These are stories: memoir, memory dump, what-happened-yesterday, tall tales, good lies, and pure fiction.
This sunrise was taken from the summit of Mt. Monadnock, New Hampshire during the summer of 1988, just before we moved to Texas.
It was the last thing I did as a Boy Scout and it was probably the coolest. We started hiking to the summit around 3am and arrived just before dawn. All around we could see the tops of other mountains poking out of a sea of clouds.
It’s the best sunrise I’ve ever seen.
When I was a kid, the story of the lost dutchman who disappeared while searching for a legendary gold mine on Arizona’s Superstition Mountain fascinated me. I remember looking at those mountains whenever we visited my grandparents in Phoenix and imagining all the stories that they must hold.
I like this photograph, taken with my old 110 in 1982, because faded with time and dirt, it reminds me of the myths of the old west and the magic they still hold for me.
I’d love to follow that old dirt road leading along the telephone poles up onto that mountain and search for that old mine myself even though I know it would be as futile as searching for the Loch Ness Monster or the Seven Cities of Gold. Hopefully, though, they wouldn’t some day spin yarns about the lost Austinite’s gold mine.
We lived in The Philippines from 1979-1982. I joined the Boy Scouts in ’82 and the first big trip I went on was a reenactment of the Bataan Death March. The real march occured in 1942 when Japanese soldiers marched 10,000 American and Philippino prisoners of war to their deaths in one of the uglier events of the war.
We spent most of spring break with American scouts from all over the Far East Council as well as scouts from The Philippines and other Asian nations. We camped on the beach each night and each morning we were bused to where we had left off the previous day. The picture above is of a carabao, a kind of Philippine water buffalo, along with a few of the guys from the troop taking a break.
We saw a lot of the Phillipine countryside and one day walked through a village where heavily armed men – I’m talking ammo belts around their shoulders like Mexican revolutionaries – stood cradling their machine guns and smoking cigarettes while we hiked past. Our scoutmaster told us to just keep walking and “don’t stare.”
It was one of those experiences that has stayed with me, that made history come alive and through sore feet and tired legs, we all got a small taste of what those brave soldiers endured during World War II.
Update: I have now correctly spelled carabao. Thanks to Heather for reminding me of the difference in spelling between caribou and carabao. It would be odd to actually see caribou in The Philippines. But who knows, there is at least one tropical island that has polar bears.
These are the stairs leading down from Mt Bonnell. I took this picture sometime in the early ’90s when I had access to a darkroom because I did the print as well.
I used to ride my bike up there pretty regularly when I was at UT, and despite many attempts to capture the views of the city or of Lake Austin and the hills, this is the only picture I ever took there that I liked.
I guess that’s how it is with photography: sometimes the best images are the unexpected ones, the subjects that weren’t your main intention but for whatever reason call to be photographed. Sometimes an ordinary set of stairs leading down through the cedar trees says more than a whole city spread out before you.
As much as I love the view from up there, especially at night when the city lights disappear out into the plains, I haven’t been there in years. I should probably do something about that.
This is from my days as a camera assistant. It was taken on the set of The Substitute Wife, a movie-of-the-week that was filmed around Austin early in 1994.
That’s me with the slate standing next to Lea Thompson. Of the three stars on that set, Lea was the only one who wasn’t full of herself. The other two managed to make life miserable for everyone from the director all the way down to the lowliest film loader (me), set PA and sound assistant (my friends).
It was my first gig on a big budget set, and for the next few years, I got quite spoiled by all the perks. It was a fun and exciting career when I was younger, but as it turned out not something I wanted to spend my life doing.
With the fifth anniversary of September 11th so close, it seemed fitting for today’s Old Photo Friday to go back to June of 2001.
I took this picture from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Earlier that day we had discussed whether we wanted to view the skyline from there or from the World Trade Center. I’d been to both on previous trips, but my wife and our friends (who live in New York!) had never been up the Empire State Building so we decided to go there since it’s more iconic.
We figured we’d catch the World Trade Center another time.
I have clearer shots of the WTC, some quite good, but I think this one fits especially well today considering that as we get farther away from that awful day, our view is getting blurrier, more obscured. Thanks for that, Disney and ABC.
This little gem is of my neighbors Mike (with the gun) and Billy. They were our neighbors at Subic Bay Naval Base in The Philippines. My guess is that I took the picture sometime in 1979.
I have a whole series of these pictures of us doing action poses with the gun. Our friend Jimmy and Billy’s brother Chris were also involved.
Mike’s shirt, you’ll notice, reads, “Iran is a four letter word.” No doubt it’s back in style in certain circles. He also had one with a nuclear explosion that said, “Made in America. Tested in Japan. Use it in Iran.”
Everyone, including me, wanted those shirts back then even though we didn’t have a clue what Iran was all about or why eight-year-olds should be wearing shirts advocating mass death for an entire nation.
Fortunately, my parents had the good sense to not let me have one.
I wonder if we’ll soon be seeing such shirts adorning today’s youngsters.
I mentioned Montezuma Castle in last week’s Old Photo Friday, and today we take a couple of looks at it from two different points in time.
Montezuma Castle National Monument is located in Cape Verde, Arizona and has nothing to do with Aztec emperor Moctezuma. The cliff dwelling was built by the Sinagua people, and according to Wikipedia Montezuma Castle was the last known dwelling place of the Sinagua. It was abandoned around 1425.
This first image was taken during the summer of 1982 when we were visiting family as we moved from the Philippines to Italy. I was 11, and it was the first time I’d ever seen a cliff dwelling or heard about the Anasazi people who built them (the Sinagua are considered a branch of the Anasazi group).
The second image was taken in 1996 when my wife and I were traveling through the four corners region looking at the ancient ruins.
Like me, the trees seem to have grown a bit in the intervening fourteen years.
In Italy, I would see the ruins of Pompeii and many other Roman sites, but none of it captured my imagination or sparked a sense of wonder comparable to what I saw in Arizona when I was a kid.