able to take at a moment notice any event that was worthy to have that everlasting snapshot added to his precious collection.
Organize!
( Update! Remember this was 12 years ago!)
He is now in the process of organizing those thousands and thousands of pictures throughout his life!
Recently he has somehow become focused and consumed to get this overwhelming project accomplished at this time in his life.
If you really got to know my father, you’d realize that his attention span is very short, so for him to finally crack down in organizing his many images into some kind of order is truly a huge accomplishment!
Does Procrastination get inherited?
I guess that’s where I must get my bad habits from about procrastinating!
Thanks, Dad! It must have been passed down in the gene pool to me in avoiding tasks that just hasn’t caught my attention to complete, yet.
It usually takes something or someone to crack the wipe for me to get certain things done in my life that I really should!
Note: with my mother’s passing on November 18, 2016, that was the cracking of the wipe, I believe!
Through the years when I worked at the store with my father and I needed him to help me finish a particular project, that the high pitch sound of the fire siren would always seem to go off, and therefore so would he be rushing off to wherever that call would be, too!
And in addition to that high pitch sound of the fire siren, there would be the call from the Millbrook ambulance squad as well, that would turn him into the Super Man and Hero for many throughout the years he was actively involved.
So all it took was a phone call from the Millbrook Ambulance answering service (Remember, there was not a simple calling to 911 back then!) that would call my father and off he would go to rescue someone, which left me to rescue that project and complete on my own!
John Kading, Gets Abducted by Aliens
It never failed to amaze me with how he would get out of doing something by having to do something else.
I had grown up thinking that he had to be the best juggler in the world to do all the things he did in a day’s time.
I would watch him in the morning, to take his daily walk to the Millbrook Diner to have the breakfast of his usual coffee, eggs, sunny-side up and toast, then he’d return to the store to do the bank deposits and another trip down Franklin Avenue to the Bank of Millbrook.
There were many times that I was sure he went to the North Pole or maybe even got abducted by aliens because he took so long to come back from either the Millbrook Diner or from the Bank of Millbrook!
However, he always managed to find his way back again at some time or another during the day.
But Mom, Shirley and I, or whoever has on duty, always seemed to manage his business pretty well, while he was off gallivanting, as my mother had called it many, many times!
He would return and we would say, “John, where were you?”
With his reply always pretty much the same over and over again, “Oh, I just ran into so and so and…” (Yep! that’s my dad!)
It never failed to surprise me in how my father could divert his attention to something or someone else instead of what he was supposed to be doing.
I have to confess to while growing up there were those times when I admit to having passionately despised that fire whistle and those phone calls from that answering service because it meant that my father would have his ‘pass’ to be excused from our project!
Therefore, it meant that I would again have to finish what we had started, and had quite obviously mistakenly thought that we would be able to finish it together!
Which was a mistake on my part to ever have imagined that miracle to happen when he had arranged a never-fail system with God himself in finding ways to be legally excused?
I think he had some kind of magical power to relieve himself of any such projects that he felt me, or someone else could do.
TALK! TALK! TALK!
But there was sure one thing he could do really well and that was to “TALK”!
And let me tell you, he managed really well in accomplishing a lot of that, too!
Nonetheless, in between all the talking, he did manage to get a lot of other things done as we
He was involved in so many organizations as well, from
- The Millbrook Business Organization,
- Millbrook Lions Club,
- Millbrook Rotary Club,
- VFW,
- and of course, I can not forget his years of sharing his love of his sheep
- and being a leader of Southern Shepherd’s 4H Club!
Finally, today I have come to realize that it was over those thousands of cups of coffee at the Millbrook Diner and “talking” with all those thousands of people, that had brought so much joy and happiness to my father’s life!
So today all those thousands of faces and images that had been captured with a snapshot from the camera that belonged to a man by the name of John Kading, my father, will be forever protected and cherished for years to come on this website www.MillbrookMemories.com!
Enjoy the Images of Years Past
I am hoping and praying that all in attendance at tonight’s presentation will enjoy all those images of people and places of long ago of his beloved village of Millbrook, New York.
(Note: The room was full of Millbrook Lovers, and everyone did enjoy the images and the stories connected with them, too!)
I hope that the audience will appreciate his dedication and devotion to have documented all these images throughout the years and all the changes and improvements that have occurred around the Village of Millbrook and Town of Washington, as well!
I hope that my father will be looked upon and respected as an authority on his town’s history in the years to come.
SharIng the Images- Brings JOY
Maybe it is to have him share these images throughout the area that will give him that sense of joy and happiness in his life just like it had by talking to all those people over all those cups of coffee at the Millbrook Diner had done throughout the years, as well!
Yes, indeed life’s all about “sharing” with others in our lives, and it is with our choice of “sharing” that we are blessed in our lives, too!
So with that, may I introduce to you, my father, John Kading and his precious gift of these images of the days of yesterday in and around the small village known as Millbrook, New York!
Please share your Millbrook Memories in the comments too!
And Don’t Forget to Join The Millbrook Memories Newsletter to get all the updates that will be coming in the months to come too!