Sunday, June 23, 2013

Meeting Penny

First picture of Penny

This is, I'm quite sure, the first photograph I ever took of the woman I once was married to, Penny. The mother of my children. I don't like to use the term ex-wife, although sometimes I do. I never use the truncated version, ex. I've always felt that there is a certain animosity implied when a person uses either of the terms, and, well, I just don't use them. (Which is not to say that there isn't some animosity. Heh!)

I have been scanning a lot of photographs lately. Most of them have been photos I took with my first 35mm camera, a Nikkormat FTN, which I'd purchased from my college roommate, Lou Perlaky. He'd gotten it from his father, whose Social Security number is etched in the bottom plate of the camera. Lately, the negatives I've been so diligently, systematically scanning are from a portrait series I shot in late 1994 and early 1995 for my first and only solo photographic exhibit, The Artist Project. The exhibition ran for a month in the spring of 1995 at the Lansing (Michigan) Art Gallery (Thank you, Karen Stock!), in its salon, and featured portraits of twenty-three Lansing-area visual artists, one of whom was Penny.

I scanned the negatives according to the date I shot them, starting with Barb Morris on 19 December 1994 and ending with a re-shoot of Mark Mehaffey on 31 March 1995. In somewhat of a twist of fate, I began scanning the next to last set of negatives—from Penny's session—sometime yesterday*. At some point, I happened to look at the clock on the computer and saw that the date was 22 June, the day that I met her in 1980. I would bet that she has no memory of the date that we met, but almost every year, for at least a moment, it occurs to me.

I was on an internship for school that summer, traveling around Ohio and Michigan photographing families at their churches for United Church Directories, an Ohio company. The churches would provide space to shoot the portraits and volunteers to assist with clerical stuff, and UCD would provide the photographer, a photographic church directory of its congregation, and (I think) one 8" x 10" photograph to each family, in the hopes that the families would buy additional prints, which, of course, they usually did.

Before shooting any portraits that summer, I had to go through a week's worth of training with an experienced UCD photographer, so I drove up from Toledo to Lansing, Michigan on the 20th to meet John Thompson, who had been with the company for some time. I took a room at the Red Roof Inn just off the northbound Jolly Road exit of US-127, then met John the next day to begin shooting a church in Mason, about twenty minutes south of Lansing. On the first day of training, I think I met John at the church. He lived in Grand Rapids, and so made an hour-and-a-half commute. On the second day, John and his wife, Karen, both met me at the motel. Karen made plans to spend the day in East Lansing with her best friend, Penny, so she drove a separate car. At some point during the day, it was decided that I would join John, Karen and Penny for dinner once John and I wrapped up for the day.

I didn't know anything about Penny, of course, so had no expectations. When John and I arrived at the now-defunct restaurant/nightclub at the Meridian Mall in Okemos, The Backstage (so named because of its location directly across from the cinemas at the mall), Karen and Penny were sitting at a table, as was another man, Rick, who I assumed to be Penny's boyfriend. About all I recall from the evening is that I was instantly smitten with her. I couldn't keep my eyes off her.

That evening, or perhaps it was the next, I was invited to stay with John and Karen at their apartment in Grand Rapids and simply make the commute with John each day. It seemed to make sense, I guess, even though my travel expenses would have been reimbursed by UCD. It gave me a chance to get to know John and Karen, so, I accepted the invitation. On the drives back and forth, I quizzed John a bit about this gorgeous woman. I joked (not really) about setting me up with her. I probably asked what the situation was with this Rick fellow, but he had little, if anything, to tell me. I do recall, however, John telling me that I didn't want to have anything to do with her. I didn't press him for the reasons, although I sensed he didn't want to share what he would have liked to tell me. Nonetheless, I didn't let it drop. During dinners, I would tease Karen about setting me up with Penny. She laughed it off.

It was during dinner, one night, that Penny called. After talking with Karen for a while, she asked to talk to me. Whoa! Heart, meet throat.

Something was going on here. It was one of those movie storylines that doesn't ever happen in real life, but was happening in real life.

