Photography

I got my first 35mm camera from a guy named Irv Winston when I was about eleven years old. Prior to that I'd been using various 'Brownie' type cameras that utilized 110mm or 120mm film. Kicking around somewhere are boxes of film and pictures I took in grade school. This same fellow, Irv Winston, was my mom's second (and last) husband and he also got me interested in the notion of recording sound onto magnetic tape. There has always been something about the idea of capturing a moment and being able to reexamine a piece of the past that I have found fascinating. I have recordings that I made on inexpensive tape recorders that didn't record at a constant speed. As a result, the only way to guarantee they would play back and be understandable, was to keep the batteries as fresh as possible. I can tell you, that was a challenge for a young kid with no money. Someday, I hope to be able to transfer those recordings onto CDs, and in fact I have already started this project. As you might imagine, editing is the challenge these days. I probably waited 15 years (after they hit the market) to get a camera that recorded sound and pictures at the same time. Monetary problems, again. But that was many years later, and another story.

When I was a kid I never thought too much about what was motivating me to take these pictures and record all the sound around me. As an adult I imagine it has something to do with mortality. Irv Winston passed away several years ago. My mother moved into a small retirement apartment. My sister and I helped her sort through her belongings, which now exceeded her storage space. This is a problem that I have recently seen crop up more than once, as the previous generation tries to decide what to do with a lifetime's collection of 'stuff'. It seems we collect objects over the years, and then suddenly find ourselves living in smaller and smaller places, with nowhere to put all the things that we have diligently collected. Thinking that I might be interested, my mother had saved some of Irv Winston's belongings, mostly clothing and smaller items. Included was a large suitcase that contained all of Irv's pictures and negatives. It dawned on me that Irv had no children and no family, that he was the last of his family line. There was no one left alive to whom I might pass on these momentoes from his past. A lifetime of pictures and no one to see them or reflect upon the life and times of the man that took them. I struggled for some weeks trying to decide what to do? I finally kept a few pictures of Irv and his parents, the only ones I recognized. And I consigned the other hundreds of pictures to the goodwill and keeping of others. I got rid of them.

As I grew into my teens I remained interested in photography. All through high school I was the photographer for the school yearbook. What a great experience! I got to go places around that old school building that no one had been in for years, including the basement and roof. I took countless pictures of my classmates, of the school grounds and at all school functions and activities. I was allowed use of the school's equipment to take pictures. I learned how to develop the film and print from the negatives. At home, in a storeroom in the basement, I assembled a darkroom. My parents entertained frequently and my darkroom shelves were lined with cases of scotch and vodka, as well as developer and photographic paper. Coincidentally, I had begun to experiment with alcohol about this same time. I discovered that it was possible to open a bottle of vodka and replace a good portion of its contents with water. This did not get me into big trouble for almost a year. It finally did, however, when the ratio of water to alcohol became noticeable. Apparently Dad threw a big party where there was lots of imbibing yet no one was getting mellow. I had to do a lot of fast talking and make some big promises to keep my darkroom in operation. The booze went under lock and key for awhile, anyway.

The school had two press cameras that I was allowed to use, one smaller and one larger. Magazines, each holding two negatives, slid into the back of these cameras. The large negative (four by six inches, on the larger camera) allowed the pictures to be printed directly onto photo paper, without enlarging. Because of my connection with the school, and the large amount of darkroom supplies I was purchasing from the local camera store, I became acquainted with the proprietor. It was through him that I was finally able to obtain my first enlarger, at a price that I could afford. This allowed me more frequent use of my thirty five millimeter camera, whose negatives were too small to print directly. He was also a wealth of information about photography in general. He gave me many fine suggestions and general tips that made the quality of my work better than average. He impressed upon me the importance of texture and background when I got the job of taking sorority photographs for the girls in Sigma Delta Sigma. And so it came to pass that I collected $25 from my mother.

