Full Frame

Copyright ©2022 Elder Road Books

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted online to: Elder Road LLC, ElderRoadBooks@outlook.com.

Design by Nathan Everett

Cover image by Arthur-studio10, ID197421704 licensed from Shutterstock.com

First eBook Edition

ISBN 978-1-955874-51-9

About the Photo Finish Series

“Photo Finish” is a series of books that chronicle the life of Nate Hart, a boy growing up in the late 1960s with a singular passion for photography. The series is intended for mature readers. The books in this series will be released in 2022-2024 as both eBooks and as an online serial. The online serial is available for free reading at StoriesOnline.net. The serials are made available on a chapter-by-chapter basis.

Patrons of Devon Layne get free access to the eBook in a pre-release form before it is available to the general public, and may read the serial online in advance of its release at StoriesOnline at DevonLayne.com. Find out about becoming a Devon Layne patron and the benefits it offers at https://patreon.com/aroslav.

Books in the series:

Full Frame

Nate Hart, class of 1968, has just been uprooted from his lifelong home in Chicago by his mother’s new career: Methodist minister. Moving to a small town in northwestern Illinois just before his junior year in high school, is going to mean starting over in life. But Nate’s passion for photography will lead him to other passions as he becomes his new school’s official photographer. It seems the girls in his school think it’s okay to expose themselves more than current standards would allow, because he’s just the photographer. No one else will see them, right? What Nate sees in the full frame of his photographs, however, will change the town.

Shutter Speed

1966-67 was a pivotal year for Nate Hart. His family was uprooted from an unspectacular life in Chicago so his mother could begin her new career as a Methodist Minister in Tenbrook, a small northwestern Illinois town at the edge of the world. But Nate learned to find his place in this new town, upsetting a few community standards where racism and veteran care were at issue. Now, ready to start his second year in the town and senior year in high school, Nate has a girlfriend or two, a studio for his photography, and a blossoming business. And the responsibilities that come with turning eighteen in 1967, as the Vietnam War ramps up under Secretary McNamara.

Exposure

Now a high school graduate, Nate is trying to make his own way in the world, led by his camera lens. When it looks like his relationships are falling apart as his girlfriends go to different schools, Nate is still tied to Tenbrook where Patricia is about to give birth. He discovers he is not alone as a protester against the war in Vietnam, even as he leaves for Chicago to start college. But the big city is not always kind, even if you’re just taking pictures.

f/stop

Driven by the need to stand up for what he believes, Nate appears before the draft board to plead his case as a Conscientious Objector once again. This time, however, he is armed with evidence that the draft board has been manipulating how young men are called, under the influence of the racist ex-cop Nate helped get fired in Tenbrook. But if Nate is granted his petition, will he be willing to serve in the capacity he’s called to?

Keep up with all Devon Layne books and read the latest at https://devonlayne.com!

1
The Edge of the World

Cornfields and wheat fields and bean fields and God knows what other kind of fields. I wished I was young enough to get excited about seeing one more cow.

“What is that awful smell?” I moaned, rolling up my window. My eleven-year-old sister held her nose and glared at me.

“He who smelt it dealt it,” she snarked.

“That’s enough, Kat,” Dad said. “We just passed a rendering plant. Think of it as a substitute for the smell of refineries.”

“Great,” she growled and hid her face in her sleeve.

It took more than a mile for the smell to fade. I rolled the window back down. It was too hot to leave closed. For the end of June, weather in Chicago and Northern Illinois had been unseasonably hot for over a week. Perfect time to be moving across the damn state.

I guess I sighed a little and started fiddling with my camera bag. I needed to get a couple cassettes of film rolled from the spool or I wouldn’t be able to record our big move, first impressions of the new town, and all that. I put the can and the spooler into my dark bag and then reached into the bag with a couple of empty cassettes. I always felt a little more peaceful when I was rolling film. I couldn’t see a thing that was happening, but I could feel exactly what I needed for thirty-six exposures.

It wasn’t like this move was really a bad thing. Dad had been laid off work at the refinery two years ago. There was some big consolidation that I didn’t understand when I was fourteen. All I knew was that Dad was out of work and we were living on government surplus again. I didn’t mind the peanut butter or the cheese, but the powdered eggs and powdered milk were just gross. Dad went into manpower retraining, a great program started by John F. Kennedy. He collected unemployment for as long as he was in the retraining program. He got trained in refrigeration and air conditioning, but he’d never found a job. He’d been doing odd jobs and maintenance work during the past few months.

Mom hadn’t been idle. She’d been studying correspondence courses for the past few years and took two terms at Garrett Theological Seminary. For the past school year, she’d been gone to Evanston three nights a week and Dad picked up most of the cooking and making sure Kat and I were in school on time. She was ordained as a deacon in the Methodist Church at Annual Conference two weeks ago and was appointed to Tenbrook Methodist Church at the edge of the damned world. One more step and you fall off into Iowa.

It was really a big deal. Mom was the first woman ordained and assigned a church by the Methodists in Illinois. I guess before long we’d be calling them United Methodists when the unification with the EUBs went through. Then her status would change because the EUBs had already ordained a woman. Mom knew her and I guess they were friends, even though she was all the way down in Springfield.

Mom thought I was going to follow in her footsteps and be a preacher. I’d worked through a lot of her coursework with her as she studied. Maybe if there was a ministry of photography, I might follow through with that, but I just couldn’t see preaching as a career. I wasn’t that committed. It’s just that the closing program at Senior High Institute at Asbury Woods last summer was pretty high pressure and I said I’d become a minister. Well, it’s not a binding contract.

Anyway, Mom got assigned to this little church and we packed up the family to move. At least they sent a truck for our furniture and stuff. We didn’t have to do all the moving and hauling. I packed every item in my darkroom myself, though.

Kat hadn’t taken kindly to the move.

“You’re making me leave all my friends! I hate you!” she’d argued.

“Name one,” Mom said as she sat to face my sister.

“Um… Janie.”

“Janie who told you that you were fat and she never wanted to see you again?”

“But Marcie.”

“Marcie moved to Wisconsin last year.”

“Angela is still there.”

“Angela is a very nice girl and I’m glad you think of her as a friend, but you’ve never attempted to get together, to play, or even to go see a movie.” Kat continued to sulk. “Honey, we’re doing this to get a fresh start where you can make real friends and not be afraid to go outside all the time. Things have been getting bad in the city. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more riots this summer. I don’t want my children to be too afraid for their lives to go outside.”

“It’s not fair.”

“No, I suppose it isn’t, but God will take care of us. You’ll make some real friends and will have them all your life.”

I hoped that went for me, too. I’d never been any better at making friends than Kat was. The friends I made were different than us. We never saw each other except at school. A new town out in the country? I could see myself out riding down a country road on my bicycle, stopping to get a picture of some dilapidated barn that spoke of Americana.

Except I didn’t have a bicycle. Mine was stolen last summer and we hadn’t seen any sense in getting a new one that would just be stolen again. There was plenty of public transportation. That was one of the good things about living in the city. I could catch the Lake Shore and be downtown in an hour. But Mom was right. There was always danger around. Especially if it looked like I was carrying anything valuable—like my camera.

I kind of dumped this story on you right in the middle. I should say that I’m Nate Hart. I’m sixteen and will be seventeen in the fall. I’ll be a junior at Tenbrook High School. Go Trojans. Why the hell would anyone name their sports team after the losers of the biggest war in ancient history? Or a condom. Take your pick.

You already met my little sister Katherine. We call her Kat—and she scratches like one, too. Mom, Rev. Joyce Hart. Dad, Richard Hart. I’ve got two older sisters. Deborah is twenty-four, married, and has a new baby. Her husband, Sergeant John Lindal, is in the army and they live on base near Kansas City at Fort Leavenworth. We’re all pretty worried about him because there’s always a risk of being sent to Vietnam soon. They’re really ramping up some gnarly stuff there. Personally, I wouldn’t go. If I get drafted, I’ll move to Canada. No way am I carrying around a gun instead of a camera. My niece’s name is Cameron, by the way. Deborah jokes that she named her after me.

Naomi joined up. She’s twenty-two and is in officer training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. She says she wants to be a pilot, but fat chance of that ever happening. Right now, she’s a mechanic. She’ll probably end up married and pregnant, too.

Yeah, apparently Mom and Dad decided to take a break before they launched me. They weren’t sure they wanted any more kids after the war. World War II that is. I wasn’t born until ’49. Kat in ’55. She might have been an accident. For that matter, I might have been, too.

So, we’re getting close to the end of June. In two years, I’ll graduate as a proud member of the class of ’68. At least I hope I’ll be proud of it. I don’t know a single person in Tenbrook. I’m told it has a population of about 750 and my class has 55 kids in it. I’ll make 56—at least until someone gets pregnant. I don’t know a soul there and I don’t expect I’ll meet anyone before school starts.

