garrison beau scott

If there is a heaven/nirvana/utopia/paradise/comfort inn with 72 virgins waiting, and I’m granted entrance, and for some reason the great creator decides to let us chose our own version of said bliss, well, I want it to go something like this.

I’m transported back in time to a place called Magoo’s Pizza Parlor in Menlo Park, Californaia, circa May 1965, the 5th of May to be exact. Just in time to catch what was one of the very first live performances of a band called the Warlocks. But not the very first show, for that I would have to pick Menlo College sometime in April. Date uncertain. But Magoo’s sounds like a cool place, and besides, they have pizza there, which is what anyone who’s designing their own heaven would list in the top 10 of things to be sure to have.

And then I’d make sure to be at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco on December 10th, 1965 when the Warlocks became the Grateful Dead. And then I’d go see them the next night at The Big Beat in Palo Alto. A week later at Muir Beach Lodge and then every show after that all the way up to 1995 after they had played 2,317 concerts. Not one of them the same.

After it was all over, and Phil closed up shop with the final Box of Rain, I’d go back and do it all over again. In between shows I’d walk around a perpetual Shakedown Street with my OM-2 and an infinite supply of TMZ, eating gooeyballs and grilled cheese sandwiches, trading smiles for stickers for patches for tape covers for sticky, for a ride to the next show.

And taking lots of pictures.

While at Brooks, we got the “rules” of photography pounded into our heads. And after a year and a half of that bludgeoning I think I began to burn out on the whole photography by numbers thing. I value the education and the emphasis on mastering those rules and by extension, understanding the intricacies of controlling the variables that photography presents, but I still needed a break.

It was then, that I departed Santa Barbara for a summer of escape in Door County , Wisconsin in an exercise of breaking the rules. And I’ll only admit to the photographic ones. Here is what could be considered my very first attempt.

The Eastgate is that special kind of place where Bud in a longneck and Patsy Cline are not only your only choices, they’re the best ones you can make. Located in Des Moines, Iowa, the Eastgate was a refuge, a home and an adopting family for four strangers. I among them.

During the summer of 1994, at the suggestion of Keith Nordahl, a friend and classmate, I took two terms off from Brooks to live and work in Fish Creek, Wisconsin. Keith’s family had been in Door County since he was a wee lad, and he grew up in this enchanted place, summering on his family’s 80 acre plot of undeveloped land.

It was the stories Keith spun about the water and the wind, and the girls of Wilson’s that convinced me. And any preconceived notion a kid from Southern California had about Wisconsin drifted away like the clouds after a mid-west summer rain storm.

One of the jobs I had was doing the darkroom work in one of those old-time portrait studios where you can dress up like Billy the Kid or Al Capone. Part of the job, in addition to working at the main studio in Fish Creek, was doing the same job for a two week stint at the Iowa State Fair. I was to be a carney.

In all there were 5 of us. The owner of the studio who took the pictures and berated anyone who dared only buy the 5 x 7, and then there was Brian, Andy, Heather, and myself. Brian had the unenviable job of selling the photo packages, and as I said, if he didn’t sell each group at least a half dozen pictures, the owner stopped what he was doing and tried to bully or embarrass these people into parting with their hard-earned cash for multiple copies of their kid’s faces on a wanted poster.

Brian was from Minneapolis and had worked for the studio previous summers. Andy (whom we affectionately called “Big Dog” was a friend of Brian’s with no idea of what was in store for him at the fair. Andy helped Heather (who had worked for the studio previously as well) with “costuming.” Another unenviable task. These “costumes” were nothing more than a facade of clothing that were tied on much like a hospital gown. They were worn by every kind of walk of life you might find at the Iowa State Fair. In August.

I had the best job. Doing the processing, I worked with chemicals that needed to be kept at a temperature that required an air-conditioner, so my time was mostly spent in a cool, darkroom listening to Grateful Dead bootlegs on a shitty little cassette player.

The four of us developed a quick friendship, realizing that we were working for a mad man who’s one and only priority was prying as much money out of these people as possible. We also understood that if we did nothing but work the fair, go back to the motel and fall asleep, just to wake up and do it all over again, one of us (or all of us) would snap and do something to the owner that’d get us on a real wanted poster.

Enter the Eastgate. If the Eastgate was a ship, it’d be the ugliest, most pirate laden one afloat. But it’d be the ship that would make it through all the wars, the one that after your boat was sunk you’d be the happiest seeing come to your rescue.

The Eastgate was tucked away in the deepest, darkest corner of a massive parking lot for a run down mall, directly across the street from our motel. I won’t lie to you and tell you that when we first walked in there to have a few beers and shoot some pool that we felt safe and welcomed. In fact when we spoke to a few locals at the photo trailer one day and told them we’d been spending our nights at the Eastgate, we were warned to stay away lest one of us end up shanked.

