Icking #8

When I said “No winter, this year” I must have been kidding... A picture taken from my window in the early morning, while I was waiting for the train to come. Yes, the train was late...

Thousands of footsteps, most of them from our dog Robbie (who wants to go outside in spite of the cold and snow), some doubtlessly from other animals whose trails need to be followed.

From eBay, I’ve learned that the best way to draw attention to no-name products is to put the description in the negative (“No Rolleiflex”, but Seagull; “No Rolls Royce”, but Toyota). Accordingly, this picture isn’t Darwin Bell’s: it is mine.

Again: The kind of detail Darwin Bell likes to shoot. I don’t know if he’d like it as much if it was a detail of his own house, but I do.

Not the first time I took a picture of this door. This one is better, though...

This is the scan of a little treasure we got just yesterday: the oldest extant picture of our house. It must have been taken shortly after the house had been built, at the end of the 19th C. It’s a rarity for us, but probably also for Icking’s pictorial history: I doubt if many photos older than this have been preserved. I was happy to see several of my earlier conjectures confirmed: the beautiful door which now adorns the back of the house actually belongs to the front, and there had been painted ornaments over the windows (traces of which I believed to have discovered on the second oldest photo ). By far the biggest surprise for us was the entrance area: they are hard to see, but there are three steps leading straight to the front door, whereas all other photos we have show the situation as it is now: a roofed portal with steps on each side.

So sah unser Haus vor siebzig, achtzig Jahren aus; seitdem hat es sich sehr gewandelt –nicht immer zum Besseren... This is what our house looked like seventy, eighty years ago; it has changed a lot since then -not always for the better...

Our house in the 50ies: the big changes were yet to come... However, the road had been broadened and the long stairs leading to it had to make a corner. In the 60ies the concrete wall on the left was extended to the right: the house kept its address but lost its entrance on this side. This makes us hard to find; deliveries are often guided by phone calls...