I had just parked my car in good old Morristown Municipal Lot 10J.
Was I a little ticked that a huge truck, delivering provisions to the Grasshopper Off the Green tavern and restaurant, was blocking several choice parking spaces?
Nahh. Happens several times a week. Usually it’s a beer delivery truck.
The Grasshopper is a popular place, and I have a soft spot for their bangers and mash with brown gravy and sauteed onions. One of the best around, and in that I include a few places I’ve been to in London and Liverpool.
So, no. I don’t begrudge them their deliveries. Especially when there is something interesting about the truck. Which was the case this morning.
Having a soft spot also for trucks with trompe l’oeil illustrations on their sides, I stopped in my tracks and started taking pictures.
The one you see at left was the first I took, and it turned out to be the best, a not unusual occurence.
But you’re not always sure about that at the time. And since you only get one shot at anything you come across (see Plain Sight peroration of July 12, "When ‘Still Life’ Isn’t"), it is a very hurried, confident or foolish photographer who takes one picture and leaves.
Unless, that is, a large dog is chasing him, which happened to me once.
Or unless the photographer is a flat-out genius (Google William Eggleston sometime. He’s the man who made the art world take color photography seriously.)
Since I am none of the above, I tried various angles, compositions, and exposures, trying to figure out how to reduce to two dimensions what stopped me in my tracks in three dimensions plus time.
The next thing I heard was, "Can I help you?" Polite, but with an unmistakeable proprietary tone.
I’ve been through this a million times, and I no longer get nervous. After all, I survived the ultimate "Can I help you?" in the early 1980s, when I lived in Jersey City.
I was in the midst of what turned out to be a four-year project of walking or biking around the city taking photographs with my trusty Nikon FE2, shooting Kodachrome 64. That was a long time ago. The film era.
I came to what looked like a tavern on a corner of Newark Avenue not far from the Grove Street PATH station. Very small diamond-shaped windows, curtained. No sign anywhere, which should have been a warning.
But I was young and naive, and there was something about the tilework and the entranceway right at the point of the corner that intrigued me.
So I got to work. A different rhythm in those days. I didn’t need a motor drive for what I did, so it was click the shutter, cock the lever, click, cock, click, cock….tick-tock. Time stopped.
The front door opened and a large man stepped from the shadows. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt with two pockets. I don’t remember anything else about the way he looked, but something about him made my heart freeze. The words he used were not "Can I help you?"
My usual explanation that I wasn’t working for a newspaper or a magazine or for anybody, but was just taking pictures for my own pleasure and interest, never sounded so feeble and implausible as when I looked into his unyielding face. He told me to step inside.
I got the strong impression that I needed to comply if I wanted to see the ‘morrow.
Inside, my eyes adjusted to the dark. I was surrounded by three or four men.
A different guy, to whom the others deferred, went through a slightly more detailed interrogation, extracting from me my name and address. (I lived less than ten blocks away. I didn’t know if that was in my favor or a reason to invest in a bulletproof vest.)
I answered in a tone I hoped conveyed innocence and harmlessness and–having seen both Godfather films several times–respect.
But what ran through my mind was not coming off like the crazy, if charismatic, young DeNiro character in Scorsese’s Mean Streets–disregard for safety and survival personified.
"Gimme the film," said the guy in charge.
I hesitated, trying to think how I could explain that I was at the end of a roll of 36 exposures, most of which had nothing to do with their club, and that I thought I had some good pictures on the roll, which I did not want to lose.
Before I could reduce these thoughts to 25 words or less, the chief said, "Either give me the film or we take the film and the camera."
The guy who had confronted me outside took a step toward me.
I was in over my head. It was by now clear I was dealing with professionals, and not the kind I worked with every day at the Time & Life Building.
I rewound the film, popped open the lid and lifted out the yellow canister. The first guy was by now in front of me, his muscular arm outstretched. I remember the bulging veins on his forearm.
Never did a roll of Kodachrome–the most exalted color film of all time–look so puny as when the guy handed it to his boss, into whose ham fist it disappeared.
"Alright, get going," said the boss. "And don’t let me see you around here again."
I believe I said "Thank you" on my way out.
Phew. When you open a can of memories, you never know what worms will slither out.
Well, folks, it’s past my bedtime. So I will call it a night and introduce you to the man behind the "Can I help you?" in Lot 10J in tomorrow’s exciting installment of…
Plain Sight: Can Levin Talk His Way Out of Another Jam?