Good Old Friends: A Collage for LMAC Themed Contest #1

LMAC has started the fall season with some exciting innovations. Our weekly contest is now a monthly contest, and we accept multiple entries throughout the month.

The picture below is the template for this month's contest. Entries are accepted through November 4, end of the day.

We also now have another exciting opportunity for Hiveans to join in the fun. Every third Thursday we will begin a Themed Collage Contest. This week, we began with an evocative theme: Good Old Friends.

Of course I wanted to jump in the activity, although I do not compete because I'm on the jury that selects winners.

I wondered for a moment about what might be interesting to feature in this collage. Then I thought, almost right away, of my best friend: my husband.

We met at work, JFK Airport (hence the airplane in my collage). It was the spring of '71. I had been working there for a year when my husband came. The picture below is the woman my husband met in 1971. That's me, on the job.

Me at Work, Winter of '70

He used to give me a ride home when we were on a late shift together, because I didn't have a car and took the bus to work. He drove a white LeMans sedan with a black top, a car he purchased with money he saved while he was deployed in Vietnam.

Summer of '72 we had our first date. He picked me up at my apartment in Queens. When we were walking to his car, I tripped and ripped the knee of my pants.

We went to Belmont Racetrack after that (hence the racehorse in my collage). He knew everything about racetrack culture. I knew nothing. We had led very different lives.

Belmont Racetrack, Where We Had Our First Date

_{Credit: dfmock. 2005. Public domain}

We were engaged almost right away and married in the spring of '73. It was a quiet church wedding at the Guardian Angel Cathedral in Las Vegas, Nevada. I remember we picked up our license at City Hall on a Monday morning and got married at about noon that day.

My husband gave the priest $50.

Guardian Angel Cathedral

_{Credit Carol M. Highsmith. Public domain.}

We stayed at the Dunes Hotel, which was demolished in 1993 and was eventually replaced by the Bellagio. The Dunes represented the old Las Vegas, and the Bellagio represented the new Las Vegas.

A colleague at work told us his brother ran the baccarat room at the Dunes, and the brother could get us a discount rate on a room. He also said his brother played golf with Frank Sinatra.

The Dunes was quite a big deal back then, and the baccarat room was where all the 'whales' played. The brother looked as though he walked out of a James Bond movie. He was very nice to us, a young couple from back home.

Dunes Hotel in 1978

_{Credit: daves_archive1. Used under CC 2.0 license}

In summer of '74 my son was born. We bought a house a month after his birth. Here is a picture of the house the way it looked in 2022. Over the years we had added siding, a new roof, new windows some shrubs, and a few other refinements, but little else. It was pretty much the way we bought it.

I stopped working after my kids were born. My husband stayed at the airport job for the rest of his career. When I returned to the job market I looked for employment in a different field.

Note the rabbits in the front yard and the cats on the walk. The rabbits were wild. The cats were ferals that took up residence at our home. We had many ferals that stayed with us over the years.

The signs in front of the bushes were congratulatory for my granddaughter's graduation. We waited until she graduated from high school to move.

We moved into our new house just last year. I'm pretty sure (hope) it is the last house we will ever own--my best friend and I.

The Collage
The base picture of the collage is of my husband and me about six years ago. We were on vacation at a lake resort. My daughter captured this picture.

I cropped the photo and ran it through a Lunapic filter.

Then I added the airplane, courtesy of @amilcar, from the LMAC Image Gallery, LIL.

The racehorse I borrowed from Pixabay. Thank you VarnaFolio.

The chapel is derived from a digital drawing I made several years ago for a writing project.

The baby pictures are my babies--my son, my daughter and my granddaughter.

The two houses in the collage are the old house, shown earlier in this blog, and the new house, shown below.

The sun was contributed by @darquin3 to the LIL Gallery. Thank you @darguin3.

I ran all the elements through the same Lunapic filter to give the collage a vintage look. The sun was augmented with a light effect from GIMP.

GIMP, Paint, and Paint 3D were used to create the collage.

LIL Gallery
This is an image resource that has been derived exclusively from Hive contributors. Anyone on Hive may contribute to the Gallery and anyone on Hive may borrow from it. Details are provided in this blog by @shaka.

It was fun making this collage. I invite everyone to join in. There are so many opportunities in the LMAC community: freestyle collages are always welcome, in addition to entries in our two contests.

Thank you for reading my blog. Health and peace to all my readers.