These days, when you want to capture something for eternity, you can whip out your digital camera, fancy camcorder, or even your telephone; heck, when Fischer-Price sells video cameras (and they do!) you know that the age of  "capturing the moment" has gone places that most never dreamed it would.

But there was a simpler time when capturing memories was one of the things that was not so simple, especially if you wanted something more than photographs. Yes, back in the days before video cameras, we were forced to use something called "movie cameras." These used photographic film rather than videotape, and unless you had one of the fancier models, there was no audio; the only sounds you heard when you were watching the movies was the whir of the movie projector.

One year, I got one of these movie cameras for Christmas. It was a basic model, small and compact, and without sound. But to my friends and I, it was about the coolest gift you could get that didn't come with an outboard motor, and we had a blast with it. We were never without it, right up until the point that it got replaced with a video camera. After that, I didn't think about the movie camera as much.

In fact, I don't even know where that camera is anymore. But, I still have the movies we shot. Each reel of film was good for about 200 seconds, so somewhere in a box I have dozens of three-minute slices of life as we knew it back then. And when the subject of one reel in particular came up recently, I knew I'd soon be digging around through our storeroom, looking for that movie… and the movie projector… and the movie screen. Finding everything I needed would be not unlike an archeological dig, but it would be worth it.

I found the screen easily; not surprising, since it was the biggest thing I was looking for. I soon found the projector, too; the hard part was moving several pieces of furniture so I could get to it. And eventually I found the box with the spools of film, though I thought I was going to have to empty the storeroom to find it; fortunately I remembered that I was looking in the wrong room.

I loaded everything into the car and headed for my friend Bud's lakehouse; we thought reminiscing over these long-lost movies would be the perfect way to end the summer. And, we weren't alone; our wives, who had never seen the movies (and had seen nothing but still pictures of us from back in those days) were looking forward to it, too. And we knew his kids would like some of the old movies, too, if we could get them to sit still long enough to watch.

So after dinner I set up the movie screen, found a good place to set the projector, and… had an awful thought. It had been years, decades even, since I had used the projector; would it still work? Was the bulb still good? If the bulb was burned out, did they even make replacements anymore?

I plugged the projector in, and nervously turned it on. A familiar whirring sound filled the air, and the projection screen was filled with bright white light; everything worked!

The first reel I was going to show-- the one we had been wanting to see all this time-- was of something we called "suisliding." That was a word we coined by combining the words "suicide" and "HydroSlide," and it was a most accurate name for what we were doing. Well, not us, really, but Bud's brother. Dave had never been proficient at the HydroSlide (or any other kneeboard) so he did the next-best thing-- he found something he was good at, and worked to perfect it. And what he discovered he was good at was riding the kneeboard on his stomach, and holding on while we drove the boat at top speed… and then made a turn as sharp as physics allowed.

Assuming he held on long enough, Dave would reach a speed that we roughly estimated to be about a billion miles per hour. In fact, it was filming some of his rides that allowed us to see exactly what was happening. By watching the movies in slow motion, we could see that Dave would get going so fast that the kneeboard would actually lift off, much like an airplane wing; shortly after taking flight the board would separate itself from Dave, and his resulting "landing" would make for some high entertainment for those of us in the boat. Rolls, flips, splashes, all spread out for several seconds and about 100 yards; "spectacular" isn't a good enough word.

Dave could only make about one ride every five minutes. It wasn't because he needed the recovery time-- though he probably did-- but because those of us in the boat would laugh uncontrollably for that long.

I threaded the first reel of film into the projector, and we sat back and watched… nothing. For some reason, the film was not threading into the projector the way it should have. I tried again, and again, but no luck.

I was discouraging, almost devastating, but we were bound and determined to watch these movies, so I unplugged the projector, and set about taking it apart, to see what the problem was.

The problem was with my plan. First, I don't really know anything about movie projectors, so I probably wouldn't have recognized the problem even if there was a large read arrow marked "THIS IS THE PROBLEM!!" and it was pointing at something that was snapped in two. Second, while I've always been pretty good about taking things apart, putting them back together has always been a problem.

Fortunately, Bud is a neurosurgeon, so I figured that if he could put a human brain back together, he should be able to reassemble a movie projector. Which is a nice thought, but not logical and, in this case, nowhere near true. But we did manage to decide that the problem was that the large spool under the projector was supposed to be catching the film as it went along, but it wasn't. So all we had to do was figure out a way to make it do what it was supposed to do.

We tried to use scotch tape to attach the film to the spool, but that didn't work; then we tried duct tape, and that failed too, ruining forever the myth that duct tape can fix anything. Disillusioned and discouraged, we set about putting the projector back together; though I wasn't sure why; obviously, it was broken beyond repair, and the odds of finding someone who could repair it were even worse than those of finding a spare bulb for it.

As I replaced the last screw, Bud said "What size film is this anyway?" I told him that they were Super-8, and he said "So shouldn't this little switch be flipped to 'Super-8'?"

D'oh!! But, yay!! It turned out to be a simple though embarrassing problem, but after moving the switch to the correct setting, we were ready to watch the movies!

As planned, we watched the one about suisliding first. The years had not diminished the hilarity of watching Dave's body bounce uncontrollably across the water, and I was agreed that he was lucky to still be alive. And I think Bud's kids realized that we were much easier on them than we had been on ourselves when we were growing up.

We watched movie after movie, and most of them had been shot at the lake. In addition to the suisliding reels, there was footage of us skiing, kneeboarding, swimming, showing off in my fishing boat, having mud fights, and so on. The kids seemed interested at best; when I made a casual remark, their interest turned to disbelief.

"Uh-uh!" "You are kidding!" "No WAY!"

So what did I say? It went something like this: "Notice how calm the water is, and how you almost never see any other boats? Would you believe that most of these were shot on a Saturday in June, July or August?"

And it was true. The water was usually smooth as glass, and there were very few other boats around to change that. And I'm glad I have photographic evidence to prove to people who don't believe it that yes, there was once a time when you could actually ski on Lake Martin without worrying about huge waves or huge boats. We call them the good ol' days… and I'm glad I got to grow up in them.