1968. Some of us had been off to college for a year or two but gravitated back to Kennett, Missouri, as young people from small towns often do. This web site is about those people and that time. This would have been a lot easier if I had actually kept a diary or journal thirty years ago. But I didn’t, so the only record I have is a few thousand photographs and a lot of fuzzy memories. The time frame is roughly 1966 -1976. If you were there, no further explanation is necessary… if you were not, none is possible. (March 1998)

Basement Summer parties marked an important change in our social lives. While city kids were bluffing their way into clubs and bars, my friends and I were drinking our beer from paper sacks in cold dark cars on empty gravel roads. Or on sweltering, mosquito-infested ditch banks. While The Basement got us out of the elements and –to some small degree– off the highways, we partied in lot of different places. I’ll list the ones I can remember.

I bought my first 35 mm camera that summer and took lots of photographs. I think I knew, at some level, that these were the best of times and worth recording.

Update: 1/18/10 – In the process of finishing up moving the Basement Diaries for the 3rd time since I created it back in 1998. I think I started in FrontPage, moved to Typepad and now to WordPress. I hope to put more photos in the flickr set and fix all the broken links that remain. You can contact me at: stevemays at gmail dot com.