After leaving Portland Maine I headed south and went pretty fast. I was headed to see Matt Wronski again as he had come upon some interesting equipment that I wanted to check out for myself. On my there I went down the coast of Massachusetts and stopped to make a few images. First stop was in North Waymouth after I drove over a bridge, saw a WWII warship parked under it and thought it would make a neat shot. While parked there I was approached by a local older gentleman who informed me that a while back the scene I was shooting was an active ship yard and his father worked there for 30 years and he himself worked there for seven. Then it closed down and thousands of people lost their jobs. Now it serves as a ferry port and the ship that I just pictured was a museum of sorts and for Halloween it was decorated for kids. There was also lots of construction going on under the bridge so I decided to do a shot of that too - looks like a perfectly industrial American river...
Next stop was at Hingham Harbor. It looked very picturesque and I couldn't help myself to stop and make a couple of plates. While washing the following images a lovely lady by the name of Laura rolled by in her small SUV and asked what I was doing. Apparently she had a small business a while back (I didn't ask what kind), but it failed. While doing some soul searching she came up with the idea of starting a motivational program called Ra Ra with Laura that was all about 'Less blah blah and more Ra Ra!'. She said she came to this spot often to communicate with her inner self and with God and we had a wonderfully loose conversation about spirituality and channeling energy. I was totally enamored with her deep Bostonian accent and she seemed impressed with my project. While driving away she said that "all my dreams will come true in the next 30 days" - that's a tall order I must say... Does that mean I should wait for a phone call from Terry Gross?
I got to say that the pouring job on the second shot here is probably the worst one I have ever done so far, but I kinda like it and at the very least I should put the image on here to illustrate that not all of plates turn out all neat and even and clean...
I made it to Matt's place just in time - we still had a bit of light left and I made tintype portrait of him, his lovely wife and son in their back yard for them to keep. The light was indeed going fast and so the 13 second exposure was barely enough, in retrospect 20 wold have been much better. I don't have the copy of the image, so you'll have to use your imagination and picture two adults seated with the 14 year old son standing over them - the figures seem to be floating in complete darkness because the surrounding greenery was in the shade and so almost nothing from it recorded in the plate. Looks kinda neat actually.
As I mentioned Matt has recently acquired a little camera collection and among them there were a few Magic Lantern artifacts - a few lanterns and a ton of old slides. One of the lanterns is a 'side by side biunial' design and actually came with a pair of really sweet little Petzval lenses - not projection lenses, but actually ones meant to make images with. Matt is thinking of making his money back by selling some of the cameras and keeping just a few of the more interesting pieces. It took quite a little talk to convince him not to separate the lantern from the lenses. In fact it was not until the next morning, after he placed a call to our mutual friend Luther in Ventura CA, that Matt said that indeed he's not going to split up the lenses from the lantern. I was very relieved to hear that - there are few things that pain me more to see as a equipment-lover than seeing parts of equipment that have been together for over a century split up without a hope of ever finding their counterparts again...
Matt was not looking forward to dealing with the plethora of the dirty, separated slides that came with the collection and so agreed to sell me the whole lot along with a very odd looking lantern for a reasonable price. Most of the slides are indeed of no particular interest and I'll have my hands full with putting them online to make my own money back when I come back to San Diego, but some of them will go very well with a new show that I'm developing and so I was happy. Plus the lantern is a really odd piece - it looks like it's suppose to project an image on the ceiling - but what? And is is missing a lens on top? I'll have to fire it up and see...
Here is that odd Magic Lantern
A set of children's stories and some pretty funny cartoons
A shadow-drawing set was among the slides as well
After leaving Matt's place in the morning I headed to Connecticut to pay another visit to Terry Borton - the man in charge of American Magic Lantern Theater in hopes that he will help me sort through my most recent find. He and his lovely wife Barbara were glad to see me again and Terry did indeed help me out a lot by taking a brief look at the slides. He didn't know what the lantern was exactly intended for though, so the search for it's function continues.
I wasn't there long and left in early afternoon to be on my way to my New Jersey. There I was looking forward to joining my friend's Justin's family for a nice relaxing weekend in the country. That's when things went wrong...
