Point Conception

Worked on a schooner in California years ago. Me and the Bosun were shaking out the crew for morning chores, scrubbing the deck and polishing brass.

A new deckhand was scheduled to join. She was from Maine, so we’d hoped she had some experience. Sitting at the end of the dock, however, was a girl in a lavender vinyl pant suit, LLBean duck boots, and the cutest little suitcase.

She had just graduated college with an Art Degree. After a two week sailing excursion in Camden, she’d decided to try her hand at sailing. Calling around to various boats, our office was the first to take her in. Lucky us!

She was bright enough. But a maritime education, starting from scratch, on a wooden sailing ship. Let me tell you, we got our steps in.

Slowly but surely she learned the ropes. Off came the shoes, unless working aloft. Away went the heavy garments that just soak up water, in favor of a tshirt and light khaki pants. Gloves gave way to calloused hands. And throw that god-forsaken Swiss Army Knife over the side!

One day she was splicing ratlines and it hit me. I looked around for the Bosun. His eyes twinkled and he tried not to smile. It was time. We knocked everyone off early and ran some much needed errands.

After dinner we gathered in the fo’c’sle, where the crew bunked. In the gloom of the musty compartment, the ceremony began. We passed around a bottle of rum and shared it with all but her. Each crew member read a selected passage or poem.

The Bosun’s contribution was a personalized version of The Ice Worm by Robert Service. He recited it from memory, slowly and deliberately. As he read the final lines, we presented the bottle of rum to her. Mourning her former life, she let go a few tears and took a big slug from the bottle. Then the Bosun handed her a new rigging knife, straight bladed with a thick back to accept hammer blows, for that stubborn line or wire.

We were a tight bunch. Passengers would comment how well we got along. How effortless we made it look.

Our last trip of the season was a week long transit from Long Beach to Monterrey, beating up the whole way. Some maintenance before the Summer season started, then change out with another crew.

Anchored in Catalina, we made plans to travel together. What about our newest shipmate? She’d had a boyfriend back home. But she was pretty sure that was over. He wasn’t a sailor. But how to break it to him? Leave that to me!

I picked a postcard at the store in Two Harbors. I wrote, She had found a new love. And that love is the sea. And once the sea has ahold of your soul, you can never get free. Not knowing the boyfriend’s name, I simply stamped it and gave it to her. She read it, gave me a hug, then posted it before we sailed.

The trip north wasn’t particularly rough. Fifteen foot swells from the Northwest. Typical for Point Conception. But we lost the bobstay and a backstay, so the Captain decided to run back to Long Beach for repairs. It was an easy point of sail, but it put the waves on our port quarter.

I had the 4-8 Watch, traditional for the Chief Mate. I came into the cockpit at 1550 to relieve the Bosun. Both watches, almost a dozen people, were scattered about the deck for turnover. A shadow loomed over my left shoulder and a huge wave swept half the deck, rolling the ship to starboard and dragging crew and passengers with it.

Quick hands got ahold of the passengers, halting their departure. But the curly locks of our Mainer went over the side and starting drifting astern. The dreaded call of Man Overboard went up as life rings and life jackets were tossed over the side.

I stayed with the ship in Long Beach while the rest of the crew flew to Maine for the service. The Bosun returned and described the scene. The family had been understanding of what had happened. While they weren’t sailors, life in coastal Maine gave them a healthy respect for the sea.

But the Bosun was still uneasy. What is it, I asked. I met the boyfriend, he said. He was pretty shaken. Shortly after getting the news of the accident he received a postcard.

The End of Light

History is a list of names and dates. Most of them meaningless.

Voigtlander Bessa, 1945;

Kodak Pocket Instamatic, 1972;

Pentax K1000, 1984;

Nikon Nikonos V, 1991;

And, my favorite, Rolleiflex TLR, 1994.

The list goes on, like collimated rays, clear in my mind’s eye. But these are the milestones that will be on the test.

The Voigtlander was a war prize, sifted from the rubble of some ruined German village. I found it on my Grandfather’s mantle shelf. A roll of undeveloped 120 film still inside. The pictures were younger versions of my grandparents and silly poses of my father and a woman who was not my mother. A new roll of film proved the camera to be in fine working order. It had a beautiful Zeiss lens. The old film had a metal spool. Subsequent rolls used plastic. The film back was complete with a frame to reduce the usual 6×9 cm exposure to 6×4.5 cm, doubling the number of pictures on a roll from eight to sixteen. The shutter stayed true into modern times. It was light leaks in the bellows that shelved the Bessa.

