Slide 73 and 74

The Slide: Me (age 15) with a pretty girl

The Date: Summer 1967

The Photographer: My sister Sally

Every couple years while living in my parent’s home and later while visiting there with my own wife and kids, someone would say, “Hey, maybe tonight we should take out the slides.” This would be followed by a collective groan because taking out the slides meant spending several hours viewing poorly focused images, many showing the back of someone’s head. But with little protest we would relent and again enact the family tradition. It was a sensory experience. The screen had a surprisingly pleasant sweet moldy scent. The projector filled the room with warmth and soothed us with the soft rhythmic hum of the automatic focus attemping the impossible.

Always, part way through, a slide would appear causing my sisters and parents to cheer, “Woohoo!” The slide shows me at fifteen on a beautiful summer day. I’m standing on the back of a pontoon boat with a pretty girl. The girl is facing the camera but I am facing the girl.

“Whoa! What’s that boy thinking?” my older sister would tease. I always protested insisting that my facial expression was the result of the shutter catching me mid sentence. But the context clearly shows me ogling the girl as if about to say, with the rest of my family, “Woohoo! Baby lookatchu!”

My sister Sally took the photo, no doubt hoping to catch me in such a pose. Not surprisingly, she particularly delighted whenever the image appeared. The truth is, I delighted too. Though I never let on, I always anticipated the slide with a kind of nostalgic longing. I met the girl moments before the photo was taken. We spent perhaps three hours together and only a couple minutes alone yet I remember her full name over forty years later. Had I not periodically seen her image I might have forgotten her. But I doubt it. Where I grew up, it was understood that you shouldn’t associate much with people from other towns. This pretty girl was not from my town and so for the first time I felt the exciting lure of the forbidden.

I lived in Port Allegany, a little borough in sparsely populated northern Pennsylvania. Port, as it was called, was a town of about twenty-five hundred surrounded by other little towns roughly the same size. Smethport, Coudersport, Eldred, Emporium, Austin, and Shingle House were all within a circle with a radius of twenty-five miles. If Port was at the center of the circle -and it sure seemed to us that it was- then the northern arc crossed the New York line and included the community of Olean. At twenty-five thousand Olean was, to me, the big city.

As children we were indoctrinated with a fierce provincial pride. We were raised to think that our town was better than others. We were not taught this in a direct way. Surely most of our parents knew better. Our local worldview was, however, the very natural result of living separated from other communities. In elementary school we were taught our school Alma Mater and sang it religiously before every athletic competition.

Although Yale has always favored

The violet star blue

And the gentle sons of Harvard

To their crimson rose are true

We will own our lily slender

No honor shall it lack

While Port High stands defender

Of the orange and the black

I think it’s safe to say that few if any from our town ever attended Yale or Harvard but we did not hesitate to compare our school to these institutions and when we did we found ourselves…well... truer.

We did not often meet children from other towns. The opportunities to do so were few and usually included team competition accompanied by fight songs so we began to see others as rivals. They were the Falcons, Raiders, Terrors and Hubbers. In the latter case we did not know what a Hubber was but we suspected it was unfriendly. We were the Gators. We were defenders of the orange and the black.

We heard stories of older boys driving to other communities and always fights broke out. The following week boys from those towns descended upon ours seeking revenge. If they couldn’t find anyone home they’d toss some manure in our community pool and on it would go. I did not participate in any of this but the stories reinforced the belief that it was better to associate with own kind.

My older sister Sally had a boyfriend named Loren. He had some relatives who owned property on Cuba Lake and he invited our family to join his for a picnic on their pontoon boat. I was uncharacteristically enthused about the trip. Cuba Lake was in New York State well outside my twenty-five mile radius of comfort. But it was a lake. This was attractive because we had very few lakes in our area. More importantly, we were invited to picnic on a pontoon. I had no idea what a pontoon was but it sounded exotic. I remembered saying to Loren, “Are you serious? You mean you can walk around and eat on the boat?”