I rolled three cassettes of film and loaded one in my 35mm SLR. I got this baby and three lenses for a real deal at Camera Warehouse—about my favorite store in The Loop. It was used, but it still took me over a year to save up the money to buy it. I wouldn’t have made it then if it weren’t for Uncle Nate, Mom’s brother, my namesake. He’s the one who got me my first camera when I was about Kat’s age. I still have my Kodak Brownie Hawkeye he gave me for my tenth birthday. Mom was shocked that he’d buy me such an expensive gift, but I loved it. I’ve been hooked on photography ever since. Anyway, when he heard I was saving for a new SLR, he slipped me $100. Unlike our side of the family, Uncle Nate always seemed to have a little extra money. I overheard Mom whisper something about it being mob money. I don’t know what he did for it—or them.

I was still using my Brownie when I entered a 4-H photography competition. Dad’s friend, Mr. Harris, had a darkroom and offered to develop my photos and print them for me. I sat with his son, Dennis, while he and Dad went into the darkroom. They chose the photos off the four rolls I’d shot—twelve exposure rolls. I was really pleased with them and they won the championship prize at the Will County Fair. Cook County didn’t have a fair, but 4-H was allowed to exhibit at Will County.

My exhibit was slated to go to the state exhibit in Springfield. I got a blue ribbon, but not the championship purple. We went over to see Mr. Harris to show him the ribbon. That’s when Dennis told me that the only reason I won at all was because of what his dad did in the darkroom. That lit a fire under me and I checked out a book from the library on film processing and darkroom techniques.

The next time I saw Mr. Harris, I asked him if he’d show me his darkroom and teach me how to develop film. He was impressed that I already knew the terminology and was so interested in learning the process. About once a month, I was allowed to go to Mr. Harris’s house to develop my film and print pictures. I found out Dad was paying for my supplies and was relieved that I didn’t have to shell out for that. I got my first 35mm camera soon after that. It was nothing spectacular. I found it at Camera Warehouse for ten dollars. It was a viewfinder camera with a fixed focus lens, and I soon discovered it needed a different size film than my Brownie. It also had settings for different lens speeds and f/stops.

By the time I was in high school, I was carting my new 35mm SLR camera around everywhere. That’s when Mr. Harris offered to sell me an old darkroom setup he had. It included various developer tanks, an enlarger and even a small supply of chemicals and paper. I couldn’t wait to get it home. Then it sat in boxes for almost a year because I couldn’t make any place in the house dark enough to call a darkroom. I ruined a lot of film trying. But I learned a lot. That’s when I started going back to the shops in the Loop. We always went to the city a couple of times a year to get clothes and anything we really needed, but I managed to wander off to the pawn shops and the huge Camera Warehouse on Wabash. That’s where I started buying film in cans and winding my own cassettes. Levi, the manager, liked to show young photographers the ropes and always gave me a good deal on film.

Everything was black and white, of course. I finally managed to turn my closet into a reasonable darkroom with my clothes all shoved in my dresser drawers and a portable rack that I got at a church rummage sale. And I started processing and printing my own film. Wow! What a learning curve that was. I was just getting good at it when Mom announced that we were going to move.

Now my entire darkroom was packed in boxes waiting for a new location in our new home.

We got to Tenbrook and found the truck wasn’t there yet. Besides, we were all hungry, so we didn’t bother to even go in to look around. As we drove through town, we saw three or four restaurants but they all served alcohol. Mom wouldn’t stop at an establishment that served alcohol until she knew the local reputation and whether it was really a restaurant or if it was a bar. Geez. In Chicago there was at least a White Castle every few blocks. We just drove on fifteen miles to Huntertown, the county seat. It was about four times the size of Tenbrook and we found a café called Gertie’s. It wasn’t much to talk about, but I found out it had great coleslaw. I didn’t order it on purpose. It just came with the burger plate. I was going to ignore it, but decided to give it a taste.

It was sweet and creamy, and I had a new favorite food instantly. The burger and chips were nothing memorable, but I’ve loved coleslaw ever since that day.

After we’d eaten, we headed back to the house. The truck was parked in front, but the driver and crew had taken a lunch break and were gone for almost an hour as we poked around the empty house. They called it a parsonage. It was owned by the church and was just there to house the preacher and his family. Her family in this case. It was a pretty simple layout. We walked into the front and Mom immediately said that the room to the right was her office as there was none in the church itself—a brick structure across the corner. It had a nice big front porch, like most of the other houses in town. It had a big living room and past the office, there was a dining room. A stairway led upstairs and beyond that was a big kitchen with a table.

We headed upstairs. Mom and Dad immediately said the bedroom at the end of the hall was theirs. Next to the stairs was a bathroom. Two front bedrooms looked identical and I gave Kat her choice. She took the one on the right. My closet was actually smaller than the one I had in our rented row house in Calumet Heights. It would be interesting trying to fit my darkroom into it.

The movers arrived and we spent the rest of the day moving in and organizing our stuff. There was an old Victorian walnut bed in my bedroom. Mom said that the church just had part time ministers the past few years and they only stayed overnight in the parsonage on the weekends.

“I asked if we could keep the bed for you,” she said. “I checked the mattress and it’s much better than the one you had in the city. If you don’t like it, we can still keep your old mattress, but that frame was falling apart and we ditched it. We’ll be making a trip to the dump sometime later this week, so anything that isn’t really usable will go out to the garage.”

I tested the mattress and pronounced it suitable. My old mattress went to the garage. Kat had her own little princess bed and wasn’t about to part with it.

We went back to Gertie’s for dinner and by the time we got home, Kat and I were both ready to collapse into our beds.

I woke up feeling a little disoriented. It was quiet. I mean really damn quiet! No traffic. No trains. No airplanes. I frightened myself for a minute thinking that the rapture had happened and I was left behind. Leave it to God to know I was faking it. Then my room came into focus. I remembered that we moved. Damn! How did people sleep with all this quiet going on?

Then I heard a truck rumble by on Main Street. My ears became more accustomed to picking out different kinds of sounds. I heard birds. And they weren’t just crows. Songbirds like you hear at camp. I grabbed a pair of sweats and stumbled downstairs.

“Oh, good morning, honey,” Mom said. She was sitting at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee and her Bible open. Dad was opposite reading from an Upper Room devotion booklet. I looked around for a clock and found our old familiar kitchen clock hanging above the refrigerator. Six o’clock. The sun was shining. “You’re welcome to join us. I haven’t been out for groceries yet, but you can have coffee if you want some.”

I didn’t usually drink coffee, but if I was going to sit through the morning devotion, I needed something. Dad kept reading, knowing better than to even offer to start over. He finished and Mom prayed, thanking God for bringing us safely to our new home. She made it sound like we’d just arrived in the promised land and I gladly said Amen and stood up as soon as she was finished.

“Why don’t you go out for a run and scout out the neighborhood,” Dad suggested before I escaped.

“A run? Outside?”

The idea was kind of foreign to me. Oh, I ran when I needed to. In the gym. Sometimes we were allowed out on the track at school. It’s not like I’m an athlete, but I guess I’m not in too bad shape. It just sounded weird to go outside and run. You just did not do that in South Chicago. There were too many street toughs, drunks, and a growing number of druggies out there. If you were running, someone was chasing you.

But it sounded kind of cool in its own perverse way. I nodded my head and put my half-full coffee cup in the kitchen sink. I saw a thermometer on the window frame outside. Seventy already. It would be eighty-five this afternoon. If I was going to do this, I’d better do it now. I went up to change into a pair of shorts.

I wasn’t much of a runner when it came down to it, but I saw a bit of the town. When I headed out of town on River Road, I saw a good-sized farm dog sitting by the road ahead of me. I turned around where I was to head back into town. I wasn’t going to depend on my ability to outrun a dog. Maybe on a bicycle.

I got home and waited for Kat to get out of the bathroom so I could take a shower. By that time, Mom had been to the local grocery store and got enough food for breakfast. When we sat down to eat, she asked how my run had been.

“Not bad. Nobody was chasing me. There’s a big dog out on River Road that I decided not to race, so I headed back to town,” I said.

“Can we have a dog, Mom?” Kat asked. “I want a cute little fluffy dog.”

“We’ll think about it,” Mom answered. I jumped back into the conversation.

“It would be a lot better out there with a bicycle,” I said, hinting broadly. “I could carry my camera then and take some cool pictures.”

“That’s true,” Dad said. “Come to the garage with me.” We cleared our dishes and went out the back door. “When we were putting things in the garage, I saw this back in the corner.”

Dad led me into the garage and we worked our way around a bunch of boxes, tools, and miscellaneous stuff. We’d lived in the house in Chicago all my life. You collect a lot of junk in that period of time. Especially if you’re my dad. In the corner was an old bicycle. It was a pretty simple single speed roadster with a lot of rust and dirt on it.

“Why don’t you try cleaning this up and see if it’s worthwhile. If you can get it cleaned, I’ll get a couple of cans of Rust-Oleum and you can repaint it. I’ll bet a new chain and it will work just fine.” I looked at it critically.

“Might need a new seat and handlebar grips, too,” I speculated. What else did I have to do? I stood no practical chance of meeting anyone until church on Sunday. Might as well see if I could get this rust-bucket cleaned up. It would be a lot cheaper than buying a new one. “Black paint, okay?”