But that wasn’t the case, for on our second night there, as we were buying a round of Bud, we noticed a jar set out to collect money to help with some hospital costs for the child of a regular. We threw in a couple of bucks each, not really thinking anything about it. But immediately afterwards we felt a difference in how we were treated.

The following night we were greeted by the bartenders, a few of the locals asked us how we were doing, and eventually we became locals ourselves. To the point that on our last night in Iowa before we packed up the trailer, and went back to Wisconsin, they threw us a going away party.

True to the photo studio owner’s greedy ways, he stayed open as long as he could that last night, hoping to squeeze out whatever few dimes remained. We didn’t make it back to our motel until way past midnight, the time that the Eastgate was forced to close, no doubt due to events that gave rise to the myriad of reasons we were told to stay away. Crestfallen, Brian, Big Dog, Heather and I decided to at least go and say good bye, if only from the parking lot.

But the Eastgate had other plans. They turned off all the lights, so that from the parking lot they looked closed, but as soon as we got to the door, they opened it up, ushered us in like gangsters into a speak-easy and gave us a proper send off. It’s hard to explain exactly how or why, but walking out of that place felt exactly how it must have felt for Norm to have walked out of Cheers for the last time.

It was just a bar, wood paneling, a few pool tables, Patsy on the juke. But for the four of us, during those two hellish weeks in Des Moine in the middle of August of 1994, the Eastgate wasn’t just a bar. It was that ship, the one you’d most want to see as you were hanging on to the flotsam and jetsam of your own life. A hand reaching into the water, with not a life preserver, but a Bud in a bottle.

Big Dog, come on back.

I met Rolfe Horn in the summer of 1993. I was just about to start my second term at Brooks and entered class that day high on a cloud. I had survived the first term, made a bunch of new friends and had this feeling that everything I wanted was slowly and methodically being laid at my feet. I guess you could say I floated into that BA-2 class.

The way Brooks is run is a little different than most college systems. Before you even begin class, you’re asked to make a choice between the 2 different programs offered; still photography or motion/film. I chose still and because of that, I would progress through lower division with the other students I started with (I think there were 11 of us) who selected the same program. This created a tight knit group of fellow students who’d go through all the ups and downs of a very intense program together.

So on that first day of BA-2, it was a little bit of a surprise to see a new face in class, a face belonging to someone who’d not been there with the rest of the class during BA-1. The face belonged to Rolfe. Being technically sound, he advanced placed into our class, and first thought was, who does this guy think he is?

But something inside said put that B.S. aside and introduce yourself, invite the guy to your party Friday, introduce him to the rest of the gang, be an ambassador, be cool. And I did, and Rolfe has been one of the greatest friends I could have ever hoped to have. The only thing I’ve ever questioned is why he only advanced placed into BA-2. Looking at his work, I’m surprised they didn’t just hand him an honorary degree and save him the 3 years of time and tuition.

I’m truly thankful though that fate, or the gods, or whatever you subscribe to, placed him in that class at that time. As I said, the way the school ran it’s lower division programs, we’d spend the next year and a half together and in that time, I leaned on Rolfe more than any decent friend should, but without fail, 100% of the time, when I needed anything, anything, Rolfe was there to give it. Knowledge, tri-pods, Polaroids, mat board, rolls and rolls and ROLLS of Velvia, laughs, kindness and a friendship that has lasted 14 years.

In the time since we graduated, Rolfe has been my neighbor, mentor, best man, Godfather to my daughter, critic, darkroom enabler, DOA combatant, trip guide, fellow farmer, sounding board, life preserver, shuffleboard teammate, and dearest friend.

Whenever I look at this picture (that’s Rolfe on the left, Keith Nordahl in the center and Jim Hughes on the right) I think of his place on Grand Avenue where this was taken and how, indeed, everything was laid out at our feet. And how it was Rolfe who showed me the value and the gift of sharing it with your friends.

Please, if you haven’t already, take a look at Rolfe’s amazing photography. The story of how Rolfe became the King? A story for another time.

Everyone, this is September. Take note, she’s easily one of the coolest out there. She alone is the reason I made sure to stop for a spell in Kansas City, Mo. each time I went out on the Greyhound. The first visit took place in the summer of 1996 on my initial dog trip. We made a side trip to visit Sep’s mother in Clinton, Mo. where this particular shot was taken.

I have a ton of snaps with September in them, as you can tell she made a very able subject, but this is my favorite. I also have an entire series of her with the slide, some serious, some pure goof, but this is the frame that stands out. To me at least, because of innocence that pervades it.