We drove a couple hours to a little cabin on a bluff above the water. We met Loren’s relatives who all seemed very old. There were smiles and hellos and awkward handshakes. Then a woman handed me a large bag of charcoal saying, “Here you are young man. Make yourself useful. Take this bag down to the boat and give it to Betty.”

I descended wet mossy railroad ties taking care not to slip and wondered how the woman below negotiated such slippery steps. Then I heard her voice. “Hi,” she said, “I’m Betty?”

I stopped and looked from my feet to see a girl standing by the boat’s Webber grill. She was not an older woman. She was a pretty girl very near my own age. “You're Betty?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she answered, “What’s your name?”

“Bob,” I said stepping onto the boat’s deck and putting the charcoal by the grill, “I wasn’t expecting you to be young,” I said, “Every Betty I know is over eighty.”

This made her laugh and that’s all I’ve ever needed to feel comfortable. She started to empty the charcoal and asked if I’d carry some lawn chairs from the landing. During the next few minutes she asked me one question after another; Where do you live? What grade are you in? Do you like sports? I told her I played football.

“Oh, I’ll bet I saw you play,” she said excitedly. “Didn’t your freshman team play against Olean?”

I felt the embarrassment burning in my cheeks. Indeed we had played Olean and lost by seven touchdowns. On a positive note I nearly caught a long pass and would have scored a touchdown had I not run directly into the goalpost. I told her the story and she laughed which almost made the loss worthwhile.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her and the more I looked the more beautiful she became. To be honest, she may not have been more beautiful than some girls in my own town but that was the point. She was not from my own town. She was a city girl from Olean. A girl from Olean was not supposed to be so beautiful, so sweet, so kind. She was the first girl I’d met from another town and so she seemed alluringly forbidden. As the afternoon progressed I didn’t want the day to end. I knew I’d never see her again.

But I did see her again just one more time. Two and a half years later my mother and I were shopping in Olean. We were at the counter in Bradners Department Store and I waited for her while she wrote a check. I wore my orange and black varsity jacket. Two girls entered from the snowy street in red and white Olean colors. As usual, I started to look away when the girl on the right glanced toward me and our eyes met. She broke into a wide smile that was two and a half years prettier.

“Hi,” she said. “How are you Bob?” I might have been able to respond naturally had my mom not joined the group.

‘Mom,” I said. “This is Betty from the pontoon. Remember?”

“Of course I do,” she said reaching out to shake her hand. And then she added “You’re Betty from the slide show.” My mother wasn’t being mean it just slipped out. Betty looked at us quizzingly.

“Oh, uh,” I stammered, “We have a slide show of you. I mean we don’t have a whole slide show of you. We just have one slide of you that we look at. Sometimes. I mean… we don’t just look at your slide. We look at many slides and your's is one of them.”

I was blushing badly and Betty laughed out loud. That was all I needed to feel comfortable.

“It was fun day,” she said smiling.

“Yeah,” I said. “It sure was.”

I stood on the pontoon. We were toward the back of the boat. I helped her with a folding chair. She put some cans of pop in the ice water cooler and turned away from me. I looked at her… and my sister snapped a picture.

Slide 41

The Slide: Dad at Cathedral Grove

The Date: Summer 1966

The Photographer: Me (age 14)

My father stands against a sweeping arc of stone block at the entrance to Cathedral Grove, a shade dappled, twelve-hundred seat amphitheater gracing a hillside of fragrant Redwoods in the California, Santa Cruz Mountains. We’ve been to church evidenced by the fact that, while on vacation, dad is wearing a white shirt and tie. Cathedral Grove is located inside the Mission Springs Conference Center built early in the last century by The Swedish Missionary Association. That explains why we are here. We too are Swedish.

My father and I hiked the steep road and arrived at the entrance before my mom, and sisters. After snapping the picture, I handed the camera to my father and ran to the top seats. He followed. The view from above was impressive. The empty wooden benches hung to the hillside’s graceful curve narrowing gradually to the bottom and the focal point of a small platform stage.

I thought to myself, “One day this place will be full of people and I will walk on that stage to thunderous applause.” But that’s not what I said to my father. Instead I said, “Hey Dad. Can you imagine how cool it would be here at a concert with this hillside covered with people?”

