Restoration Memories

By: Jeff Howard

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

"Time is but the stream I go fishing in." Henry David Thoreau

In his twenties and again in his forties David Albers attempted to discover his ancestry. When those efforts yielded not a single clue as to his origins he sequestered the pursuit. Failing to discover any clues to the missing puzzle pieces of his life made him too melancholy.

A call from the coroner's office, the discovery of a cache of old photographs and a visit to Restoration Memories, an unusual photography studio tucked away in a back alley in Chinatown, changed everything.

Restoration's unique camera sends David back to introduce himself to his youthful parents in 1947, discuss his twelve-year old mother's library in 1932 during a lunch at the Stockton State Hospital for the Insane and fight fires with his grandfather in 1906. He escapes being lynched in 1874, rescues his benefactor in 1885 and fulfills his mother-in-laws wish to have one more night on the town in 1942.

Restoration is a tender, thoughtful and at times humorous adventure where the past helps David complete his present. We are who we are, he concludes, not only by the shuffling of DNA from bygone generations but by the confluence of millions of circumstances and decisions made before we were born.

A fire, an epidemic, an escape, a broken water pipe, a bully, a rescue and we exist or, in some cases, don't. If not for this, that. At 5 am on April 18,1906 David would not have existed in the future at 5:15 he would. If not for that, this.

He comes to terms with it all at the Hall of Fame Dinner for his father in 1986.

Some of Restoration Memories is true. Some of it could be.