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Tales of Philly Sales

During this last week I had a great conversation with someone I met on Facebook who lives in the Charlotte area but grew up, as I did, in Binghamton, New York. We got to reminiscing about some things that are no longer in the area, such as the signs at Walter’s Shoe Store and Elgin Rugs, and stuff every good Binghamtonian should know, such as where to get the best spiedie.

Asking yourself, what’s a spiedie? The native food of Binghamton. The nectar of the gods. That which I must eat every few months or so or I start to twitch. More here…

So in amongst the conversation was a mention of Philadelphia Sales Company. Alas, I have no pictures of this place, since it closed before I ever owned a camera, but it’s an important component of why I do what I do. While I tell you all about it, I’ll scatter in some pictures of other Binghamton landmark signs I did manage to get in time.

Greyhound Station, Binghamton, NYGreyhound Station (restored), Binghamton, NY

Philadelphia Sales Company, or Philly Sales as they were more commonly known, was the Wal-Mart before there was Wal-Mart. They had everything for less and you didn’t question its origins. Four floors of random stuff from ball gloves to fabrics. The building it was housed in was not in the best neighborhood, and when you entered from the parking lot, you were greeted by the view of the back side of some ancient tenements which had somehow managed to stay upright despite seventy or more brutal winters.

The original entrance was essentially through a narrow shed at the front and right of the building. During the winter this became a dirty, sloshy, claustrophobic mess, but once inside, you were rewarded with the smell of popcorn. Philly Sales had an old popcorn popper and they kept it in the entrance, and if you grew up in the are in the 60s and 70s, this is a grand memory. To tell the truth, I can only recall getting the popcorn once or twice, but the aroma was overwhelming, cheering, warming on a chilly day.

Red Oak Diner Sign, Binghamton, NYRed Oak Diner, Binghamton, NY

The building itself was a marvel. What it housed prior to Philly Sales is unknown to me, but it certainly never looked like it was meant to be a department store. There were steps in odd places. Some sections were cavernous, others were laughingly small. The first floor, past the popcorn machine and all the candy a child could ever want, was a section of glassware. Midway along this area of glassware was a sign telling you to “Watch Your Head.” And they meant it. At this point, the builders, tired of high ceilings, decided to lower the ceiling to child level. I’m guessing it was five and a half feet from the ground, because my mother could enter without bending, but at a certain age, I could not. It was a proud day the moment my hair touched that ceiling. A rite of passage. Some people have bar mitzvahs, I had this.

Competition KItchens and Baths neon sign, BInghamton, NYCompetition Kitchens, Binghamton, NY

To get upstairs, you had several options. Staircases seemed to appear out of nowhere. I swear there was one that went from the fourth floor to the third that had been a secret passageway. But each staircase had something special: an indoor neon sign with an arrow, lighting the way. “THIS WAY TO THE THIRD FLOOR.” These signs were relics even in the seventies. I’d like to think somebody has them somewhere.

There was neon sign outdoors as well, on Clinton Street, which was technically its address, although hardly anyone ever entered from that side.

Ellis Brothers Furniture neon sign, Binghamton, NYEllis Brothers Furniture, Binghamton, NY

My family has a friend who worked there for a period of time. She said that there was definitely a sitcom that could have been based on that place, and that her boss could have been played by Don Knotts. The crazy tales she told only added to the place’s slapstick allure. We went frequently.

And then Wal-Mart burst forth from the South, rendering it irrelevant. At the time, we welcomed the colossus in, somehow never dreaming that this old wacky place had created such fond memories. For instance, Phily Sales had a bin of white tube socks. Fifteen feet by nine. You could jump in it if you needed to hide from danger. No one ever needed that many white tube socks, but they had them in case you did.

It’s odd to think of a place I know so well no longer exists. The whole building is gone now, and a new one in its place. It makes me sad that I don’t have a picture of it, but maybe that makes the memory stronger.

Anybody else have tales of Philly Sales? I’d love to hear them.

Addendum: Recently I found this picture from the Clinton Street entrance. I’m not sure who took it or when it was taken, but it looks like it was taken after it closed.

Philadelphia Sales

The Brotherhood of the Rusty Ice Cream Sign

Let’s face it. We all love and feel nostalgia for the local ice cream stand. That wonderful building with a lot of glass in the front, a sliding window, a towering swirl on a sugar cone, and usually, an old sign on top, lighting up the night, welcoming in your poor, huddled masses, yearning to breathe soft serve. For many, the opening of the ice cream stand is the sign that spring is here, with the promise of many summer days ahead.