“That would be something,” he replied.

The reason I didn’t say what I was thinking is the same reason we were visiting Cathedral Grove. I didn’t say what I was thinking because I’m Swedish. By this I mean I am of Swedish descent. It has been so all my life. My paternal grandfather spoke with a strong accent that made him impossible to understand. When I was very young he said something to me about, “Wiking blood wunning through my weins.”

After my mother translated the phrase I wondered if Viking blood was different from any other kind. I suspected it was. Once while savoring a boiled potato with dill, I bit my cheek and it bled profusely. I noticed a slight fishy taste. Later as a young man, when entering small coastal villages I often felt an urge to rape and pillage but that may have been true of non-Swedes as well.

It was confusing because there were some aspects of my Swedishness that did not seem to fit with Vikingness. All the Swedes I knew were quiet people who did not abide boastfulness nor believe they were better than anyone else. Not to be too alliterative but they were predominantly peasant people from particularly poor parts, picking pea sized potatoes from piles of rock. Not a showman in the bunch. Even now, I can hardly think of a Swedish artist or star. Oh there was Abba but they sang almost entirely in English. The one exception might be the long locked tennis star Bjorn Borg. Borg was the rage, not in spite of his Swedishness but because of it. Borg never screamed at the referees, never threw a fit or tossed his racket at a ball girl. Bjorn was stoically Swedish in the way he quietly destroyed his foes. Sadly, he and his tightie whities are hardly remembered by the younger generation. All of this to say, I felt confused about my Viking blood.

“One day this place will be full people and I will walk on that stage to thunderous applause.” That’s what I was thinking but I felt too embarrassed to say it. I did not have it in me to say it. Apparently, that kind of blood was not running through my veins.

Seven years later, the summer I turned twenty-one, I returned to this place as a staff member at the conference center. By that time I’d had four summers of counseling experience in New York State so, despite my young age, I was given a lot of responsibility. I over saw all large group gatherings, spoke at all youth chapels and did a bit of entertaining too. But most notably this summer of ‘73 was the summer I met Tommy.

During the first week, our director received a call from a pastor in the Bay area. “I’ve got a young man in my youth group who really needs something to do this summer,” he said. “He’s fifteen, Dysfunctional family. Nice boy but definitely at risk. I’m concerned he’ll end up on the streets and that would be very bad. Do you happen to have an opening on your staff? He’ll do anything.” Our director explained that we didn’t have an opening, but if the boy was willing to work without pay we’d be happy to take care of him.

The next morning I met Tommy. He was a shy lanky kid who looked like he may have spent the last year growing too fast. He didn’t know a soul and hid his scared eyes beneath a mop of curly brown hair, staring toward his high top sneakers. The director welcomed him like a long lost son.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Tommy said brightening.

“Well then, let’s head over to the dining hall and get you something to eat. I’ll introduce you to some of the staff and they can show you where you’ll be bunking.” And off they went.

I finished up some work and twenty minutes later entered the dining hall where I was shocked to find this formerly shy boy now boisterously delighting several tables with a ‘chew and show” of potatoes, peas and boiled wiener. He had everyone’s attention and was enjoying it. By all appearances he was a gifted teacher. Most of the young campers around him had already learned that they too could be funny by mixing a variety of foods and yelling wide mouthed at their friends. Even a couple younger counselors were seduced by this pied piper now smiling widely while forcing an ooze of lemon Jell-O through his teeth. I had no choice but to step in and ruin the fun. The children responded quickly but guffawed again watching Tommy roll his eyes in mock exasperation. And so our relationship began.

“Tommy,” I said one morning. “You know that sound you make with your hand in your armpit?”

“You mean this one?” he said pushing his arm beneath his shirt and beginning a crude rendition of “It Only Takes a Spark.”

“Yeah, that’s the sound,” I said. “Listen Tommy, I want you know I recognize that is truly a gift. And I don’t want to discourage you from using the talent God has clearly given you.” My sarcasm was not missed and his eyes began the roll again. I continued calmly. “But Tommy,” I said, “I find it distracting when I’m speaking in chapel and you punctuate the ends of my sentences with those sounds. I’d like to ask you to not do that anymore. By “anymore,” I mean “EVER AGAIN.” He didn’t respond.