I wheeled the bike out into the driveway and tried just getting on and riding. The wheels turned and the brakes worked, so maybe it wouldn’t be too bad to get in good operating condition. Dad pulled the car back so I had room to work and attached the garden hose to the outside faucet. I ran inside to get my camera and took a couple of pictures of the bike in its ‘before’ condition. I scrubbed the bike down with a brush while Dad pulled out various tools and a parts pan. He’d always been a tinkerer and had more tools than Ace Hardware. I couldn’t name what half of them did.

“You know how to use the wrenches to disassemble it. Be sure you keep your parts organized. Here’s a parts pan and a can of kerosene and a cleaning brush. The WD-40 is in one of the boxes back there, but you should use grease for the bearings and regular machine oil on the chain. Not sure where those are, but I’m sure you’ll find them. Feel free to organize and put away anything you unpack,” he grinned. Then he headed for the car.

“Where are you headed, Dad?”

“Into town. I need to start looking for a job. And Mom gave me a shopping list of things to get at the supermarket in Huntertown. Apparently, the little grocery store here in town didn’t have enough to please her. Wish me luck.”

“Yeah. Good luck on finding a job, Dad,” I said. It was good to see him enthusiastic about going to work. The past year, especially, he’d been slowing down and had less energy. I didn’t like seeing my dad as a beaten down man. Especially now that Mom was the apparent head of the family.

I unpacked a box of what looked like car maintenance things and put the stuff on shelves in the garage in some semblance of order. Then I took it all off the shelves and found a broom so I could sweep the dirt and nests off before I reshelved the things. I tore apart the box and laid it out next to the bike, as I tried to figure out where to start disassembling and cleaning it. I guessed the wheels were first.

Taking the bike apart and cleaning each piece was actually kind of fun. Dirty, greasy fun. Kat came out to see what I was doing and turned her nose up in disgust.

“Mom said I can walk downtown,” she said. “Alone!”

“It’s a different world out here, for sure,” I answered. “Just don’t get so relaxed you aren’t aware of things. Some of the trucks that come through town don’t even slow up. Be alert.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.”

She turned and headed into town. I wasn’t really worried about her being unaware of the trucks. Traffic was something we always had to be aware of in town. But I didn’t completely trust this town yet. I wanted her to be careful.

I stood up and watched her as she headed to the street. Mom came out the back door.

“I forgot a couple of things at the grocery,” she said. “I’m just going to go down and pick them up.”

“Kat told me you said she could go downtown alone,” I said. Mom smiled.

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to let her out of my sight.”

That’s my mom. She wanted Kat to have her freedom, but she wasn’t going to abandon her youngest child in a new town.

After I’d gotten all the parts disassembled and scrubbed in kerosene, I started in with a wire brush and steel wool to take care of the rust on the frame and fenders. The fenders weren’t going to be restored to a shiny chrome finish. They were too pocked and flaky. As I cleaned everything up, I decided the bike would look good if everything was gloss black—fenders included. Yeah. I’d need to get new reflectors and a light… maybe one of those odometers. Back when I had a bicycle, I’d seen a simple odometer in the Sears wish book. It fastened to the fork of the bike and each time the wheel turned, a little prong on a spoke advanced the clicker. There was a setting for the size of the wheel and it moved a mechanical odometer forward by the circumference of the tire.

I took pictures of my progress during the morning, and at noon I went into the house and cleaned up a bit to have some lunch. There wasn’t much in the fridge yet, but Mom had gotten bread and peanut butter. And dill pickles. No problem.

While I was eating, I noticed a door under the stairs I hadn’t paid attention to yet. I opened it and found rickety steps that led to a basement. I turned on the light—a single bulb hanging in the middle of the room—and made my way carefully down, ducking my head. At the bottom of the stairs, I saw an old wringer washing machine. I looked back up and wondered how anyone had ever gotten it down there. It turned out that was the only ‘finished’ part of the basement. I pushed aside a curtain to look into the rest of the room and found a room with a dirt floor, a single lightbulb, and concrete walls. And shelves. Shelves full of vegetables and fruit in glass jars. I carefully picked one up and blew the dust off the lid of the Mason jar.

“Pickled beets, August 1957.”

Crap! Nine years old food! I’d let Mom and Dad decide if any of it was edible. The floor was damp and there were cobwebs all over the little room. I guessed they called this a root cellar. I discarded the idea of using it for my darkroom, though it was certainly dark enough. It gave me the shivers to think that some kid might move in here in ten years and find the remains of my enlarger and developer tanks with pictures still hanging from a line like the canned goods on the shelves.

I went back to work on my bicycle, using 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out all the rough spots left by the rust. I was reminded of a joke. One thing you get when you hang around ministerial students and preachers, like my mom, is a lot of preacher jokes.

There was once a preacher assigned to a church in a small town like Tenbrook. It was a poor community and the preacher was poor, so he only had a bicycle to get around on. He rode to make calls on his parishioners, rode to visit people in the hospital, and rode to run any errands he needed to do. All was well until the day he went out and discovered his bicycle was missing. What would he do?

His neighbor saw him and asked what was the problem. The preacher explained the situation and said, “What am I going to do? I can’t call on the sick or visit the shut-ins. I can’t even get groceries.”

“I have an idea,” the neighbor said. “You are a fine and popular preacher. Everyone in the community comes to our one lone church to hear you preach on Sunday mornings. This Sunday, preach a fire and brimstone sermon on the ten commandments. I’ll watch the congregation for you and when you get to the eighth commandment, ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ I’ll spot the person who blushes and looks guilty and we’ll have the thief.”

It sounded like a good idea to the preacher. He had no time to prepare such a sermon for service the next morning, but he stepped into the pulpit confidently and began to expound on the text with great descriptions of the reward sinners would receive in hell for their unrighteousness.

He was almost there when the tone of his sermon changed dramatically. He began to talk about the love of God and how no sin was too great for God to forgive. He had the congregation in tears and five people came to the altar at the end of the service to be saved.

Later he talked to the neighbor, who was still wiping his own eyes.

“It was beautiful, pastor. The best sermon this town has ever heard. But it bothers me that you never got to the eighth commandment and we’ll never know who took your bicycle.”

The preacher blushed and scuffed his feet.

“Well,” he said. “I got to the seventh commandment and remembered where I left it.”

If you haven’t had the church and the Bible force fed to you for sixteen years, like I have, I’ll just say that the seventh commandment is ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ I have a pin that shows I have sixteen years of perfect attendance in Sunday School.

Well, that would sure be me if I was a preacher. Even while working on my bicycle, I was thinking about whether I might meet a girl whose house I could ride to while her parents aren’t around so we could make out in her bedroom and maybe finally do the deed. I could about set a clock by the frequency of my hard-ons.

When Dad got home, he inspected my work and grinned.

“There’s not much finish left on it, is there?” he said. “Should make the paint go on real smooth. Here’s the Rust-Oleum. Gloss black like you said.” He handed me two cans of spray paint. “Why don’t we see what’s for dinner and come out afterward to get a coat on this baby?”

“That’d be great, Dad.” I was always inordinately pleased when Dad praised something I’d done. I walked him back into the garage and showed him the boxes I’d emptied and shelved. He said he’d start repacking boxes for the dump and this would sure make it a lot easier.

At dinner, the talk was all about his search for work. It seemed like there wasn’t a lot available, even driving the fifteen miles into Huntertown.

“It’s not a career move, but for now, I landed a job at the gas station just as you go out of Tenbrook. It’s the only garage in town, so they stay pretty busy. Of course, the farm equipment goes to the implement dealer, but Henry has a good reputation as a mechanic and most folks take their cars there for maintenance. It just has him swamped, so I’ll be on the pumps from early until the high school kids who work there get out of school. I should be home about three most days and that means I can still pick up odd jobs and fix dinner. I figure the pumps will be a good place to meet people and let them know I’m available.”

“That’s wonderful, Richard. It’s important that we be seen as a family that works hard, not just that preaches the Word. It’s a good example.” We all nodded our heads. “What about you, Kat? What did you discover today?”

“It’s little. I walked all the way to the school. It’s clear on the other side of town. Then I went to the store.”

“Which store?” I asked.

“The only one that’s open,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s funny. It has some work clothes and groceries. And odd stuff. Like a shelf full of sewing stuff and one of school supplies.”

“A real General Store, huh?”

“Yes,” Mom said, “but as I found out when I went shopping this morning, its depth of supply is limited. For example, you can get a can of soup there, as long as you want Campbell’s Chicken Noodle, Tomato, or Cream of Mushroom. Any other kind, you have to go to Huntertown. For cereal, you have a choice of Corn Flakes, Cheerios, or Wheat Chex. Or oatmeal.”

“There’s a funny old man next door who has a soda fountain,” Kat continued as if no one had interrupted her story of the day. “He doesn’t have Coke. He said he had soda and flavored it however he wanted. I had a lemon soda and it was really good.”