I took the sorority pictures at my house, arranging part of my bedroom so as to create a photographer's salon. I took close-ups of all the girls' heads and shoulders, using a large Turkish towel tacked to the wall, for the all-important background texture. I used the school's speed graphic press camera and my new enlarger to print each girls' 8 by 10 retouched sorority pictures and the many wallet sized pictures they needed to give to their friends. I was so busy enlarging and printing that I left the large towel tacked to my bedroom wall.

My mother, and I'm sure the mothers of most teenage boys and girls, is a very curious woman. She wasn't particularly thrilled that I was using my bedroom as a photographer's studio. Especially since I closed the bedroom door while taking each sorority sister's picture. I hadn't thought to give each girl her own appointment time and the entire sorority arrived at two PM on photo day. About 30 young women gathered in our living room and on the stairway to the bedroom while they awaited their turn. I merely closed the door between clients to give each girl a bit of privacy during her moment with the camera.

Later that evening, at the dinner table, I could tell that my mother had something on her mind. She finally admitted to having gone into my bedroom. This was very hard for her to do since generally my bedroom was considered to be my own personal space. After all, I was 14 years old, and a junior in high school. Senior Times She said, "I just wanted to make sure none of the young ladies forgot anything." Right. This is where the curiosity was beginning to do its work.

"I couldn't help but notice, not that I was prying, but one of our large Turkish bath towels seems to be fastened to the wall in your bedroom?"

I immediately sensed that I had the upper hand. "Yes?"

"Well, I couldn't help but wonder, I mean, really, that is, why? Why is a towel fastened to your bedroom wall?"

This was great. She had gathered information without a search warrant and I wasn't bound to explain. I had the hammer.

"Is there anything wrong? I'll wash the towel."

"No, nothing's wrong. I was just curious..."

I lowered the hammer. "Well mom, what's it worth to you?"

"Worth to me? Why, it's not worth anything to me, I just saw the towel fastened to the wall and naturally wondered why it was there?"

I decided to let nature take its course. I continued eating. I gave the appearance of seriously thinking this matter over in great detail. I frowned and stared at the ceiling. I occasionally opened my mouth as if to speak but then closed it again. Dessert was served. I placed my napkin on the table and began to push back my chair. "Well, I think I'll just be excused now and go do my homework."

Mom spoke.

"If you think I'm going to pay you money just so that you'll tell me why one of my own towels is attached to your bedroom wall, you're sadly mistaken, young man!"

"Okay, mom."

Two days went by. There was no further mention of the incident. I purposely left the towel fastened to the wall. The next night at dinner I casually mentioned that I would be removing the towel from the wall the next day. And the next day I washed and folded the towel and returned it to the linen closet. And that night at dinner things finally began to get interesting. The real bargaining began.

"So, you'd charge your own mother money? To answer a simple question, you would charge your own mother, (who loves you) money?"

"You don't have to pay any money, mother. Unless you feel it's that important to know why I had the towel fastened to my bedroom wall?"

"Well, I certainly don't feel it's that important! I'm just naturally curious, the way any mother would be, to find one of her good towels fastened to the wall in her son's bedroom. Towels aren't ordinarily fastened to walls so a person would naturally wonder why this one happened to be on the wall in the first place?" A pause. "I suppose, just to satisfy your childish demands, that I'll give you a dollar to tell me why."

"A dollar? I don't think so mom. Well, I've got to run along now."

My father now set down his knife and fork, and began to listen, an amused smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Crossing his arms on his chest, he said nothing.

"Wait!" Her face got dark. Her brow furrowed. "We didn't raise you to be a conniving, money grubbing young man, who would charge his own mother, who loves him, actual money to tell her something that she wants to know."

"No, mother, you didn't. But you did raise me to believe that knowledge has value and that valuable things have a certain worth. In this case, I have knowledge of something that you want to know about and I feel that knowledge has a worth that is greater than one dollar."

"I see. Well, just to put an end to this nonsense, I'll give you ten dollars to tell me - just this once."

Dad's chin dropped to his chest.

