... our second house in alaska, home from 1960-1962 ... behind the photographer, always seeming almost within arms reach, the horizon was the imposing saw-toothed outline of the rugged chugach mountains ... to the left, perhaps a thousand feet or so, a virtually impenetrable palisade of pines marked the end of light and the beginning of our most wondrous playground, the dark, deep, endlessly primeval boreal forest ...
... here our little ford sedan patiently awaits the birthing of two new siblings ... the dads and their friends would gather together on weekends, all of them garbed in no-longer-fit-for-drill army fatigue trousers and starched-to-glare-in-the-sun white undershirts ... scuffed army boots, metal frame sunglasses, watches, if any, were simple ... always, the jingling of their dog tags, i would one day come to learn that that sound was music to which some of them silently chanted the refrain, "i'm alive, i'm alive, i survived" ... a song that let them forget, but allowed them to remember, too ... in their eyes, the shadows of what they had witnessed, as children we understood it was the look of the most dangerous of men, but were comforted knowing the tenderness they sometimes desperately tried to hide was what allowed us to feel so very safe in their presence ... beers and cokes, "smoke 'em if you've got 'em," powerful taboo words hurled at the nuts and bolts that dared resist their efforts ... to me, all of them, they were of a group i wanted to be accepted into when i grew up, the hairy-armed-man club ... in this world, it was my elemental truth that they could do anything ... simply, when one of them happened to need a car, the rest gathered together to help build one ... imagine my surprise, later in life, when i discovered that automobiles were manufactured in factories, not assembled in the back yard from odd parts ...
... i know that technology has improved transportation, that today our cars are safer, more comfortable, far more efficient ... despite all that, however, i know that no fancy "store bought" car i drive will ever be quite as neat as the ones which my dad built with his own hands ...
ARGUS C3-CINTAR 50MM-F/8-1/100TH-EKTACHROME-ISO 80