One of the things I miss most about my dad is watching him play with his old Super-8 home movies.

He would haul out the projector and thread the small reels into it like a pro, set up the big screen with the silver reflective glitter on it, dim the lights, and start the show.

Dad’s home movies always had some interesting titles, too. “Oren’s Dog” had about fifteen seconds of a cute puppy — and the footage of me coming home from the hospital a few days after I was born. “Baby Skunks” took up a few seconds of our trip through the redwoods of northern California. Then there was the coal mine.

Dad worked as an oiler on a dragline in the strip mine, so he had a bird’s eye view of the dynamite blasts they would use to remove the dirt from on top of the coal. One day, he took his camera. From then on, we saw the blasts first forward, then backward, then forward, then…. Well, you get the idea.

Maybe I’ll call Baltimore projector rental to relive those memories again. The films are faded and brittle now, but it would be so nice to see that highwall rebuild itself again.