Whoa! She was more curious than I’d realized! "I was thinking more like thirty, mom."

"Thirty dollars? Absolutely not! Do you know how much money thirty dollars is? Have you any idea? Twenty. I'll give you twenty out of the goodness of my heart and that's it!"

"Make it twenty seven fifty?"

"Twenty five dollars and that's final! You are on very thin ice, young man, and you'd better take this money before I change my mind!" So I did.

To this day, whenever I see a camera in my mother's hand I like to mention something about how, 'the picture might be improved if there was a little texture in the background?'

Having a good relationship with the fellow at the camera store paid off in another way, besides good advice and the occasional discount: It got me the electric eye. The electric eye made me famous and nearly gave my poor mother a heart attack. One day after school, a few days after the incident with the towel, I happened to be at the camera shop. I noticed a gadget on the counter that I didn't recognize. It was a black box of about camera size and it even had a lens. When I inquired as to its use my mentor explained to me about photoelectric eyes. The black box produced a beam of light that shot across the room. If a mirror was placed into the beam, and the light reflected back at the box, then a photoelectric cell would register that event and a circuit was completed. As long as the circuit was completed a switch was held open. If something broke the beam the switch would close and activate a secondary circuit. In this case, the secondary circuit was used to ring a bell in the back room of the camera shop. The unit had been set to shine it's beam across the doorway at the front of the store. Customers entering the store would break the beam and a bell would ring in the back room. My proprietor friend had replaced the electric eye with a more modern (and much smaller, less noticeable) unit. I was able to acquire the old electric eye with part of my profits from the towel bartering incident. A plan immediately came to mind.

As an amateur tinkerer and part-time inventor I had acquired a lot of useless junk. Well, that's what my mother called it. To me, these odds and ends of old motors and lamps were raw materials, that just needed to be shaped into something new and valuable. Included in my collection of oddments was an old vacuum cleaner. At one time this had been a fine state-of-the-art machine. Self-propelled with a one-third horsepower motor driving a thirteen inch beater bar that loosened the dirt. It also featured a bright light on the front to illuminate those hard to see areas in dark corners and under the furniture. To better understand what made it work I had stripped the thing down to just the motor, the beater bar and wheels, and the headlight. It had formerly been covered with a heavy metal case, well insulated and chrome plated. It had formerly had a long handle and a heavy fabric bag to catch the dirt. Without the heavy case and fabric bag it was much lighter and surprisingly fast. Also surprisingly loud. When I plugged it in, it took off across the room at a furious rate! And making a pretty furious noise, too. A regular screaming demon. That's when I got the idea.

I had occasionally wondered, after the towel incident, just how often my mom came into my room while I was at school? I decided to rig up a telltale device. I would use the electric eye. If someone came into my room and broke the beam, thereby completing the secondary circuit, it could turn on a counter, or a light. Something to tell me that I had had a visitor. Except that I couldn't find a counter and turning on a light didn't seem very exciting. So I hooked the electric eye up to the screaming demon. And I stuck the screaming demon under my bed. I turned the whole thing on and went to school. And when I came home from school everything was just the way I had left it. After about a week of carefully checking everyday to see if the screaming demon had shot out from under the bed I came to the conclusion that no one violated the sanctity of my bedroom. And I went to bed that night, somehow both pleased and disappointed, and I forgot to turn it off.

I fell asleep.

I don't know what woke me up first. It might have been the vacuum cleaner roaring to life underneath my sleeping head. Or, it might have been my mother, yelling her brains out in my bedroom doorway. In the headlight beam of the screaming demon, roaring across the bedroom floor, I could see her waving her arms over her head and jumping from one foot to the other. She was screaming something about, "Sweet Jesus and Mary Mother of God help me!" My mother is not a religious woman, or at least she wasn't until that moment.

It was word of this incident, repeated by my close friends around the school, that made me famous as 'the kid that scared his Ma half to death'. The downside was that she didn’t come into my room to kiss me goodnight again for a long, long, time.