In a waiting room recently, I took my cell phone in my hand, not to annoy the other patrons but to re-live some fun moments. I checked through my saved pictures — my hubby and me at the Angels/Sox game at Fenway, Charlene Sands and me drooling at a Tim McGraw concert, a bazillion pix of our year old grandson — and I enjoyed everything all over again.

When I got my Kodak Instamatic for a graduation present sometime last century, I thought I was on the top of Everest. With its Magicubes, it was so state-of-the-art. In my wildest dream then, I never imagined a future where I could take pictures with a phone….and email them to a computer! Or use a digi-cam where I can delete all of my faux pas in a flash and where everything’s got a date for instant record keeping. Or scan a horde of old photos for publication on the Internet for you to see.

I wanted to share today some of the gorgeous antique photographs that inspire me. But beforehand, I’m going to make you suffer through a brief history of photography through 1900. After all, I am a retired schoolteacher and lecturing’s a hard habit to break.

Cameras existed long before J.N. Niepce produced the first permanent image, a heliograph, in 1826 - an exposure that took 8 hours with a camera obscrua! This was an image of an outside scene formed by a simple lens and sunlight shining through a small hole into a darkened room. (Camera obscura means “darkened room.”)

In 1837, his partner, Louis Daguerre, began to produce images on silver iodide-coated copper plates that took 30 minutes to develop with warmed mercury. Two years later, Fox Talbot introduced the negative from which many positive images could be produced. But paper negatives didn’t produce the detailed images of the daguerreotype. In 1841, he patented his “calotype” negative/positive process with its 5 minute exposure time.

London sculptor Frederick Scott Archer never patented his 1851 wet plate collodion process, where he spread a mixture of nitrated cotton dissolved in ether and alcohol on sheets of glass. The result: the 10-second exposure “tintype.” Much cheaper than the daguerreotype, the tintype brought photography to everyday people. The name probably comes from the tin shears or scissors needed to cut the small pictures (about 2″ x 3″), rather than the metal plates on which they were reproduced.

In 1861, Scottish physicist James Clerk-Maxwell came up with the color-separation method by using green, red, or blue filters when taking black and white photographs. And during the Civil War, Mathew Brady and his staff exposed 7,000 negatives while covering the war!

British physician Richard Leach Maddox developed the dry plate process in 1871, using an emulsion of gelatin, the protein in animal bones, and silver bromide on dry plates. (Gelatin is still used today.) Exposure time: 1/25th of a second!

When he was 24 in 1880, George Eastman set up his Eastman Dry Plate Company in Rochester, NY. By 1888, the general public had access to a simplified camera, thanks both to his “Kodak Number 1″ model and his mass developing/processing service. A year later, Eastman produced the first transparent roll film. This was a vast improvement over the 20-foot roll of paper in the “Number 1″ that produced 100 two-and-a-half inch circular pictures.

The next year, 1889, Thomas Edison improved the Kodak roll film to 35mm and put the perforations down each side. This became the international standard for motion picture film. Briton Eadweard Muybridge, who had changed his name from the unexciting Edward Muggridge, is credited as the “father of the motion picture” for his 1877 time-stop sequence photos of Leland Stanford’s galloping horse. He didn’t copyright his images, though, and lost a lawsuit against Stanford when he published them. Yes, that’s the same guy who named a university for his son. (Mr. Muybridge and his “flying horse” play a brief but adorable part in a work of mine that likely won’t ever emerge from my hard drive. But oh I had fun writing it!)

In 1880, the first half-tone photo appeared in a newspaper, and ten years later, Eastman introduced the Kodak Brownie box camera.

Okay, now the lesson is over. Last year, my mom moved to a beautiful retirement apartment, leaving my brother Paul and me to shovel out her old house. While the process that he and I have nicknamed The Upheaval has its ups and downs, one “Up” is the treasure trove of antique photos I’ve found. Going through them is like nirvana.

This tintype of my great-grandfather shows him handsome enough to star in his own romance novel. Agreed? Even more interesting is the tintype in the same studio of an unidentified woman. It’s not his only sister. And it definitely isn’t great-grandma. An old girlfriend? No one knows. But Great-Grandpa was happily wed for almost 55 years to my darling great-grandma.

Look at that face. How could he not? One can almost forgive her for weighing only 98 pounds the day she gave birth to her eighth child. (I did not inherit those genes, by the way.)

But, I do think Tintype Woman deserves a story of her own. Especially since I borrowed Great-Grandma’s name for a character in my first book.

The next photo touches me deeply. One of my great-grandparents’ seven sons passed away as an infant, little Paul. In the nineteenth century, it was common to photograph the dead children, but my ancestors fortunately passed on that tradition and only depicted his catafalque. I just can’t help being teary-eyed just looking at it; I think this could evoke a powerful scene in a future book.