My local was the Jones’ Humdinger on the north side of Binghamton. They open in late March, so the ice cream season is just as likely as not to coincide with the end of winter. Yet people are willing to stand outside for their ice cream then, in the hopes to capture a bit of sunshine.

Jones Humdinger

The Humdinger still has the old sign that was there forty years ago.

Here in Allentown, the Ritz Barbecue has an ice cream stand with some of the best I’ve ever had. Plus, they have a terrific old sign.

Ritz Ice Cream

This sign, in part, led me to start the hashtag on Instagram #rustyicecream, dedicated to these seasonal paradises. There are quite a few still going in the Northeast, due to the fact that we never get tired of ice cream in the summer, so any chance I get to visit another local parlor, I get on over there.

Needless to say, when I discovered there was a beauty I missed in the Scranton area, I slapped my forehead a multitude of times. Credit Leah Frances of @americansquares for alerting me to the existence of Carter’s Dairy Freeze in Exeter, PA. Her picture a few weeks ago, coupled with the fact that I was going to be in the area in late March, sealed the deal. I was going.

Carter’s is on a stretch of US 11 which I had somehow missed, in between Scranton proper and Kingston. It doesn’t disappoint, containing all the requisite ingredients for summer nostalgia: glass, ice cream, outdoor space, sign at the top.

Carter's Dairy Freeze, Exeter, PA

Only problem was, I was there too early. They weren’t open for the season. I consoled myself with a few shots. At the back door, there was a man doing some cleaning in the building. I didn’t know if he was working for some cleaning service or if he worked there, but he glanced over at me from time to time as I cast my camera skyward to get just the right angle for the sign. After a while, he realized what I was after and he walked over. “Admiring the sign?” he asked me.

Always great when I don’t have to explain what I’m doing. This guy knew that I was after the history, and he had the appreciation of it, too.

Turns out this was the owner of the place, Louis Venetz. He bought the old ice cream stand more than ten years ago. “I get called Mr. Carter all the time,” he mentions to me, with a laugh. “Probably be on my obituary.”

Carter's Detail

The neon is gone from the sign, and he’s looked into getting it restored. He told me what the quote was that he got, and I can readily understand why he hasn’t done it. That’s a lot of scoops.

On the way home, I wondered if it’s possible to set up a GoFundMe or some such for somebody else. Just a thought.

You could clearly tell that he loves this place and understands what it means to the community. In short, he’s exactly the kind of guy you want to run the local ice cream place. I don’t often do it, but I asked to take his picture. Honestly I don’t think I could have taken a better one.

Louis Venetz

Carter’s Dairy Freeze opens up this weekend!

Anybody have any memories of Carter’s (or your own home town ice cream stand)? Feel free to comment!

The Search for True Meaning in Allentown

We had one of those mornings. At the crack of 4:30, Cat exploded in a variety of meows, mows, and MERRROWRRRS until we woke up and gave him running water from the bathtub he felt he so richly deserved. As we didn’t have to go to work that day, we did as we do most mornings, drink our coffee while contemplating how we can ship Cat off to a more forgiving family. In Argentina, preferably.

Cat
Cat, destroyer of dreams

As this point in the conversation can take a turn for the dark, we changed the subject to something lighter. We had just bought a new TV stand, and it was sitting in the living room all bright and beautiful. Our TV had been resting on the cedar chest, and in order to use it for the purpose in which it was intended, we had to lift the TV off to open the lid. Not so bad with the current LED, but before these days of lighter televisions, we had an old CRT which weighed roughly 14 tons.

“How long have we had the TV on the cedar chest?” I asked.

I immediately regretted it. The answer to that question was going to be far too depressing.

But that’s how the winter is in the north. It goes on so long that when you think back to a time it wasn’t winter, even that isn’t enough to cheer you up. This winter has been especially dark and cold, and on top of it, the two of us have had weird and annoying health issues. That and Cat’s regular mid-morning assaults on our slumber have made for a rough couple of months.

cat
Cat, sworn enemy of human sleep

“We didn’t have it there in Chattanooga,” Laura said. “I think it was when we moved.”

I heard the word Chattanooga and saw a golden opportunity to change the subject. We were married there, and spent our wedding night at a bed and breakfast in town. It had been a long-denied plan of ours to go back to that place, but time and finances conspired against us. It looked like it was going to come together for our 15th Anniversary, but we ended up in Japan instead. No regrets, of course.