“How’d you get money for a soda?” I asked. I had a few dollars, but I was going to need work before I could even buy more film.

“Oh, I happened to run into Kat when I finished my shopping and we went in for a soda. I had a vanilla cream soda. It was perfect. And they were only twenty cents each,” Mom said. “I guess he only opens when he feels like it, but he’s usually there on Friday and Saturday evenings and more during the summer. He says it’s a popular place for kids to come on date night.”

“Everybody seems to be really friendly,” Dad said. “I’m sure we’ll meet more people on Sunday at church.”

“Well, don’t expect too many miracles all at once,” Mom said. “It’s summer and attendance always falls off once school is out. I’ll need to spend tomorrow working on my sermon notes. I scarcely got my office set up today. I still have all my books to unpack. Now, Nate, did you do anything besides work on that old bicycle?”

“Not much. But it’s actually going to be pretty cool when we get it finished. The tires are in pretty good shape and Dad brought home paint for it. I should be able to put it back together tomorrow,” I said. “Oh, but I discovered something. There’s a basement… sort of.”

“I knew there was a storm cellar, but I hadn’t been down there,” Dad said.

“Yeah, I don’t even know where that trapdoor leads. I mean a basement right through the door over there in the kitchen. It has a little room with an old wringer washing machine in it. And then there’s an unfinished space with shelves full of canned goods.”

“You mean like soup?” Kat asked.

“No. I mean like green beans and pickled beets. Canned in jars. It looks like it’s nine or ten years old.”

“Oh, dear. Stores put away and forgotten about. I might need one or two of the church women to come over and help sort it out.”

“Stuff will last forever if it’s canned right,” Dad added.

Dad and I got the bike painted after dinner. The only bit of silver left on it was the handlebars, cranks, and spokes and rims. The rest of it was shiny gloss black. It was going to look pretty cool. I hoped it rode okay.

I got to bed around ten and dug around in my dresser for my watch and my bottle of hand lotion. The watch was so I knew what time it was when I woke up in the morning. I didn’t want to go downstairs while Mom and Dad were having devotions again. The lotion was for… I guess what every sixteen-year-old boy uses lotion for. I got a hard-on while I was brushing my teeth, just from my cock bumping against the sink in my sweats.

I settled in and thought about Theresa Newman in my class. Well, former class. I guessed I’d probably never see her again. She was cute. My fantasy girl. I think she knew it, too. I suppose she was lots of guys’ fantasy girl. We hardly ever said anything to each other, but she sometimes smiled at me. She liked to dance with Nancy and me at school dances. I looked over at her one day in English class and saw her rubbing at her breast while she read. They weren’t very big, but I imagined what it would be like to rub her breast and was lost in thought—with a painful erection—when she looked up and saw me staring at her. She kind of froze and glanced around. I was afraid she was going to scream or something. Instead, she just kept lightly rubbing at her breast, but her motions got smaller. Like at first, I thought she must be rubbing at where her bra cut across her chest. Then she started just rubbing circles around the tip of her breast and she shifted her position slightly. She moved her hand away and I could see the stiff point of her nipple pushing out against the fabric of her blouse. I looked up at her face, but she’d gone back to reading and was ignoring me completely.

In my room, I relived that event and rubbed my cock with the lotion. The explosion was epic. Wow! If I could just touch Theresa’s breasts and feel that little nipple poking out so strong. The very thought brought yet another pulse of come from my cock.

I grabbed one of my socks and mopped up the mess all over my chest and stomach. Damn, that was good! I drifted off to sleep with my dreams filled with Theresa’s breasts. Too bad I’d probably never see her again.

2
Hell and Angels

It took longer to get the bike put back together than it did to take it apart. Dad told me it would. I just knew he wanted to get in there and ‘help,’ but he had to go to work first thing in the morning. I was determined to get it all put together before he got home.

You see, I’m not really a mechanical genius. I could probably find the plug on the oil pan and change the oil in the car if I had to. I’d had to check the oil and the filter in the Falcon. But Dad was content to know I could change the oil and a tire. He’d gotten all the stuff that fathers do with their sons out of the way when Deborah was born. She could disassemble and reassemble a car. Literally.

I guess she was about sixteen or seventeen when he called home from work and said he had a new water pump for our car. I think it was a 1950 Studebaker Champion or something. He told Deborah to remove the old pump and he’d install the new one when he got home, so we could leave on vacation in the morning. Deborah laid out a big tarp in front of the car and started at the grill, disassembling everything until she got back to the water pump. When Dad got home, all the parts were laid out on the tarp in the order she took them off. He installed the water pump and Deborah put all the parts back on the car. She still did all her own maintenance on her car and I was pretty sure Cameron would get more experience as a mechanic than as a photographer. I don’t know. Maybe as her Uncle Nate, I’d give my little niece a camera for her tenth birthday.

I took after the more domestic arts, if you count photography as a domestic art. Anyway, I was determined to get the bike put back together before Dad got off work. And I managed it. Barely. I was still struggling with the chain because I failed to load it on the rear sprocket before I put the wheel back on the frame.

“Does it work?” Dad asked.

“I think so. The wheels turn. I was just going to test it out.”

“Let me adjust the seat for you. You’ve grown since your last bike. Longer legs than you used to have,” he said.

I agreed. I recognized the tone of voice. He really wanted to be a part of getting my bike ready. We set the post and he held the back of the bike between his legs and adjusted the seat as I stood on the pedals. I rode out to the street and back.

“I think an inch lower would be more comfortable,” I said. “Maybe I haven’t grown quite as much as you thought.”

He reset the seat and tightened the bolt holding it in place.

“Let me see if I can ride it,” he said. I handed the bike to him and he mounted, wobbling all over everyplace until he got to the end of the drive and then he dismounted and walked it back. “They lied,” he said.

“Who?”

“All the people who said you never forget how to ride a bicycle. I forgot!”

“How about all the people who say something is as easy as falling off a bicycle?” I asked.

“I think they had it right,” he laughed. He went into the house to get cleaned up. I picked up the tools and put them all away, folding up the corrugated cardboard I’d used as a work space. When I finished, only my bicycle and the car were left in the driveway.

No time like the present. I ran in the house to get my camera and stuck my head in Mom’s office.

“I’m going to test drive my bicycle,” I said. “Won’t be gone long.”

“Okay, dear. Don’t get lost.”

I wondered where there was a place I could get lost around here.

I took a spin around the town, just to get more familiar with the half dozen streets. I took a few pictures of the churches and the school and Main Street. Then I headed out of town on the highway. There was a good wide paved shoulder on the highway out of town, so it was a smooth ride. The freshly greased sprocket and chain worked okay. Maybe a new chain would be a good idea, but it worked fine for now.

I pumped hard to see how fast I could get it going. It wasn’t that fast. It had no extra gears to shift into and this old bike just had coaster brakes. The bike I’d looked at in the Sears catalog was a Spyder with a banana seat, raised handle bars, three-speed, and hand caliper brakes. Just as well. The more I thought about it, the more childish that bike seemed.

I was lost in my thoughts when I heard the roar of a motorcycle coming up on me. I coasted and made sure I was well off the road.

“Hey, kid!” the rider of the lead bike said. I saw there were two others with him. He throttled down to match my speed. It was no good trying to ignore him. “Nice new bike. Be a shame if it were to get all scratched up.”

The girl riding behind him giggled. She started to reach out to give me a shove and I had to think fast.

“It’s not new. It’s really an old bike. I just sanded it down and spray-painted it.”

The rider slapped his girlfriend’s hand down.

“No kidding? You did that paint job yourself?”

“Yeah. It was really in crappy condition. I’d rather not have to do it over.”

The motorcycles sped up and pulled off on the shoulder ahead of me. Crap! There was no sense in turning around and running. They could easily catch me. I was at least a mile out of town. The guy put his stand down and waited for me to come up behind them. He just raised his hand and I stopped. I’d had experiences with gangs in Calumet City at school. It was usually better to just let them have what they wanted. I didn’t have any money on me and hated the idea of losing my camera, but what could I do. As Dad would say, “Better your camera than your eyes.” The guy walked around my bike looking closely at it.

“This is some nice work. Could you do a paint job like this on a motorcycle?” he asked. His girlfriend was walking around me, too, and reached out to stroke the cross bar between my legs. I kind of stiffened.

“Smooth,” she said. She shook her head and her blonde hair flipped around her shoulders. I didn’t think she could really be that blonde.

“I guess anybody could do this. It just takes some sandpaper and paint. Motorcycle, though, should probably have automotive paint. This is just a can of Rust-Oleum. I’ve never worked with automotive paint.”

“Yeah. Paint’s paint. Come up here and take a look at my bike.” I kicked the stand down and walked up to his bike. The whole left side of it was scratched up. I whistled.

“What do you think? Could you sand and repaint this?” I started to answer and noticed his girlfriend turn my bike around and ride back toward town.

“Hey!”

“Don’t worry. She won’t hurt it. If she does, I’ll spank her ass. What about this?”

I examined the scratches closely.