While driving west on 84 I noticed Gilli slipping from 4th gear into 3rd while going full speed (her full speed being 55). It happened once... I thought it was a fluke. It happened again... I thought 'this is strange'... and then is happened permanently and all of a sudden I was forced to go 40. I knew something was awry and pule off the freeway at the next exit. Never having experienced any real problems with the bus I didn't know what to do... I sat at the parking lot adjacent to the freeway and prayed that this was just a glitch and that my baby was all right. After smoking a cigarette and saying a quick prayer I got back on the freeway and this time it was evident that there is something majorly wrong here - Gilli wouldn't even go into third gear, forcing me to go about 30mi/hr to the next exit, where I got off again and weighed my options. It was nearly 8pm on the east coast, so all the mechanics shops were closed. Luckily I have a sticker in the darkroom from San Diego's Freightliner dealership and repair - I go to them when I'm home for routine maintenance and they are very kind and professional. I called them up and described my symptoms. They said that I'm in luck because they have an Allison transmission repair shop right next door to them. This is when I told them that I'm in Connecticut. They said "oh!"... After some searching they came up with a few places that were not too far away from me and suggested that I call the after-hours numbers. I called the local Freightliner shop and after describing the symptoms again was told that it was indeed the transmission that was acting up and that I should get myself to a shop in Middletown ASAP. According to the GPS that shop was 37 miles away, but that was via the freeway and there was no way I was going back out on there and creating a hazard by driving 15 miles per hour in the dusk... I decided to navigate the surface streets and take it at whatever speed Gilli was willing to go. That speed apparently was about 12 miles per hour. I coasted downhill in neutral and on those short stretches got up to 20 or 30, but most of the time I was crawling with my emergency blinkers on and pulling over for every car that caught up to me. It took me over 3.5 hours to get to the shop and by that time it was nearly midnight and so I fell asleep in their parking lot. I dreamed of mechanics messing up the walls of the bus and not being able to find the transmission...
In the morning I was woken up by the arriving workers and directed to the service yard. The folks who worked there were very nice and they were also highly recommended by not only the two places that I called before, but also by the customers that I met there. Bob, the guy who handled my case, was apparently with the company for over 30 years and it took him no time at all to figure out that the whole transmission was shot. With a sunken heart I asked him how long will it take to fix and how much should I prepare myself to spend. He said that there is a chance that it could be done by Friday, but I should not hope to walk out of there without spending less than $4.000... I was stunned, but proceeded to ask for them to get a real quote as soon as possible as I was really looking forward to the weekend in the country with Justin and his family. The estimate didn't take long to come in. Bob was spot on....
I had really no other option but to bite the bullet and authorize the thing. For this price I would get a whole new transmission and I would still be able to proceed to do all the things that I was scheduled to do next week. Looking at the whole thing in a more positive light I realized that this could have been worse. I could have broken down next Thursday and would have had to cancel a whole lot of workshops and other activities. Or I could have broken down somewhere in the middle of the country, hundreds of miles away from the nearest big rig repair shop and would have had to pay thousands in towing costs (or take a hundred hours to crawl there through some desert). So all in all this situation was not the worst thing that could have occurred. In reality this is just going to push me further to work harder and sell more work, set up my Etsy shop, start setting up more events, get more organized and so on - in the end it's just money and I am sure that it will be found somewhere. My commitment to this venture is complete and so I need to be prepared to do whatever need be to keep it going.
As it happens the one and only customer that was present at the shop at the time I was there was a very nice big rig driver who parked his large purple 18-wheeler next to me around noon. He had some power problems and was waiting for an estimate himself. When the quote did come in he was shocked to find out that he is going to be out a whole $5K to fix his bread-winner. He didn't have that kind of a cushion of cash and so decided to go slowly towards his home and to work for other people for a while while saving money to fix his truck. I asked him which way exactly was he going and was delighted to hear that he was going to pass within a few miles of the farm that I was going to and was willing to give me a ride. he said that he was still pondering what to do and was waiting on some details, so in the meantime I asked him if I could make a portrait of him and so here is Dickson the truck driver.
While I was processing the image Bob came back with some rather discouraging news - apparently there was no way that the job was going to be done before the weekend, and this being the Labor Day weekend in all likeliness Gilli would only be ready for the road next Wednesday... I had no other choice but to nod my head in acceptance and hope that it will indeed be done by then. Before leaving the shop I was able to talk the guys into pulling Gilli into the garage and not leaving her there in the sun. I explained that I have some chemistry that can not get hot and that in general this was not a 'rig' to me, but a life partner and so they were kind enough to open up a bay and let me park her indoors for the entire duration of the repairs. Here is the shot of Gilli's current surroundings. I hope she is safe and sound there... From what I hear the transmission is already out...
The 120 miles that Dickson took me went by quick over the conversations about life, religion and many other topics. Dickson is a great guy who has a wife and 4 boys, the oldest of which just moved out to go to college last week and the youngest is 5. his wife stays home to take care of the kids, so he is the only bread-winner in the family and he was really concerned about what he was going to do now that his truck is going to be out of commission for a long time. On the other hand he was not stressed - he believed wholeheartedly that the Lord will take care of him and provide a way out. I admire that kind of conviction and pray that he got home safe and that everything will work out for him and his family.
At a gas station in Port Jervis in New Jersey, where Dickson dropped me off, I was picked up by Justin's stepfather Hans, who took me to a beautiful 300 acre farm where I felt instantly accepted as part of their large wonderful family. I am currently staying in a guest house where I have 4 rooms to myself, family members keep arriving all the time and there may be as many as 17 people at the height of the gathering. Justin, myself and two of the kids took a really beautiful hike through the woods earlier today and so I am rather tired, but feel very good about having finished this blog.
By the way, while I was typing this up the blog received it's 400.000th view! YAY! I'm glad people are finding out about Gilli, following our adventures and I hope that some of them will be inspired by it.
Good Night!
Anton Orlov
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