His behavior was the result of unmistakable charisma and uncontrollable immaturity. As I watched him that summer I wondered if he’d be Ok or if he’d end up on the nightly news another victim of poor choices. What makes one kid go right and another turn bad? How many bad decisions does a kid have to make before it’s too late? These were questions I asked while watching Tommy during the summer of ’73.

And then one day I saw of flash of something brilliant. I sat in the staff lounge on a Saturday afternoon. The campers had departed and the new batch were not expected for another day. I was listening to Neil Diamond’s new live album Hot August Night. The record was huge that summer. On the cover, Neil’s frizzed hair is longer than shoulder length, his face glistens with sweat and he poses suggestively as if holding a woman in a lewd, passionate embrace. “Solitary Man” blared from the speakers and Tommy walked in the room. He stopped for a quick moment before shouting like a rock and roll announcer, “Would you welcome Neil Diamond and Hot August Niiiiiiiight!”

It was funny and I was smiling. Then he struck the pose… perfectly! His brown curls fell over his face, his arms embraced the woman, his face distorted and he became Neil Diamond! Tommy disappeared and Neil Diamond stood writhing before me. It lasted five seconds. It was something like genius. I applauded and cheered.

I don’t remember saying goodbye at the end of the summer. I didn’t think to look for him nor he for me. We just left.

I returned twenty years later to perform on the fourth of July. I walked up the hillside to Cathedral Grove. It was very nearly filled with people. I walked on the stage to thunderous applause. I wasn’t even surprised. It seemed as natural as could be.

Tommy’s life took a different turn.

When my sons were young I told them this story and one of them asked, “Dad, do you think he would remember you?”

“He might,” I said. And that’s the truth. He might. I can’t say it with any more certainty than that. I can no longer know or even imagine what goes through the mind of a man who is no longer the Tommy I knew. Time has transformed him into someone unable to experience life like the rest of us. Maybe unable to even recall it. Who can say what a man like Tom Hanks remembers?

Slides 1 and 38

         
The Slide: My mother smiles for the first picture ever taken on the new camera.
The Date: 1963
The Photographer: Mr. Blumenthal 