“A couple of these are pretty deep,” I said. “I could probably sand them down close, but to do a good job, I’d need some filler. Then it’s just a case of tearing the bike down and sanding everything smooth and coating it with new paint.”

“Tearing it down?” he asked.

“Well, you see how the frame gets hidden by the tank here and by the engine back here? You wouldn’t want a new paint job to be everywhere except where these parts come together. I’d need to remove the parts, sand them, paint them, and then reassemble it all.”

“You could do all that without making a mess of the engine and tranny?”

“I could probably get my dad to help. He’s pretty handy with this stuff. Can I take a couple of pictures to show him what we’re up against?”

“Yeah, sure.” It looked like he just noticed my camera, but now that I had pictures of his motorcycle so I could do an estimate, he was less likely to just grab it and go. “Where do you live?”

“Back in Tenbrook. Um… I just moved into the Methodist parsonage.”

“No kidding? Well, I’ll swing in that way on Sunday afternoon. You can tell me what you think it’ll take. It will probably keep your bicycle looking nice a lot longer.”

I looked up and his girlfriend was standing on the pedals headed toward us as fast as I’d been going. She slammed on the brakes and slid to a stop.

“This old bike could be some serious fun!” she said. She jumped off and put the stand down.

Another motorcycle roared up behind us.

“Warren’s headed out this way,” the rider said.

“Damn pig,” the guy I’d been talking to swore. “Why can’t he just stay in his nice little office and play with his gun? Let’s ride!”

The girl mounted the motorcycle behind her boyfriend and he kicked it to life, followed by the other three bikes. They hadn’t seemed to be interested in me or my bike at all.

“See you Sunday afternoon, kid!” he said as they rode off. I didn’t even get his name.

I rode like hell getting back home. About half a mile toward town, I saw the village police car pulled off to the side of the road.

“Um… Dad? Could I talk to you for a few minutes? Out in the garage?” I said after dinner. He raised an eyebrow and followed me to the garage.

“Should I cut a switch?” he asked. That was only partly a joke. I’d been on the receiving end of a willow switch a few times.

“Um… I don’t think so. But I might have a problem. When I was out riding this afternoon, I got stopped by a motorcycle gang.”

“What? Damn it! Moving all the way out here was supposed to get us away from gangs and violence! I’ll call the village constable.”

“No, Dad. Wait. It was a little tense for a minute or two, but we reached a point of um… respect.”

Dad put a hand on my chin and turned my face left and right.

“You weren’t in a fight.”

“No, sir. They were admiring the bicycle. The guy… I guess he’s the leader of the pack… had some damage to the side of his motorcycle. He wanted to know if I could sand and repaint it. But I think the tank, engine, and transmission need to be removed from the frame in order to do a good job painting it. I’m not sure I can do that.”

“You want me to help you?”

“I don’t know if they’ll pay much. They offered to protect my bike from scratches.”

“That’s not enough. You’re talking about a week’s worth of work, son. I wish I could see it.”

“I took pictures. I figure I’ll have to set up my developing stuff in my closet tonight.”

“We need to find a better place for that. What about that room in the basement?” he asked.

“It was really damp down there. I don’t know that I could work there. It would take me days to clean out all the cobwebs and crap in there, too. For now, the closet will work. I’ll have to figure out something better later.”

“Okay. Set up your equipment. If it doesn’t look like it’s too bad, I’ll help with the engine, but you’ll have to do the disassembly yourself. Examine it carefully before you start. In the case of a motorcycle, it would be best to remove things in large chunks, not every wire and sparkplug individually.” He laughed at that and I understood he was referring to Deborah’s removal of the water pump. The story was well-known in our family.

“I think I should get the garage in better shape before I start a project like that, too,” I said. “I’ll work on that after I get the photos developed. Um… Thanks, Dad.”

“Just do a job that will make us proud, son. And, uh…, it would probably be best not to mention this to your mom. It would break her heart to think we moved clear out here and didn’t escape the gangs.”

I took all my clothes out of my closet and dumped them on my bed. I could probably still sleep there if I shoved them over to one side. Then I set about getting my equipment unpacked. I might be able to develop the negatives in the bathroom if I waited until late at night when everyone was in bed. Then I’d only need to worry about the prints in the closet. Once I got the chemicals mixed and the film in the tank, it wasn’t as sensitive to light. I just needed to keep swishing the handle back and forth.

I didn’t have a table for the enlarger, so I needed to set it up on the floor. Then there was the problem of having a red light. Oh, I had bulbs, but there was no light in the closet. I had to run a trouble light into the closet and then I could plug the enlarger into it as well.

Everyone was long in bed and asleep by the time I started processing the film.

Dad looked at the prints Saturday morning. He said he didn’t have to work because Henry hired high school boys for the weekends. He figured he’d get more hours when school resumed in the fall and felt Henry was giving him a break but didn’t really need him in the summer.

“Well, those look like some pretty deep scratches on the frame and tank. You need to drain the tank and clean it thoroughly. You don’t want any gas fumes when you’re raising sparks sanding,” he said.

“I’m gonna raise sparks?” I asked.

“With scratches as deep as these appear, you’ll need to sand with the disk sander, and strip as much of the paint off as you can, too. The 220-grit paper you used on your bike, followed by steel wool, was adequate for your purpose. But this kind of job will put you into genuine auto body work. You’ll need 1000-grit paper to get this smooth enough to paint. Then you’ll need to prime it all before you begin painting. I’ve got a spray gun in there somewhere. Don’t know where it got packed. You should practice spraying some kind of surface before you start on the bike. It takes a little experience before you learn how to control a nice smooth flow.”

“Will you help me with this, Dad?”

“I’ll show you how. You do the work. Now on the engine, I’ll clean it up and tune it. You reassemble everything. I don’t expect you to be an engine mechanic when you’re learning to be a body mechanic.”

“I didn’t really want to be a mechanic,” I sighed. “Guess it’s not a bad skill to have, though.”

I spent the rest of the day cleaning the garage and putting away as many of Dad’s tools as would fit on the shelves and bench. I found the sprayer. It had never been out of the box.

Dad… Well, he was an orphan. He knew his brothers and sisters, but his father didn’t consider them suitable to raise his last child. So, he put him in an orphanage. How miserable do your siblings need to be for your father to consider an orphanage a better choice to raise you than your brothers or sisters? My grandmother died when Dad was only three or four years old. My grandfather was gone when Dad was in his early teens.

Anyway, Dad never really owned anything but a few clothes and some old poetry books until he left the orphanage at seventeen. He was kind of obsessed about having stuff. Especially tools. There were a lot of times when he left the refinery on payday that he stopped at Sears to see what was new and great. I think Mom wanted to move clear out here partly for Dad’s sake—to get him away from easy access to tools for sale.

The first person I met who was in my class was Andy. He was handing out bulletins on Sunday morning as people came into the church. I’d been meeting a bunch of people who all were welcoming the new preacher and her family.

“Here,” Andy said, after we’d been introduced. He handed me half the stack of bulletins. “Cover the other door, would you? Usually, one of the older guys handles that side, but he’s not here this morning. Can you handle passing the offering plates? When the preacher says it’s time, you take the plate from the left aisle and I’ll take the right. We have to pass it across the aisle so we catch the people on the other side. Then we walk up to the front when the congregation sings the Doxology. I don’t know if this preacher will pray over the plates while we’re holding them or when she takes them and places them on the altar. Do you know?”

“Most of the places I’ve been take them to the altar, but Reverend Mother Superior might change things up. Best to stay loose and go with the flow,” I said, laughing. I took the bulletins. “Talk to you later.”

I knew about this stuff. You don’t have perfect attendance in Sunday School for sixteen years without learning some of it. I walked up the aisle to see if there were any people who came in on that side who hadn’t gotten a bulletin. They thanked me for handing them one. When the service started, I spotted where Andy was sitting and sat on the opposite end of the last row of pews. In the city, the back row was the first to fill. Apparently, the people here wanted to get a closer look at the new preacher.

The service went smoothly. I was happy Mom kept the sermon short, including her own preacher joke at the beginning.

“There was a new preacher assigned to a church out in the country to take over in the middle of winter. He fought through the snow to get to the church, only to find that just one person had showed up for the service. He apologized to the old farmer and said he guessed they’d just cancel the service.

“‘Preacher,’ the farmer drawled, ‘if I go out to feed the cattle and only one shows up, I still feed him.’

“The young preacher was so inspired, he began the service immediately with a hymn, a prayer, a scripture reading, the offering and Doxology, and a sermon that could have been preached on the Mount of Olives. He was inspired. They sang another hymn and the new preacher ran to the door to greet the old farmer on the way out.

“‘Preacher,’ said the old man, ‘if I go out to feed the cattle and only one shows up, I don’t give him the whole load.’”

Mom was really a pretty good speaker and loved presenting to the congregation. Oh. She took the offering plates and placed them on the altar before she did the blessing.

She was also a really good storyteller. Before she preached the sermon, she called all the children—there were only four in church that Sunday—up to sit with her on the steps to the chancel. She told them a cute story with a moral lesson and dismissed them back to their parents. I think the adults enjoyed her children’s story as much as the children did.