One night that week, after work, the four of us met again at Rick's American Café, a basement bar in East Lansing. Supposedly, she was to meet her friend Rick there to celebrate his birthday. I don't know if that was true, and well, I didn't care. We drank and listened to the music of Newt and the Salamanders. I swung my knee over to bump hers and told her, "I kneed you." She laughed. Not the wonderfully raucous laugh I would eventually come to know and love, but a laugh nonetheless. Rick never showed. Before heading back to Grand Rapids, we kissed in the parking lot where once stood a theatre.

My training period with John was cut short by UCD, as there was a church in Bloomfield Hills that the company wanted me to shoot. I don't know if a photographer had fallen ill, or if there was no one else available. Whatever the reason, I made plans to head east to the Detroit area, with an overnight stop in Lansing. Yes, with Penny.

After my one-day stint in Bloomfield Hills, I headed back home to Toledo, then photographed a church in St. Joseph, Michigan, and another in Decatur, I think, before getting the call to spend the better part of two weeks in Jackson, Michigan shooting a rather large Catholic Church, St. Mary Star of The Sea. Penny offered to put me up for the duration—I accepted, of course—and on one of the very hot days (it was one of the hottest stretches of weather ever in Michigan, as I recall) came to meet me when my shooting for the day was finished. That's when I took the above photo (and she a couple of me) using the already positioned light set-up and company camera.

Many people associate smells with memories. I don't. I have never had much of a sense of smell. So, most of my memories seem to be related to and triggered by my sight, and very often by old photographs. So it was again this weekend as I scanned the negatives of portraits I'd shot during one of the most difficult periods of my life, only to see that I'd be scanning the last photographs I would take of Penny, on the anniversary of the day that I met her.

Penny | The Artist Project

*I actually began writing this late on the 22nd, not finishing it until sometime on the 24th.

Monday, June 06, 2011

Paris

Eiffel et Caroussel
Eiffel et Caroussel ©2008 by Patrick T. Power. All rights reserved.

Friends of ours will be getting married in November in Vannes, France. I hope to be able to go, as well as spend a little time in the city I love so well. As it happens, there is a contest running at Oh, Happy Day, which seems way too well timed.


Wish us luck!

Monday, May 18, 2009

L'amitié

Marker by Patrick T. Power
L'amitié © Patrick T. Power
Dear friend,

I want to help you, not save you. I want to help you be whole, not just a little piece of yourself.

I want you to stop your self-destructive behaviour not because it's what I want, but because it will lead to an even better you. A you that I think is already quite wonderful — compassionate and warm and giving.

Love,
Me

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Delma and Lupe Get Married

Delma & Lupe Get Married

I didn't attend this wedding. In fact, until years later, I didn't even know Delma existed. And she lived right across the street from me!

Based on this slide's date imprint, this wedding likely occurred in May of 1967, so, I would have been 11½.

Delma Estrada was the eldest child of Freddie and Bertha Estrada who lived in a house across the street from us when I was growing up. Freddie had two brothers who also moved into the neighbourhood at about the same time (one next door to him and the other two doors down the other direction) and many of the children growing up in their households were the same age as my brothers and I, as well as every other kid on the block, so many of us — to use a term from those days — ran around together.

It's very possible that Delma was already living on her own when the Estrada families moved onto Utah Street, which is why I wasn't aware of her at the time. I think she was my brother Bob's age (who is ten years older than I am), and he wasn't living at home in 1967, so it's very possible that she simply wasn't around. Or... being eleven years old and all, I might have been too busy playing baseball or round-up (a more grown-up version of hide-and-seek) to have noticed her.

But as regards this photograph, Delma isn't really the story. The story is her sister Olga.

Olga was a year older than I. I did know her, and would occasionally "play" with her around the 'hood. She was just another kid on the block, really, and since she was a girl, she didn't take up much of my attention. And although she was Catholic, she attended public schools, so as we grew up, we saw less and less of each other on a daily basis.

Fast-forwarding to the summer of 1975 (I think)... while washing my bug on the street, I heard a voice (the sound of which I can still hear in my head... very Debra Winger-esque) calling out to me and I turned to see Olga sitting on her porch swing, laughing at whatever it was she had just said.

I finished what I was doing and walked over to join her.

Quickly, we became the best of friends. We spent a lot of time together that summer, often just sitting on her porch swing talking and laughing. I shared my Martin Mull and Jackson Browne records with her and she tried unsuccessfully to turn me on to Uriah Heep. (Ugh!)