The Kodak Pocket Instamatic was a Christmas present in youth. It was the first camera for many. A simple point and shoot with a 110 film cartridge. Kodak’s early “Pocket” camera was the Vest Pocket, one hundred years ago. Frank Hurley, expedition photographer for Ernest Shackleton, used one in Antarctica after their ship had been crushed in the ice. The big box tripod camera that shot images on glass plates was impractical for a voyage of survival. The Vest Pocket kept the only records of the many months spent on the Weddell Sea and on Elephant Island before their dramatic rescue. I had use of one for a short time before 127 film was discontinued. Its aperture was merely a rotating selection of pinholes over a shutter with as limited a selection of speeds. The Instamatic was much more simple. A fixed aperture and plastic lens, a predetermined film advance slide, and a push button shutter release. Picture resolution sucked. What negatives I’ve saved can only humorously be described as experimental.

The K1000 was my first SLR. It sported a cheap 80-200 zoom lens most days. Many of them reduced to paperweights, dropped while running towards, or away from, the action. These were the days I learned what photography could be. 135 film was plentiful and varied. I bought film by the carton. Black and white negative TMax and color slide Ektachrome were my friends. And, of course, I would find my way to Ilford, Agfa, and Fuji. Those were glorious days! The K taught me how to frame a picture, bracket exposures, and shoot from the hip for the less hospitable subjects. The world suddenly came into focus. And, yet, there was more to come.

The Nikonos was a beast, but short lived. It had a solid frame, bright orange rubber grips, a clunky but reliable shutter, big knobby controls, and thick o-rings that let it submerge safely to depths of 100 meters. I used to joke that, in a pinch, you could use it to hammer nails in a board. It was quite congenial and accepted the same 135 film as the Pentax. But it lived on an ethereal plane, on the edge of air and water. The images it produced were obviously from a world inhabited by mostly mythical creatures. Like Jenny Hanover. And, like the malicious sprite, once tempted an introduction to her world. The camera and a Casio G-Shock were wrested from me and today share some bed in the Pacific Ocean. Somewhere below the depths of their known limits, they are testing their integrity long after I have given up my own.

Retired to my right age has come the Rolleiflex TLR. She used largely Fuji color slide and Agfa Scala black and white slide films. The images were a simple 6×6 cm. Here I was full circle with 120 film rolls. The Scala was a chore though. Only five labs in the US even carried the chemicals to make developing possible. And not for many years. I favored Duggal’s in New York, mostly because they supported my drinking habit. Once, while ordering a Heineken from a stall in Dubai, a man had offered me one hundred dollars for the camera. That was hardly more than I had paid at Terry’s Camera in Long Beach, California, a year earlier. Luckily the Rollei lent itself, with the boxy frame, small lens, and large downward facing viewfinder, to clandestine operations. And the square pictures wouldn’t care if the camera was laying on the table, half hidden behind my beer. With the help of a cable release, I snapped away. This was the UAE, not Saudi Arabia. The penalty for photography wasn’t the severing of a happy appendage. But I didn’t know, and didn’t care.

Just last week I stopped by a camera store. It was the only one around for fifty miles. Science fair was coming and I had hoped to make pinhole cameras with the kids. The room was filled with relics of a different time. When asked, the tired arm behind the counter pointed to a glass corner. “Is this it?” I asked, referring to six boxes of 135 and two of 120. “There’s a company in France,” he said, “and the Czech Republic, and Ilford, still making film. Kodak is selling what stock is still on the shelves in the warehouse. And then it’s over.” I relieved him of the 120 film, asking when he would order more. He wasn’t ordering more, he said.

I still see life through a rectilinear lens. That is my time. I could bemoan the death of film, lament the depth of field or color saturation that digital pictures lack, or reminisce about the feel of a favorite camera body like it was my high school girl friend. But that is not what I miss. And this is for extra credit, so pay attention.

In New York, I would stay with Isaac Cohen. We had met in LA at a Thanksgiving party full of UCLA film students. I was dating a scene painter. Isaac was her former boyfriend. We were the only two she had invited to the party, not knowing many people in town yet. Isaac and I hit it off and stayed in touch through his move back east. With a suitcase full of undeveloped Scala, we would make our way to Duggal’s in Manhattan. Isaac would drag along his father’s giant Konica-Omega Rapid M. He called it the “wedding camera”. It shot the oddball 6×7 cm format, producing only ten shots on a roll of 120. Ten at night, we would drop off the Scala and any other stray film, and take a 5 pack of 120 for the Koni. We hit the bars in the neighborhood and blew through the film. In the dim light, the film demanded long exposures, sometimes minutes at a time. We went back to Duggal’s to drop off the five rolls and continue drinking. A block away, a man grabbed my coat and pulled me into an alley. Before I knew it, he was showing me his gun and asking me for money, not as politely as I make it seem. I didn’t see Isaac and wasn’t sure what had happened to my wallet. We danced around as I checked my pockets. There was a flash in the air. The man fell against me and dropped the gun as the Konica came down on his head again and again. In his place stood Isaac with a crazed look on his face. He shook the Koni at me. “Try THAT with a digital camera!”