My mother is wearing a soft beige camel hair coat. She’s standing in Blumenthal’s Camera and Sporting Goods in Olean, NY. She crossed the state line earlier that afternoon and drove twenty-five miles on this winter day to buy a new Argus C3 Range Finder 35 mm camera. It wasn’t expensive but it was more than she and dad could afford. Nevertheless my mother came to buy the camera because my baby sister’s first year had gone largely unphotographed and this was unacceptable.
My life and that of my older sister were well chronicled in books of yellowed curling snapshots but this would no longer suffice. The baby’s life would be forever remembered in carousels of 35 mm slides projected grandly on a retractable screen of shimmering white sand.
My mother has just asked Mr. Blumenthal to show her how to take a picture.
“Oh it’s very simple,” he said, putting his cigarette in an ashtray. Taking the camera out of the box he turned his head to the side carefully blowing smoke away from my mother. “Argus makes a wonderful camera,” he said, peering over top his glasses and turning the Range Finder knob to 6.0. “Once you know what you’re doing, you can hardly take a bad shot.”
My mother smiled beautifully and Blumenthal snapped the first picture ever taken on our new camera. It would be a couple months before we excitedly and awkwardly put up our screen, placed the projector on a folding TV tray table and viewed our first thirty slides. Most were out of focus. Several were double exposures and one perhaps a triple. My mother’s “first” picture had a band of yellow flames transecting the top third of the photo and burning from her nose through her forehead. Otherwise it was lovely.
To be fair, photography used to be far more difficult. You had to think about what kind of film to use in what kind of light. You had to focus by hand. You had to set your shutter speed, advance your own film, hold your hands steady, breathe softly, avoid caffeine. There was a lot to think about and apparently my parents didn’t. And they had no inclination to discard that first slide. Nor did they discard any of the other nineteen hundred and seventy taken with the Argus C3 over the next two decades, thirty percent in which the subject matter was not identifiable. This is not surprising because my parents never discarded anything.
They lived in their little home for fifty years and hoped to be there longer but my mother’s increasing immobility made it impossible. Dad fought the move too long but finally resigned himself to the truth and began making plans to move into a retirement center several states away.
Looking a few weeks ahead in my calendar I realized I had some free days and called my dad to tell him I’d love to come and help him clean out his garage.
“That would be great,” he said. “How soon can you get here?”
“ I can be there the week after next,” I said.
“I’m not sure that’s soon enough,” he said. “The garage seems to have acquired the qualities of a black hole. If I open the doors other people’s junk gets sucked from their homes, up the street and into my own.”
Arriving a week later I learned that he was barely exaggerating. The piles they’d saved over the years were paralyzing. Needless to say, when I arrived, all that should have been discarded long ago was finally thrown out. There was little to keep. I found a picture of my grandpa Nelson playing steel guitar in his Swedish Gospel Quartet. It’s a professional studio shot, an eight by ten probably taken in the early ‘30s. It’s in the original mat and frame. Unbelievably, it’s still under unbroken glass. I look at it even as I write and it is a treasure. But there was little else.
Toward the end of the last day, with the garage nearly empty, my dad rummaged in the back corner, digging through one of the last of the larger boxes.
“What do you suppose we should do with these?’ he said.
I looked to see him holding a slide carousel and our old projector. I walked over and looked in the box. There were many carousels. I knew what they contained. I knew most of the slides were not very good. But I couldn’t tell him to throw them away. To be honest, I couldn’t throw them away myself.
“Put some tape on the box,” I said. “I’ll take them down to the post office and mail them to my house.”
“You sure?” he asked.
“Oh yeah,” I answered. “I’ll take care of them.”
“And what about this?” he asked. In his hands he cradled the old Argus C3 Range Finder 35 mm in it’s rotting leather case.  Without a thought I carefully took the old treasure and casually tossed it against the cement block wall. We had a good laugh.

Mr. Blumenthal fit the camera into its case and screwed the fastener in the bottom connecting the two. It had begun to snow outside.
“Go slow on those roads,” he said to my mother. “It’s gonna be really slippery on the hill.”
My mother thanked him and tied a floral printed scarf beneath her chin. Mr. Blumenthal picked his cigarette out of the holder.
“I’m telling you,” he said. “You’re going to be very pleased. You can hardly take a bad picture with that camera. Those slides are going to be priceless.”
He was thirty percent right.

Slide 5

The Slide: Helmer Larson is pretending to be angry at the annual Christmas Smorgasbord. This particular year the event was held on the second floor of the Grange Hall.
The Date:  1960
The Photographer: Probably my dad

When I was very young, each December, on one particular Saturday afternoon, my Dad and I would have lunch and then walk down to the church to meet Helmer Larson who would arrive shortly with a gorgeous Christmas tree in the back of his pickup. Throughout my early boyhood old Helmer Larson was an endearing and enduring presence in my life. In church I always chose to sit in front of Helmer. When I began to squirm, even the slightest bit, (as I always made a point to do) I would feel his big hand on my shoulder. Without looking back, I’d reach into that old hand, and remove a neatly wrapped red and white peppermint candy, which if sucked carefully could last me through the sermon, the closing prayer and clear through the benediction.
Helmer worked for the gas company, driving, and hiking the gas lines that cut ribbon like over the rugged Allegheny Mountains. It was along those desolate lines high on the hillsides that Helmer found his Christmas trees for our church, though to say he “found” them is not quite true. It would be more accurate to say that he grew them, even nursed them, often for years. If he found a tiny evergreen along the edge of the line, he’d trim it. Returning the following year he’d trim it again patiently waiting until the tree had reached nine or ten feet. Then he’d cut it down and deliver it to the church. It was a lovely gift that only he could give.
As he grew past retirement age, it became apparent that Helmer would not be able to clear the gas lines much longer. His driving became a problem. He could no longer distinguish colors and had several minor mishaps involving traffic lights. The company said it was time to retire and he agreed to resign at the end of the year.
I felt so sad that Saturday at the church when, for the last time, Helmer delivered perhaps the most beautiful tree I’d ever seen. Thick full branches, Deep summer green.
“And there’re more where that came from,” he said. “It’s a shame I won’t be able to get ‘em ”