She worked at a Catholic orphanage on the other side of town, and I was working at Commercial Aluminum Cookware (now Calphalon) when it was located in the heart of downtown Toledo. We each were making our ways in the world while still living under our respective parents' roofs.

Indeed our friendship became very intense in the first couple of weeks as she intimated to me that she thought she might be pregnant. Until that point, I had no clue that she was seeing someone (a friend of her older sister Mena's boyfriend), so I was rather crushed. It had been feeling like more than a friendship to me. I was seriously free-falling into love only to be provided an ACME anvil to cushion my landing.

She soon found out she wasn't pregnant, and we went about business as usual on the friendship front. Unfortunately (for me), her relationship seemed to be developing. It was especially disconcerting since I often sat on my porch playing guitar, whence I could see when Steve or Dave or Thomas — or whatever the hell his name was* — came 'round to pick her up. What further made things difficult for me were the stories she told about him... stories that painted the picture of a not-so-very-wonderful guy. It was killing me.

I don't recall where in the chain of events it occurred, but we finally went out on what I believed was a date. I don't know now where we went for the first part of the date, but we ended up at Inky's on the north side of Toledo. Inky's is a family-run Italian restaurant near where my father worked. As a family, we had pizza there once a month or so since my dad did work for, was friends with, and golfed regularly with the owner, Frank Incorvaia. Great people. Great food.

It was a nice night. We had fun. We went home. We kissed on her steps.

I don't know why, but we never went out again. I suppose that she sensed my inexperience. It might have been the third time in my life I'd kissed a girl, so no doubt there was no comparison between what transpired for her that night and, well, what gets one pregnant.

Still, I remained in pursuit, while at the same time being able to read the writing on the wall.

At the time, Commercial Aluminum Cookware shared a building with a few other businesses, one of them being National Super Service, a manufacturer of industrial vacuum cleaners. At some point, I'd heard that they were hiring and I suggested to Olga that she apply. She hadn't been too happy at the orphanage and, I thought, wouldn't it be great to work in the same building! She applied and was hired. And much to my chagrin, our relationship — whatever it was — began its decline (read: came to a screeching halt).

Not long after starting at NSS, she began seeing Jeff, a very quiet, likable guy. Sometime in 1977 or 1978, they married. I had begun college by then and attended the wedding with my girlfriend Lisa, who I'd met at school. I went to visit Olga and Jeff once after they'd been married and I think that was the last I saw her. She eventually took a job with Jobst Institute (whose claim to fame was having manufactured space suits for NASA), in whose parking lot she died. Or so I was told. My mother mentioned it in passing to me over the phone while I was at school, so I never heard anything about what had happened. I've never had the opportunity to ask her sisters or cousins. She had injured her head in her high school swimming pool and I was led to believe that her death had been somehow related to that.

I still have a piece of fabric that she gave me. It's the only tactile reminder I have of her. A picture she had given to me wore out years ago from being in my wallet. Just as I am able to hear her voice, I am still able to see that picture of her beautifully big-toothed smiling face. It is a face and a picture that I have forever tied to Jackson Browne's "Fountain Of Sorrow"... from his all-too-hitting-close-to-home Late For The Sky record.

I think of Olga every November 13th, her birthday. Until I found the above photo, if I wanted to see her face, I would look at this photo of a friend who (in this shot anyway) bears a remarkable resemblance to Olga.**

A few years after she died, I had a dream in which she spoke to me. "Don't worry," she said, "everything is just fine."

Now the things that I remember seem so distant, so small
Though it hasn't really been that long a time
What I was seeing wasn't what was happening at all
Although for a while, our path did seem to climb
But when you see through love's illusions, there lies the danger
And your perfect lover just looks like a perfect fool
So you go running off in search of a perfect stranger
While the loneliness seems to spring from your life
Like a fountain from a pool

— Jackson Browne (Fountain Of Sorrow)

________________________________________________________

*Thinking now about this, I'm pretty sure it was George. (ptp, 2013)

**Or so I thought until I was recently able to compare Olga's graduation picture to this one. Something, however, reminded me instantly of Olga when I saw it for the first time.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Dried Rose

Dried Rose by Patrick T. Power
Dried Rose © Patrick T. Power