The photos on contact sheet 49 are from a variety of rolls of film shot in a variety of situations.  Some are Muscatine photos from around 1971, some are Cornell College photos shot around 1976.

The photos from Muscatine include a set of photos of my cousin, Joe Hanson Jr.  My aunt Cathy wanted photos of her son.  My mother was extremely practical.  She suggested that we tie little Joe into a swingset chair with a diaper to keep him upright.  You see what we accomplished.  Joe still teases me about it.

Some of the most valuable photos (to me) that I’ve taken are of nothing in particular.  Back when photography was expensive per shot, it may have been a waste to shoot a photo of the post office or the new construction for what is now the old library.  They are vignettes in time that are so normal, so usual, and yet so transitory.  The now-antique cars date the photos. 

There is a photo of Cindy Richmond waving a stick as a sword with her brother Randy in the foreground.  The Richmonds lived next door and I spent a lot of time with David.  This put me around his five siblings.  Cindy was interesting.  She was one or two years ahead of me in school.  After three years of living next door to each other and frequent interaction with her, I was about to enter high school from junior high.  Cindy told me, through David, that I was not to greet her or acknowledge her in any way at school.  I was socially beneath her.  If I were to greet her or acknowledge her, she would ignore me, and she did not want me to suffer that social indignity.  This was a good introduction to Muscatine High School.

The photos also include Pam, the family dachshund.  She was my mother’s alter ego.  She, like my mother, was mostly live and let live.  But, if you messed with her, she would never forget.  For example:  Pam mostly ignored my friends when they came over, but she really did not like Craig Koll, who lived a few blocks away.  She would growl and nip at him so much that we had to put her in a room whenever Craig came by.  I asked Craig if he knew why the dog didn’t like him and he said he didn’t know.

It wasn’t until we were seniors in high school before Craig admitted that when we moved to the neighborhood when he was 12, he came by to see if we would subscribe to his newspaper route.  We weren’t home, but the front door was open and the screen door stood between him and Pam.  Pam, like all dachshunds, barked at all solicitors at the door.  Craig thought it was funny to spray Pam with his squirt-gun.

Pam did not forget.

There are also some photographs around Muscatine’s Weed Park pool and concession stand.  David, Craig and I all lived near the park.  Dave and I would frequently address our junior-high boredom by walking over to the park and seeing what was happening there.  We were more interested in the human zoo than the zoo that had the other animals.  It helped that there were a few extremely nice, very conversational, pretty young women (yet older than us) operating the concession stand.  There will be other photographs of them.

This contact sheet also includes a few photographs of Rich Frank, a man who lived in Altoona Hall with me.  Rich was a unique person.  He told us, the members of Altoona, that as an experiment in mind control he walked into the local Post Office and told the clerk that he was there to collect his $5.  The postal clerk looked at him, asked again, and Rich told him again that he was there to collect his $5.  Rich said that the clerk opened the drawer and gave him the $5.  I always thought that the story was meant to determine just how gullible the rest of his dorm was.  The last I heard he was a physician.

The photographs referenced in this essay can be viewed in the Photos by Number gallery, # 00049