“Hey, man, thanks for covering as an usher,” Andy said when he caught up with me after service. “I’ll bet Allen retires from the duty and just leaves it to you and me. I get here on most Sundays. There aren’t many teens who bother in the summer, as you can see. We have a pretty good youth group in the fall, though.”

“Sounds fun,” I said, noncommittally.

“We might be the only guys. There are five girls who come most weeks, though, and it’s worth it just to be around them. Do you date yet?”

“Um… Haven’t really had an opportunity.”

“Well, it’s pretty choice in the group. Plus, we do a lot of joint activities with the Catholic Youth. Those kids are wild!”

“Now that sounds like fun!” I said with more enthusiasm.

“Some of us guys gather over at the school on Sunday afternoon if it isn’t too hot. We play a little basketball. Not much else happening in the summer unless you’ve got a car. You drive?”

“I’ve got my permit, but not a license.”

“Yeah, that sounds familiar. Anyway, come over this afternoon about three if you’d like to meet some others and play a little ball.”

“I might not be able to make it. We’re expecting… um… company this afternoon and I don’t know when they’ll show up. If I can make it, I’ll be there.”

“Cool.”

Well, that was easy. I couldn’t imagine walking into a new church in the city and getting invited anywhere. Or even beginning to make a new friend.

Before I headed across the street for lunch, I stopped to take some pictures in the sanctuary. I knew what the inside of a church looked like, but I was experimenting with different angles and focus settings to see what effects I could get. Shooting black and white film, I wasn’t going to get all the colors of the stained glass, but I could capture a pretty good pattern of different shades as the light through the window fell on the floor.

It was three o’clock when we heard the motorcycles on the street. One pulled into our driveway while the others kept going through town. Dad was in the garage with me and nodded for me to go take care of business. We’d talked about how hard the job would be and I tried to figure out how much film I should be able to buy for that kind of money. I’d typed up an estimate.

“Hey, kid,” the biker said as he and his girlfriend walked up the drive toward me.

“It’s Nate,” I said taking a deep breath to calm myself.

“Sure. Nate. I’m Tony. This is Patricia. Hey, is that Rich from Henry’s service station?” He waved. Dad smiled and returned the gesture. “You guys related?” he asked.

“My Dad,” I said.

“He treated us like customers when we stopped there Friday. So many of the jerks try to ignore us until we start pumping our own gas. Anyway, how soon can you get my bike done? I could leave it for you for a couple of days,” he said.

“In a couple of days, I could sand down the rough spots and spray it with Rust-Oleum. That what you want?”

“I thought you said auto body paint.”

“Doing a thorough job of refinishing the bike will take me a couple of weeks. It’s not like I can wave a magic wand over it and make it all new.”

“Two weeks? Shit!”

“Here’s the deal. Give me the bike for two weeks and I’ll pull it apart, clean it, and refinish it. I’ll have to drain and clean the tank before I can work on it with the sander. I’ll strip most of the finish from the frame and tank and fenders. Then I’ll sand it to a polish, prime coat it, and finish coat it. While I’ve got it down, Dad will tune the engine. Nothing fancy, just make sure everything is performing right. You pick it up in two weeks and pay me $25 for the paint job, $10 for the tune-up, and the cost of supplies, paint, and parts.”

“Whoa! That will be, like, fifty bucks! How about we just make sure your bike stays nice and clean and scratch-free?” he laughed. I went over to get my bike and rolled it over to him.

“Here. Scratch it up. Go crash it into a wall. Take it to the dump. I spent two days cleaning it up. It isn’t worth two weeks of labor on your bike.”

Patricia caught her breath. I stood and stared Tony in the eye.

“Uh… Yeah. Put it like that and fifty bucks sounds like a fair deal. You’re something else, Nate.”

“Moved here from Chicago. Guess I haven’t smoothed out my rough edges yet.”

“Hey, peace, Boss,” he said holding up two fingers. “Let me make some arrangements. If I get the bike here by next weekend, can you turn it in two?”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Groovy. It’s nice to do business with you, Nate. And I wouldn’t worry about your bike. It’s safe.”

He and Patricia got on his bike. Just before she mounted, she looked at me and grabbed her crotch. She mouthed what I think was ‘cajones.’

I raised my camera and snapped a photo.

As soon as they left, I ran into the house before Dad could stop me. I barely made it to the bathroom in time to get my pants down and sit. My bladder and my bowels cut loose at the same time and I sat there panting. I’d stood up to a gang leader and made him accept my price.

Now that it was over, I was shaking like a leaf. I guess it was better than throwing up. I just wasn’t going to spend my life in a new town running away from gangs and toughs. I’d had to deal with gang members in the city and did pretty well with them. Mom and Dad didn’t know that. I knew that if you didn’t establish yourself right away, they’d just keep taking from you. I had no idea how to fight. I just wasn’t going to back down from him. Or anyone else.

My heart finally quit racing and I stepped into the shower to feel the hot water on my head. Eventually, I felt reasonable enough that I got out and went to my bedroom. I closed the door, and flopped on the bed naked, and went to sleep.

It was too late for me to get over to the school to shoot some hoops when I woke up. I’d have to pick up the game some other time. I decided to finish up the roll of film I’d started and get it processed. First, of course, there was dinner. Sunday night was the least formal dinner we ever had. If you could even call it a meal.

We were all allowed to eat whatever we wanted that was in the house on Sunday night—within reason. Fortunately, ice cream with chocolate syrup was within reason. Mom and Dad often had popcorn as we waited for Disney to come on the TV. Kat had recently gotten into Cocoa Puffs and milk for Sunday dinner. Mom indulged her.

And we ended up being pretty sensible about it. Since almost nothing was off limits, we tried a bunch of different things and we seldom overdid it. I think when I first heard we were moving, I might have eaten an entire half gallon of ice cream, but that wasn’t a usual thing. A bowl full of ice cream and enough Hershey syrup to make a chocolatey mess was usually adequate.

When Disney was over, Ed Sullivan came on. Then the TV went off. Mom and Dad had always been strict about how much TV we could watch. Two hours of family time on Sunday night. Not more than an hour on any other day. Since I turned fourteen, I’d been privileged to catch two of my favorite shows most of the time. Saturday afternoon, if nothing else was happening, I spent an hour watching American Bandstand, just so I could learn the dances. I loved the way those kids could dance and often wished I lived in Philadelphia. Of course, I often joined the family Saturday evening for Lawrence Welk. That improved my dancing, too.

I also got to watch Where the Action Is on Thursday and Saturday evenings. Pretty much the same with popular music, but less dancing. I liked music and I liked dancing. I had a transistor radio that was permanently tuned to 890AM, WLS in Chicago. The signal was just barely strong enough to reach us in Tenbrook at night.

I went to my room after our TV and ice cream binge. I grabbed my developer kit and retreated to the bathroom for half an hour, much to Kat’s displeasure. I managed to get the film rinsed and headed to my room to do some printing.

I had some good shots, not the least of which was the shot of Tony and Patricia on his motorcycle. I just caught them right as they looked up at me to wave goodbye. I had a wide open aperture and 1/500th shutter speed. What I got was a really sharp picture of the two of them on the motorcycle with everything behind them going soft to fully blurred. When I finally hung the last print to dry and went to bed, it was almost two in the morning. I just flopped on one side of my bed with all my clothes still lying on the other side.

When I finally dragged myself out of bed Monday morning and looked at the prints, I was really happy with what I saw. I needed to work some more on action shots—maybe with faster film.

I did some more work organizing the garage Monday and after lunch, decided to pedal around town and see if I could find some interesting pictures. Of course, I had to get some more pictures of Main Street. It was just too perfectly ‘small town Americana’ not to be photographed. It was so different than the city. The tallest building in town was Center Marketplace at four stories. It was a funny building, too. Well, not the building itself, but the sign on it said “Shoe Dept, Men’s Clothes, Meat Dept, Groceries—Fruits, Hardware, Notions.” What a combination! Of course, it didn’t have anywhere near all that stuff in the store anymore. It was pretty much like Kat had described with just a few shelves of miscellaneous stuff and then groceries.

There was an old train station that was getting to be pretty weathered and dirty. A couple of luggage carts and a bench sat on what had been the platform. The tracks didn’t look like they’d been used in a while. I took a couple of pictures and thought it would be cool to take a portrait of someone sitting there, waiting for a train that never came. That was because there was no passenger service here these days. Maybe there would be freight trains in the fall, though, when the grain elevators were full. There was a siding that went right through the elevator complex. I took some pictures of that, too.

I wasn’t really on a mission of any sort. I was just exploring and taking pictures of my new home town.

“Hey, Sailor. Nice wheels!” I heard from my right.

Two girls were sitting on the porch railing of a house I was going by. I guess railing isn’t the right word. It was a cool house, all made of stone. So, the front porch had stone pillars and they were sitting on a low stone wall with a cement cap on it. I squealed the brakes a little as I came to a stop.

