Gary Martin is a wealth of history. His currency blends his own family’s history with that of his hometown. He’s an organized historian, a collector of strange photos and seemingly pointless documents.
Through inherited memories he holds the responsibility to keep the Martin name-all 11 generations of it-alive. His ancestors owned grocery stores downtown, played and swam at Warner Park and lived in a still-standing house on Kirby Avenue.
That makes him an invaluable piece of the Picnooga puzzle. Picnooga, an initiative to preserve and archive Chattanooga’s history, is counting on Gary and the community to delve into their closets and attics and basements to bring out those caches of photos to help fill the archival vault these digital historians hope to create.
Everyone is familiar with the dusty old box. Full of yellowing squares or rectangles etched with greying iridescent ink, some aunt, uncle, mom or dad, has this box. It belongs to the genealogist of the family, the family historian, the Gary. For some, it sits untouched until the next generation. For Gary it’s a Pandora’s Box, a tempting rabbit-hole of curiosity.
For a town like Chattanooga, those boxes are filled with pieces of gold, irreplaceable treasure glittering from a world forgotten.
DO YOU HAVE A BOX OF OLD PHOTOS COLLECTING DUST?Are you the family historian saving photo albums of old Chattanooga? Do you wax poetic to your children and grandchildren, showing old photos to them? Share that history with Picnooga and the rest of the world by emailing pics@picnooga.org
At least, that’s what David Moon, the founder of Picnooga, thinks. He’s looking for that bounty so that he and a small team can preserve, archive and build a valuable resource full of Chattanooga history.
And believe it or not, he’s treasure hunting from afar. After living in the area for seven years, he now works and lives in Florida. But in this digital age of Facebook and Twitter and email, he’s been able to source hundreds of photos and more importantly, stories, from Chattanoogans and their pasts. He’s an active part of a group of individuals who talk, share and think about where Chattanooga has been.
“I’ve always been interested in history,” David says, to no surprise. But he’s from New Jersey originally, so it may seem surprising that Moon would be this enamored with our Scenic City. “Chattanooga is just this little town, where everyone knows each other, but it’s larger than that,” David says. “There are these stories that need to be told. There are people who know these fascinating tales, we just have to find them.”
After thinking about buying an old East Chattanooga theater, the Rivoli, David says he was a little frustrated and in too deep to just quit cold turkey. He was exhaustive in his efforts to learn more about the former Glass Street institution.
“I went to the library, I tried to get pictures of the theater back in the day and they weren’t there. I knew it had to be out there, so I was looking for those shoe boxes of photos, I was searching people’s attics,” he says. “I had all of this untapped energy, I had done all of this research, and I realized there is not one great source to search.”
Picnooga exists to do two things. First, to find old photos, preserve them digitally, archive them along with all metadata in an online, searchable database. And then secondly, the Picnooga team hopes to work with local history projects in fundraising, outreach and mission.
“There’s so much living history here,” David says. “I want to get other people excited about the history of Chattanooga.”
Outside of David’s full-time marketing job, he’s contacting libraries and people to just see what’s out there. He could be pleading with collectors to let him have access to their photos. He’s scouring eBay.com looking for people selling lots of old photos, or networking through Facebook, to find these people-the family genealogists, the passive keepers of history.
When David makes contact with people like Gary, he works with the individual and Southtree, a local digital archiving company, to find a time to sort through all of the images they have, identify what photos would be good to preserve for Picnooga and scan them in at the facility. They are given to David for keeping, electronically.
It’s not hard to see that excitement in people like Gary when he visits Southtree to sort through his binders and books of old photos and documents. This is not his first trip, and it won’t be his last. He’s pulling out old black pages, torn from their original scrapbook bindings.
The black paper is soft, fraying and barely enough for the photos to cling to. Photos and papers fall out as he sorts through, he’s struggling to keep it together.
“I’m looking for this one photo that I know David is really interested in,” he says to Sam, the young Southtree assistant asked to help him that day. “I can’t believe I can’t find it right now.”
He turns to his binders and stacks of papers. He’s turning each page, quickly saying who is depicted in each passing image, stopping to point out familiar Chattanooga scenes. In the time of girls named Dot and boys named Oscar, Gary is well versed. He’s been coached, importantly, by his late father, with whom he shared the discovery of his past.
He has photos of Warner Park in its heyday. Photos of grocery stores on Market Street, homes on Kirby Avenue, all parts of his family and Chattanooga. He’s on Facebook talking with others, just like him. The community trying to preserve Chattanooga’s past before it is forgotten is strong. And that’s what David is banking on. But it’s frustrating.
“Why wasn’t it saved? I don’t know why, I don’t see why,” David says, speaking of places like the old Union Depot, or Cameron Hill. “With this landscape, the priorities (of the past) surprise me. Life in Chattanooga is fascinating when you peel back all of these layers.”
The timeline of the Picnooga project is infinite. Right now, David is working hard on organizing how the project’s database will be built. With help from local digital archivist Crystal Kile, of course. “We want to do it correctly, the process of organizing the information is important, and eventually we will get to that database,” David says. “Right now though, we’re letting people know what we’re doing and getting the word out there.”
But Picnooga is more than collecting digital donations for a to-be-developed resource; it’s also about getting involved in local history efforts. David says he’s working with the Chickamauga Library on a project and getting involved in the restoration of the Ellis Restaurant sign on Market Street. “We’re wanting to do whatever we can do,” David says.
As Gary’s about to give up looking for the photo, he picks up, once again, a dilapidated black scrapbook. Out falls a small rectangle and he flips it over impatiently. On the other side, a slightly blurry grayscale image depicts the scene of a Sunday stroll. On the Walnut Street Bridge, a sharp-suited man flanked by a trio of women smile, wearing long dresses and foreign hats. Behind them, a graphic sign for Lookout Biscuit, can be seen. David, Gary, and anyone who has so far contributed to the Picnooga project are all aware of the same thing, the one thing this single image shows in spirit.
Though before you the image is black and white, your eyes fill in the familiar modern blue iron railing of the bridge. Your imagination extends beyond the white border of the photo to the wooden platform beneath them. And the lush green trees in the background are slightly bigger, as decades of life have given them strength. In your mind, this photo isn’t from the 1920s; it’s really from today.