My dad spoke up, “Helmer, you don’t have any six or seven footers up there do you? I haven’t gotten our tree yet. I wouldn’t mind hiking up myself.”
Helmer’s face lit up. “No need for you to bother Bob. You and Bobby go ahead and decorate here. I’ll go get you one and bring it up to the house. I’ve got one in mind and it’s beauty.”
Dad and I finished at the church and got home mid- afternoon where I took my post at the front window peering into the light snow, waiting to see Helmer’s truck winding up our road. My family always loved putting up the Christmas tree but this year the excitement was palpable. This year Helmer was bringing a tree. Not a little scrawny one like one we could afford. Not partial trees like my dad and I found on the hill behind our house, two little misshapen ones we had to wire together to look symmetrical. No Helmer was bringing a tree this year.
When I saw him spinning his back tires, fighting his way up our snowy street and into the driveway I ran out to meet him followed closely by my mom and dad. Before Helmer was out of the cab I was gazing down from my perch a top the wheel well.
“What do you think Bobby?” Helmer asked dropping the tailgate, “Isn't she a beauty?”
“The most beautiful beauty I’ve ever seen,” I said honestly.
As Helmer dropped the trunk onto the ground and held the tree upright I saw my father’s face drop and I thought I saw tears in my mother’s eyes.
“Oh my! Helmer,” she stammered and then hugged him around the neck. “Helmer thank you so much. It is just… ,“ she seemed at a loss of words, “ … beautiful.”
It was the perfect tree. It was Helmer’s perfect gift. And I remember feeling so happy. We’d gotten his last and best tree. My dad patted him on the back and thanked him again and then Helmer got in his truck and drove off with a smile on his face. It was then that I realized that something was wrong.
“Oh glory,” my mom said to my dad. “Bob what are we going to do? We can’t have that tree in our house.”
I thought she must be joking. I said, “What do you mean Mom?”
“Bobby,” she said, “It’s bright yellow. There’s not a bit of green on the whole thing. None at all. Poor Helmer couldn’t see the color.”
Well I’d known my colors for several years so I too had seen that it was yellow. I just happened to think it was a stunningly attractive yellow tree. Who ever said a Christmas tree had to be green?
“Mom,” I protested feeling the tears filling my eyes. “We have to put it up. It’s from Helmer. It’s his very best tree. When he comes for supper he’ll know. Dad and I could wire together a dozen puny things trees from our hillside and never make one like this.”
Since they both knew I was right, we put it up. And it was the most beautiful yellow tree. But I don’t think my mom and dad saw it that way. Oh the shape! Yes certainly they knew that the shape was exquisite. But I don’t think they ever saw the beauty in the color. They’d had too many years of expecting green.
Fortunately I wasn’t the only one who was impressed. All my friends gasped at the beauty of the yellow tree. One buddy mentioned that his family had been hoping to get a yellow one but then his dad got laid off so they had to stick with green.
Adults who visited our home noticed too. As soon as they walked in the door I could tell they noticed the color, but none said a word. Once I overheard my mom in the kitchen. In her quiet voice she shared the tree’s story with a guest. No grownup said it was beautiful.
I guess it was an advantage that year to be a child. Only the children recognized the stunning beauty of Helmer’s perfect gift.
He only lived another year or so. One autumn evening my dad asked me to go for a ride in the car. We drove up Mill St. to Helmer’s house. Dad parked by the ditch and we walked around back where he knocked on the door. Helmer answered and invited us in. It was evident to me that he wasn’t feeling well. He and dad spoke in soft tones about some illness “coming back” and both men seemed very sad. Then my dad took Helmer’s hands in both of his. I couldn't hear what he said. On the way home I remember asking, “Dad, what’s a prostate?