The girls were a little overly made up with blue eye-shadow and pale pink lipstick. Their eyebrows were neatly painted on and looked flat. Both of them had hair cut in bangs and poofed up in the back. They held cigarettes in their fingers. Unlit.

“You just passing through?” one asked.

“New in town. Just out getting familiar and taking pictures of things that interest me.”

“Not much to get familiar with. See anything that interests you?”

I put the kickstand down and positioned myself so I could get a good look at them.

“Yeah. Do you mind if I take a couple of pictures of you?”

“Us?” They started giggling, totally disrupting their attempt at glamour and sophistication.

“Oh, sure. Like anyone wants a picture of us.”

“I think you look kind of cool sitting there on the porch. Ultra-sophisticated.”

“Yeah. We’re just trying on a look for school next fall. Not like they’d let us wear this to school. But it was in the magazine and fun putting together.”

So far, I had no way of really identifying which girl was which other than one was on my right and one on the left. I snapped a couple of pictures while they preened and posed.

“I’m Nate, by the way. Just moved into town, next to the Methodist Church.”

“I’m Judy and this is Janice. We’re Catholic.” Judy was on the left. She looked just a little taller and thinner than Janice. Both had black or really dark brown hair. They were wearing some kind of dress that didn’t have a skirt exactly, but shorts. I kind of wished I could see their legs. Pervert.

“Father Emory said there was a new preacher in town and to pray for his ministry,” Janice said. “You the PK?”

“Oh, that’s kind of an old school term. These days we prefer to go by TO.”

“I know PK is preacher’s kid. What’s TO?” Judy asked.

“Theological Offspring,” I laughed.

“Oh, geez. So, your dad’s the preacher?”

“No. My mom is.”

“No way. A woman preacher?” Janice said. “That’s got to be some kind of new record. Never heard of a woman preacher. Cool!”

“I guess it’s new for the Methodists. Mom’s the first one in this state,” I said. “Hey, could you both look over there toward the corner? Janice, how about raising your hand to point like there’s something really interesting over there.”

“Sure.” They perched on the wall and Judy turned almost all the way around to look the direction Janice was pointing. I loved the look of the cigarette in Janice’s hand.

“Um… Would you mind lighting the cigarettes?” I asked. “It kind of looks fake to have them unlit.”

“We’re not supposed to have them,” Judy said. “I kind of took them out of Mom’s purse. I could…”

“She’ll never miss them,” Janice supplied. “Get a lighter.” Judy slipped into the house to grab a lighter and Janice turned to me. “I’ve been dying to have a puff. Do you smoke?”

“No. Never got into it. It’s kind of hard to do anything bad when you’re the preacher’s kid.”

“TO,” she giggled. Judy came back with the lighter and resumed her perch.

“You sure you want to do this?” she asked Janice.

“Shut up and just give me the flame. You don’t need to light up if you don’t want to.” Judy held the lighter and Janice inhaled through the cigarette. And then started coughing. “Oh, geez! It’s a lot stronger this way than when you breathe it in from your mother’s smoke.”

“You okay?” I asked. Her eyes were watering a little and I could see her mascara beginning to dissolve.

“Yeah, fine. Just took me by surprise,” Janice said. Not to be outdone, Judy lit her cigarette, but she didn’t take a deep drag. She took it out of her mouth and looked at it. From where I was standing, I could see the pink lipstick on the filter.

“Now take that same pose, looking over at the corner,” I said. “That was really neat.”

This time the pose really came to life as smoke curled up from the lit cigarettes in front of the girls. After I’d taken a few pictures, they snubbed out their cigarettes and we just talked for a few minutes without the camera in front of my face. I found out I’d be in their class when school started.

“I’ll let you know when I get these developed,” I said. “Can I just stop by?”

“During the day,” Judy said. “Not at night when my parents are home.”

“And please don’t take those to Mr. Barkley at Center Marketplace to get them developed. He looks at all the photos when they come in and he’d tell our parents,” Janice said.

“I do my own developing,” I said. “I have a darkroom set up in my closet. Nobody will see them until I’ve shown you.”

“Cool,” Janice said. “Maybe you could show me your dark room sometime and we can see what develops.”

“Janice! You tramp!” Judy giggled. I kind of liked the idea. But I just got on my bike and rode back home. This would be some fun film to process and print.

3
The Shadow

I spent the week biking around town, taking pictures, and cleaning the garage. Tearing down a motorcycle was going to be more work than tearing down a bicycle. It wasn’t going to be that bad, I guessed. I wasn’t going to be working on a Harley Hog. Tony rode a Triumph Cub 199cc sport bike. It was about two steps above putting a motor on my bicycle. It would be a little tricky taking it apart, but not as bad as it sounds at first.

Still, I was going to need room and clean workbenches to do the job, so I worked pretty hard and managed to get all the remaining boxes stacked neatly on one side of the garage with the other side open for my repair job. I found Dad’s Shop-Vac and got into all the corners on my side of the garage to clean out the dust and cobwebs. I’d probably need the vacuum when I was sanding, and was glad it had a filtering bag.

Of course, Mom wanted to pull the Falcon into the open bay and not have it parked in the driveway. Dad explained to her that I had a job coming in and would need the shop space. Mom eyed the stacked side and suggested Dad might want to clear more room so she could get her car inside this winter.

In the winter, I didn’t think I’d be doing any jobs and Mom would be welcome to park on the side I’d cleared. But Dad made some effort to clean out the other side. It was just hard for him.

In addition to collecting tools he’d never need or use, Dad was a bit of a hoarder. He never threw anything away. When we were unpacking one box, he proudly pulled out a thing that I couldn’t identify. He held it like it was a precious trophy.

“What’s that, Dad?” I asked.

“That is the water pump your sister Deborah took out of the old Champion. Took apart the whole car to get to it.” And with that he told the story that I’m sure I’d heard twenty times already. He wasn’t going to throw away that old piece of junk, because it was the first thing Deborah did on the car by herself.

I’d leaned over the engine in a car and only recently was able to check the oil without a stepstool. I could understand why Deborah decided to start at the front and take everything off so she could get to it. She’s only five feet tall.

Dad came home from the service station where he worked on Wednesday afternoon, driving a flatbed truck. Mom was out “calling” so he pulled up right to the garage and whistled to get my attention. I was inside with my music going full blast. At the sound of Dad’s whistle, though, I came running. I’d learned that early on in life.

“Help me load all this stuff onto the truck, Nate.” We set to work.

“Are you taking all this to the dump without even opening the boxes?” I asked in disbelief.

“Hush your mouth, boy. None of this is going to a dump. Henry says he’s got a building behind his house about the size of a garage that’s mostly empty. Used to be where he worked on cars before he got the station. He said I can store my extra stuff there and get at it any time I want to,” Dad said.

“That’s cool. Is there anything else I should have out of here for my project?”

“Yes. When we get to the back, there’s an engine stand. I think I can adapt it to fit the motorcycle engine when I work on it.”

It took us an hour to load all the boxes onto the truck and locate the stand. Then we drove out to Henry’s place and backed the truck—which was Henry’s—up to the outbuilding. In another hour, we had everything stacked neatly on one side of the old garage. Henry had a bunch of stuff stored on the other side.

Dad dropped the truck back at the station and thanked Henry, then we walked home together.

I did an additional modification to my bike that week, too. I pulled the handlebars and cranks and painted them the same gloss black as the rest of the bike. With new handlebar grips, the bike had a whole new classy look. But I wasn’t done yet.

At Western Auto where I went to get some initial supplies for the motorcycle, like detergent to clean out the gas tank and sandpaper, I came across some pinstriping paint. I bought a can of metallic gold and a fine brush. I put a thin gold line down either side of the crotch panel on the bike and painted a four-leaf clover on the head tube. I chose a four-leaf clover because I couldn’t think of any other design I felt confident I could draw.

When everything was reassembled, I rode over to Judy’s house with an envelope of photos. No one was home. I didn’t know where Janice lived, so that ended my quest for female company. I didn’t think the two were really girlfriend material, but they were kind of funny and cute. I could definitely see spending more time photographing them.

Friday, Tony brought his motorcycle over and pulled into the garage where I pointed. It was a dirt floor, so I had broken down boxes to spread out and taped them together to make a work surface.

“You take care of my baby,” he said. “I’m taking off for two weeks on a road trip to California. Now, if you aren’t quite done with it when I get back, I’ll let that slide as long as it’s ready soon.”

“Why the sudden leeway, Tony? I expected you to be a little hardnosed about this.”

“Nate, people got me all wrong. I’m not a bad guy. I just like to have a little fun and tease a bit,” he laughed. “Besides, the old lady said to be nice to you. She’s got half the votes and all the pussy.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure. Well, I’ll still do my best to have it ready when you get back. You sure you want it all black?”

“Just like your bike. Jet black and glossy. I’ll call it The Black Snake. And I like what you did with the gold. Can you put my initials, TK, down on the corner of the tank? About here?”

“You got it. Western Auto said they can have the paint next week. It will take me that long to get it stripped down.”