Well, their second son was my grandfather, a prim and proper minister. It seems his profession gets short shrift in romance novels because of, ahem, the love scenes. Truth to tell, the hero of my Eadweard Muybridge tale is just such a preacherman. But I think Grandpa’s a dashing hero anyway. I just imagine him on the way to woo his beloved (my grandma), as proud of that buggy and his horse Babe as any fictional hero with his Stetson and stallion.

After seminary in St. Louis, he took a call to Union City, Oklahoma, which evokes every pioneer town I’ve ever dreamed up myself, or read about. How about you?

But now’s when things get interesting and I get to let my imagination run wild. A whole ton of the old photos aren’t labeled with any specific details. Grandpa and Grandma lived in a parsonage, so no one knows who belonged to this homestead. All that’s written on the back is: “A bird’s eye view of the place taken last spring. Oklahoma.” So without a who, exactly where, or when, I can people this homestead with whomever I want.

How about these twins? Boy or girl? Children of both genders in the late 1800’s dressed quite similarly until little boys turned six or so.

Very poignant is the picture of “Raymond and children.” No relatives alive today remember them. No last name. No date. No hometown. Where is Mrs. “Raymond?” Did she die birthing one of the kids? Was he heartbroken? What futures, what loves, what adventures did those little kids have? Did they have a stepmother later on? Was she wicked? Since I don’t know for sure, I’ll just give them a good stepmom in some future tale. I might even let Raymond find love again.

Now, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to help me develop a story about the woman in this photo. All I know about her is the photography studio’s label, “Sedalia, Missouri.” Look into her eyes and tell me the story you see there when you comment today. In three sentences or so, give her a name, a goal. Conflicts and motivations. A future worthy of a romance novel heroine including of course, a hot hero. My family members will pick the “story line” they like best and that writer will receive a copy of my latest release, Midnight Bride, and a pair of sterling-silver cowboy hat earrings.

So get creative. Who is the pretty lady? Where does she live? On what journey would you like her to go? And most important of all, who will be the love of her life?

This past weekend I had a writer friend fly into town to speak to our local writing group and she had heck getting here because of the FAA grounding of thousands of planes. It left travelers stranded and scurrying to get alternate flights. Her experience made me think of travel back through the years. None of it has been easy or fun - with the exception of the Star Trek method of beaming people from one location to another. Now that would be my idea of travel! If only it were possible. But as irritating as today’s travel is, it was far worse in the past. None was easy or fun, but that didn’t keep people from packing what they could carry and starting out. Seems we’ve always been a determined lot.

Travel in the west was especially uncomfortable, dirty, and sometimes required considerable strength and fortitude to get to destinations. Imagine conditions when bathing was hard to come by. But the pioneers and settlers had little choice if they needed to get somewhere.

Stagecoaches: Normally they traveled a trotting pace of 6-7 mph if the roads weren’t washed out or blocked by fallen trees or boulders. If the stage got stuck, the passengers were required to get out and help push. Some coaches had two bench seats and others had three. There was very little room inside. The passenger’s knees touched the other person sitting across from them. And I pity the man who had long legs! Also, some coaches had seats up on top with the luggage in the fresh air. Stage stops were about every 30-40 miles apart. There, the horses (or mules) were changed for fresh ones. It was dusty and hot. Passengers were sometimes, but not always, furnished linen dusters to wear over their clothing to keep off some of the dust or rain. Not ideal by any means.

Horses: Averaged 7 mph going at a trot if they weren’t loaded down too much. They could ideally carry a 140-190 pound man, his 30-40 pound saddle, a bedroll, canteen, and a rifle. That was a full load. Horse and rider could usually make 50 miles a day without too much exertion and that included stopping to let the horse rest several times. If the cowboy was going to be too long on the trail, he brought a pack mule to tote his food, cooking utensils, extra clothing and such. A horse wasn’t built to carry all that plus the rider. Too much weight caused sores on the horse’s back or bruised its kidneys. The caring cowboy took excellent care of his mount, for without the animal, he was walking. And a cowboy never walked anyplace where he could ride.

Wagon: A wagon could make ten to twelve miles a day if the animal pulling it was rested and in good health and the road in fairly good shape. Of course, that didn’t include mountainous regions. Ten to twelve miles a day translated to around 4 mph with plenty of rest stops. Most wagons were generally pulled by mules because they were heartier and they saved a man’s horse.

