This started out as a simple post after I ran across a short video digitized from an old 8mm film of my parents. It was among a very few surviving family movies that survived since they were taken in the 1940s.

It shows my grandparent’s home in Waipahu, along the mauka side of Farrington Highway just after the bridge over Waikele Stream. My grandparents bought a large piece of property, built their home, and then sold off several other house lots over the years, using it as their savings account. It’s the house that I recall visiting when I was growing up. But my sister always referred to it as the “new” house, which sent me looking for more information. A quick search in Newspapers.comm turned up a legal notice that construction had been completed in January 1947. I was born in August of that year.

My original intent, besides just sharing the brief glimpses of the area in area nearly 80 years ago, was to see whether any readers have experience in using software to clean up old video like this. I would be very interested in hearing from anyone who has done that.

Okay. That was the plan. Simple.

But then it got complicated.

I’ll pick up the story and explain what happened in another post.