“You know, speaking of Western Auto, I stopped there early this week and they referred me to a body shop in Huntertown. I got an estimate. Not that I don’t trust you, but I wanted to know what kind of a deal you were making me. They said it would take them a month and cost a lot more than you’re charging. So, I can afford to be a little lenient on the schedule.”

“Mind my asking how it got banged up like this?” I asked.

“Slick pavement. A car pulled out of an intersection ahead of me and I slammed on the brakes. Totally laid it down on the side. I was lucky to be wearing my leathers. Still got a few scrapes. Guy in the car that pulled out in front of me just kept going like he never saw a thing. Only 150 miles on the bike when it happened.”

“Good thing you were riding alone.”

“Yeah. Took me two weeks to convince Patricia to get on it again. But everything works fine. Just needs the body repaired.”

I pulled out a clipboard I’d cadged from Mom. I’d typed up two copies of the estimate and had him sign one. The other, I gave him.

“Put your address and phone number on this, too. If I need to get hold of you or when I’m ready for it to be picked up, I can call.”

“You act like a pro. Gotta respect that, man.” He filled out the paperwork and handed it to me. We shook hands and he walked out of the driveway. An Impala pulled up in front and he got in, giving me a little wave as they drove away.

What I’d forgotten was that this was a holiday weekend. The Fourth of July was on Monday. It didn’t make much difference. Mom still preached on Sunday morning, even though there were about half the number in the congregation that there had been the week before. Andy and I still handed out bulletins, passed the offering plates, and sat in the back pew of the church. Mom gave a kind of patriotic sermon. Not sure how she made the connections she did.

“Hey, we’re still going to play basketball this afternoon,” Andy said. “Join us?”

“Yeah. About three? No company coming today.”

At the appointed time, I rode my bike over to the school and spotted half a dozen guys at the outside basketball court. I stopped a little short of them and snapped a couple of pictures.

“Guys, this is Nate. He’s a junior joining us this year.”

“Hey, Nate,” they chorused. I was soon chosen for a team and we played around for a while. I’m not that great at basketball and one of the guys discovered he could fake me out anytime he wanted to, just by raising a hand in the air and then going the other way. I made one basket, though, so I didn’t feel too bad.

“What are you going to do when the rest of the guys are on the basketball team?” Andy asked when we broke to get a drink from the fountain. I laughed.

“Sit in the bleachers with your girlfriends,” I said. That got some groans and some water splashed at me.

“Fine. We’ll just count you as one of the girls,” one of the guys said.

“I’ll probably be taking your pictures,” I said.

“What?”

I went to my bike and grabbed my camera to show them. They were more interested in the bike.

“Nice bike. You plan to win the parade tomorrow?” Tom asked.

“The what? What parade?”

“It’s a Fourth of July tradition around here. Everybody in town goes,” Andy said. “It started out being all adults a generation or two ago. Then, as bicycles became more a thing for kids, it was just for the little ones. But these days, it’s back to being something everybody who has a bicycle participates in. The town’s too small for a regular parade, so everybody decorates their bicycles and we ride up Main Street as the crowds cheer for their favorites. Mr. Barkley sponsors some prizes, but he always ends up with best of show because he has one of those old high-wheel bikes from like a century ago. You have to ride.”

“Yeah. Parade’s at noon,” Tom said. “All you have to do is show up. Then you can join us at the river for swimming. I heard Janice has a two-piece she’s wearing that’s really cut short.”

“I think I met her. And Judy.”

“You’ve met the town fruitcakes then,” Ron laughed. He hadn’t said much all day. “Nothing wrong with the bods. I just don’t think I could date one of them,” Ron said.

“Only if you dressed up in a costume.”

“You could be Captain Crunch.”

I couldn’t keep track of the names and who was talking.

“Judy and Janice dressed up as Popeye one time. Ever since then they’ve been calling people ‘sailor.’”

“Yeah, they called me that when I met them. What’s it all about?”

“Back in elementary school, the teachers had a ‘dress like your favorite character’ Friday,” Andy explained. “Judy and Janice took it a step further and dressed up like characters every Friday. Everyone thought they’d grow out of it in junior high, but they’re juniors in high school now and still putting on a show most Fridays.”

“I thought they were dressed a little um… extreme. I took some pictures of them. Reminded me of some of the pictures of the victorious allies cruising through France that were in Look Magazine.”

“Now they’ll be after you to take pictures of them every week,” Ron said.

“Just stay away from my girlfriend,” Dan said. “Anybody touches her, I’ll take his balls.” He hadn’t said much today and I got the impression he was a year older and kind of a tough. I don’t know what possessed me.

“Gee, man. Don’t you have a pair of your own? They kind of come as standard equipment on most guys.” Dan gave me a shove and I landed on the ground, protecting my camera from getting smashed. He was headed toward me with a fist raised.

The other guys jumped in front of him and got him settled down. He took off in a huff. Andy helped me up.

“They might be standard equipment, but I guess none of us have balls the size of yours,” he laughed. “Dan thinks he’s tough. He’s a senior and hasn’t let any of us forget it since school got out. I think there’s only one guy in school he won’t tangle with.”

“I don’t have big balls. I just have a big mouth,” I said as I dusted myself off. Mom would have a fit if she found out I was in a fight. Not much of a fight, of course, but still… “Who’s he afraid of?” I asked.

“Tony Kowalski. If you run into him, just be quiet and do whatever he says. He’s got a gang of motorcycle buddies from Huffington. They follow him like he’s Jesus.”

“I know Tony,” I said, not thinking what that might do to my standing. “I’m doing some work on his bike for him.” The guys all stepped away a bit.

“Man, he’s bad news. There’s been a big run of thefts and graffiti lately and the constable suspects it must be his gang. They just haven’t caught the guy at it,” Tom said. “Um… see you at the parade. I gotta boogie.” He turned and left the court. The other guys quickly followed.

“You might have a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card, being the preacher’s kid, but don’t get caught with Tony when his gang gets busted,” Andy said. “See you tomorrow.” Then even Andy left. I rode home for Sunday night Sundaes.

I needed a little something extra, so I had two.

Monday morning, I started tearing down Tony’s bike. I’d drained all the liquids from it over the weekend and the next thing to do was remove the fuel tank and clean it so I didn’t get any accidental ignitions from gas fumes. While I was working, I spotted my little sister’s bike and thought I should clean it up a little so she could ride in the parade. I used a damp rag to clean all the dust from it from sitting in our garage in the city.

“Hey, Kat!” I yelled from inside the back door. “Come down so I can adjust your bike for you.”

She came skipping down the stairs in a pretty good mood.

“I have a bike?” she asked.

“Did you forget you own one? The question is, ‘Do you remember how to ride?’ There’s a big parade of bicycles at noon today. You’ll probably be able to meet some other kids your age.”

“Coolio.”

She came to the garage and looked at her bike.

“It’s a little kid’s bike!”

“Well, you were little when you got it. I don’t think you’ve ridden it in a year or two.”

“I can’t go out on something like that! They’ll think I’m a dork.”

“You could decorate it up. Put a couple of balloons on it. Some ribbons. Maybe get a card and clip it to the fork so the spokes make it sound like a motorcycle,” I said. She looked disdainfully at me.

“Dork,” she repeated and stalked off to the house.

Well, that was that. I looked at her bike critically. It really was too small for her. Maybe I could find an old bike somewhere I could fix up for her. I went in for an early lunch and told Mom about the parade and that I was going to go ride in it. Mom tried to convince Kat to participate, but she stubbornly refused.

Mom and Kat walked downtown to get a spot for the parade. Not that it was hard in the one-block business district of Main Street. There were probably a hundred people out to watch the parade, most in front of Center Marketplace. I rode around until I found where folks were gathering for the parade.

I don’t think Kat would have looked like a dork. There were people of every age getting ready to ride, including some parents who were walking along with tiny tykes on little bikes with training wheels. Every bike was decorated. Just like I’d told Kat to do. Balloons, ribbons, crepe paper, flags, noise-makers. And in the middle of it all was Mr. Barkley on his high wheeler. Everybody was laughing and there were six kids getting ready to lead the parade marching with kazoos. At the stroke of twelve, signaled by a blast of the volunteer fire station siren, the marchers started off down the street. They were followed by the littlest riders, most of whom had parents walking beside them, sometimes holding their bikes steady. Then it went up in age. There were a couple of groups of high schoolers. I rode in the second group. The first group were some of the guys I played basketball with the day before. They rode while bouncing basketballs beside them. Apparently, they were most of the high school team. My bike stood out from the others in my group and they motioned me to take the lead. There were more people on the street when we started riding the block of our ‘downtown.’ When bikes reached the end of the block, the riders dismounted and walked back up to join the spectators. I got a couple of whistles for my bike. Behind my group were four riders on racing bikes with drop handlebars. They wore helmets and matching jerseys. And finally, Mr. Barkley closed down the parade with his high wheeler.

That was a preview of Full Frame. To read the rest purchase the book.

Add «Full Frame» to Cart