Watching the 8mm Whale family films my dad shot when we were kids on the old Kodak takes me back to happier times.

Which we all sorely need these days.

I get so much enjoyment out of them that I have taken fondly to calling the collection The Whale Bank of Happy Times. Much of the pleasure I get from the films — now digitized thanks to my brother, Matt — I get from seeing once more the people I loved in the long ago, many of whom have since passed.

There, my parents, then in their 30s, my late brother Jim, then just entering 6th grade, many neighborhood kids at Halloween, duffers duffing on various golf courses, aunts and uncles and grandpas and grandmas, not to mention many a treasured trip to Oroville and swimming in Lake Osoyoos.

I have to add that amusing titles, commentary and segues dad added to transitions between scenes post-production only enhances the enjoyment of the films. He was good at it. It may have helped that he had a shot or two of whiskey at hand when he worked his editing magic.

Here are a few of my prized celluloid moments.

The first film begins with the preliminaries to our first family vacation to visit my Aunt Betty, Uncle Russell and our cousins Dan and Cathy Dorn in Aurora, Colorado, in June 1968. Dad’s first order as director was to have all of the junior Whales in the front yard hide behind a bush on the southeast corner of the house, and then run toward the camera.

Why? Who knew? Ours was not to question why.

“What was that about?” … “Dunno,” we murmured to each other after we’d completed this mystical assignment, and then piled into the old Chevy to launch the the great-American, cross-country adventure.

There I am, Mr. Skin and Bones, fresh out of kindergarten, eager to enjoy my first summer break, days after taking part in the arduous task of performing the time-tested kindergarten square dance for the whole of then North Auburn Elementary School.

There’s my big sister Carole, my-then knobby kneed little sister, Diane, just about to enter kindergarten, Matt, on the cusp of fifth grade being his usually smart-alecky self, and then skinny Jack, about to enter 4th grade.

That vacation also took us to Yellowstone National Park. I watch the first film and am smacked again by the memories of that time, which still live in my bones, including the ever present nose of sulfur at Yellowstone and one dead tired walk, hand in hand wth dad along a boardwalk at Yellowstone.

As the years and films roll on, we get Jim’s band, “The Five Shades of Blue,” with Chuck Buser on drums — the guy who could play anything and still does — Shorty Adamson on electric guitar, Joe Bollinger on rhythm guitar, and Dave Pattison on tambourine, performing the Monkees song “I’m Not Your Stepping Stone” in Buser’s garage for a gathering of Catholic nuns. Jim was playing with only one string on his guitar that rainy afternoon, so dad christened him “Jim One String Whale” on the placard he inserted into the film.

That band was composed of kids from to 13, but it was no kiddies band. This was an incredibly gifted group. The guys wrote their own songs. In the summer of 1969, the band nearly took top honors from other established local bands at the Battle of the Bands at Seattle Center. Paul Revere and the Raiders were the main attraction.

Moving on, there’s the neighborhood kid population crammed into our living room Halloween 1970.

Other scenes capture the neighborhood kids playing baseball in the Whale backyard, the tent my folks bought in ‘69 with dad’s caption “Dad’s dead body is under tent.” It only occurred to me as I wrote that line that the old man must have said at some time, “A tent?! Over my dead body.” Here’s Diane dressed up as a hippy for Auburn Parks and Recreation’s Hippy Day, and she and Carole playing with makeup, a segment my dad called “Silliness.”

I wouldn’t part with any of those memories for anything, and I am so thankful to have them. Hope you all have such treasures.

Robert Whale can be reached at robert.whale@auburn-reporter.com.