Trains: The normal speed for steam engine locomotives was about 25-30 mph in 1864. Early on, the best they could get was 15 mph. Trains had to stop approx. every 30 miles to take on water and coal so it took forever and a day to get anywhere. In summertime when the windows were down, the traveler got covered from head to foot with thick soot and smoke. Sometimes cinders flew in and caused burns. Again, long dusters kept their clothing in fairly good shape but they were hot. I guess it depended on how desperate you were to try to keep clean. Sometimes women wrapped their hair with a kind of close-fitting cap. In wintertime, passengers near the potbellied stove roasted while those at the other end of the car froze. Toilets, if they had them, were no more than a curtained off chamber pot. Imagine how embarrassing that would be! The only good thing was the train stations. Passengers could get off, use the facilities, and eat a meal. I’m sure they took full advantage of those depots!

The next time you’re grumbling about having to stand in a long check-in line at the airport, have your flight canceled, or riding in your air-conditioned car with its soft upholstery and get stuck in traffic, don’t complain. We have it so much better than our ancestors it’s not even funny. Just take a minute to appreciate what you have and remember that nothing will ever be perfect - except if we learn how Scottie beamed people from one place to another!

Are you the adventurous kind who would like to go back in time and take a journey? If so, which method of travel would you prefer? Or do you mind the endless airport screenings and cancellations? How about getting stuck in traffic, do you gripe and fume or just accept and make the most of it? I’m curious.

First let me preface this by saying: Everything is all right NOW! 

But—I read an article in RWR magazine a while back about how you cannot miss out on MySpace if you want to promote your work. Well, I’m on MySpace and all 759 of my close personal friends are no doubt reading Petticoat Ranch right this second.The page is up and running now, but it wasn’t always so easy.

RWR didn’t tell me the dark side of MySpace—and no, I’m not talking about the vampires who have their own pages. That is the subject of another column. Far darker than the blood-sucking living dead is me trying to create my own page. I’ve spent, oh, I’m sure it just seems like a decade trying to figure out MySpace.Finally, my 17-year-old daughter Katy took pity on me and showed me how to invite people to be my friends and how to—forgive me—pimp my page. Where do kids come up with these things?

And why do they have the nerve to say them to their mothers?! 

Anyway, I invited a bunch of people to be my friends. It felt kind of, well, nervy, you might say; like a bad high school party you go to and everyone gives you the “Who invited you?” look. But Katy pep-talked me into it, so I did it.Then after all the invites went out, I tried to, umm, you know to my page and—forgive me again—somehow ended up with a stripper as my background picture.

She was not there when I selected from among the 1,000,000 background choices. And sure, they can’t show you everything on the background, but c’mon! You’d think they’d include it if there was a stripper!! And she was moving—there were shots of her wearing less and less. It was very high-tech in a triple-X kind of way. Did I mention I did this after I invited all these friends? Excellent. Nice surprise if they come and check things out, huh? I invite you to MySpace and a stripper opens the door. Just the impression I want to make!So, of course, on the very day someone might actually agree to be my friend—“hello 38 Double D.”
 
And the only way I could get rid of g-string girl was to get rid of everything, including a bunch of scary-looking lines of code.  Think “Nightmare on Elm Street” with a computer monitor. 

 I don’t even really know what code means, except it’s numbers and symbols and letters that mean nothing to me. I hated to erase it because once it’s gone, there’s no getting it back—not with my computer skills. But either the code went or the stripper stayed and honestly, there was just no chance the clothing challenged girl could stay, what with my friends coming over soon, so I had to delete it all.

So, I lost the stripper and everything else too, except my book cover and a blurb about the book, and of course this nice, growing list of friends. Did you know I’m now friends with Tim McGraw? Yeah, right! Me and Tim! BFFs.  

I now have many friends, most of whom I have stolen from other author acquaintances’ sites and, well, I’m worried. I mean, honestly, do my friends love me for myself? I think not. I’m guessing I’m not going on Tim McGraw’s Christmas card list. And how badly can we abuse the word friend, huh? And why, oh why, did Faith Hill dye her hair brunette—what was she thinking?

So that’s my adventure into cyberspace. If you want to invite me to be your friend (and you’re not afraid), I’m completely open to it (http://www.myspace.com/petticoatranch). Just remember the more I drag you inside my head the more you’re going to need a GPS tracking system so when you call for help—and believe me, you will—the police can find you and save you. And just one more point: I wouldn’t be able to help you run the GPS tracker so you’d be on your own there, too. 

Next up? Facebook. If I survive, I’ll report back.

So how are you with technology? Ever accidentally logged onto some site you were afraid would make Homeland Security kick down your door? And what about research? Authors are always looking for a way to kill someone in a fresh and entertaining way…good luck running for President and not having the, “Seventy-five Fastest Acting Poison’s” website show up in the opposition research. Or the fact that you’ve checked out, “Severing A Human Head” from the library…six times.

Tell me about you and technology. The wonder…and the terror!