“Maybe we could go for our…” I said, and stopped. We looked at each other and had the same thought. The end to that sentence was going to be twentieth anniversary. Four years away.

“I don’t want to wait,” Laura said.

I smiled, “I don’t either.”


I can’t say as I ever thought that much about mortality. It was one of those subjects that was going to be put off for another day, most likely the exact moment where I realize I can’t get out of bed and function like a normal human being.

But the winter makes you question how long you have. The idea that you’ve lived for twelve and a half years with a TV propped up on your cedar chest will do that for you, too. And then, right around Christmas, my eye started messing up on me. Like every good American, I consulted the internet, the repository for all the world’s knowledge, and in its wisdom it has determined that I have either Dry Eye Syndrome or a rare flesh-eating bacteria that will devour my entire head within three days.

I was still around after three days, so that’s good. But the problem hasn’t gone away. Even though I’m almost certain that this is not how I’m going to leave this Earth, the question of when and where and why that’s going to happen looms larger.


One day a long time ago, Laura and I had a conversation about people we knew who were older, and how it seemed that one person we knew was older than the other, even though Person A was much younger than Person B. The answer to this was easy: attitude.

As we sat in the living room in the morning, watching Cat wander in from the dining room and wondering what size box is appropriate to ship a mammal to Buenos Aires, Laura said: “I want to wake up every morning, and celebrate the fact that I’m alive”

It took me right back to what we talked about years ago. The fact of the matter is, we all hit this moment in our lives where we are faced—to a large degree or a lesser one—with our own mortality. When that time comes, we really have two choices: we can either mope around and tell everybody we’re going to die soon, or we can wake up in the morning and enjoy the fact that we did, in fact, wake up that morning.

Because of a Cat.

To Be Continued

Since we last met, the summer ended and the fall arrived. I continued to write and take a few pictures, but nothing momentous or amazing was going on, so I was feeling like I would need to post something just to post something. And that’s never good.

By the time we got to October, it was time for vacation, and for Daytona Beach, which I figured would give me something to write about. Storms had come through as they had the year before, but instead of flip-flops and glasses and televisions washing up on shore as they had during Matthew, all we got this year was seaweed. And not just seaweed, but SEAWEED.

seaweed

We visited the St. Augustine Lighthouse, which was something we wanted to do for a long time and never got around to:

St. Augustine Lighthouse

All of this was interesting, and I admired the photographs as I got home, but overall I didn’t feel like anything happened. We went to the beach, we ate seafood, we listened to the ocean at night, and yet, when it was all done, I didn’t feel like much of anything happened and I didn’t feel like our vacation felt like a vacation. Not true, of course, as I look back on it. But a malaise is a malaise, I didn’t post anything, and I wasn’t really taking much, if any, pictures.

So the question is, when you feel like this, what do you do about it?

You don’t talk about things. You do things. The lack of photography was really getting to me and I wanted to go out and take pictures, but by this time it was November, and November in Allentown is not the most photogenic. Most times, I’ve avoided the dark, dreary scenes that punctuate the coming winter in eastern Pennsylvania, and certainly with the way I was feeling, such images would seem to be truly counter-productive. I sat on the idea for about a week, and then I said to myself that I had to do something.

So I drove around. The sun was bright and the weather was cold. I had a shot in mind, something I had seen a few days before. Nothing momentous, just the winter sun on a fence:

FenceBut it was a start. I drove in to the city with another shot in mind. There was an old variety store downtown with a “Teem” soda sign, a rarity even in the day when it was put up. Unfortunately, it didn’t exist anymore, and I ended up driving around. Along the way, I spotted a woman in the window of a diner, so I shrugged my shoulders, and took a shot out the passenger’s side:

Diner WindowI didn’t know if what I was doing was art, but it was certainly making me feel like I was doing something. During the next few weeks, when I found a free moment, I just started driving around Allentown, taking shots at whatever I saw.

Alley

Tower and Dodge Van

 

It rained one night and Laura had a hair appointment, so I carted myself out to get some shots. I went by Zandy’s trying to recreate a shot I had made earlier, only this time I brought my tripod. And when I say tripod, I mean, a 16-year-old aluminum and plastic bit of off-brand nonsense that can barely hold the weight of my camera. It was raining a lot, so I stayed inside the car and tried to wrestle with this beast to make it stand straight enough to take a decent shot out of the window.

This is not an easy thing to do.

The rain was cascading in through the driver’s side window. I was flopping all over the seats, trying to get a somewhat decent angle. The locks on the tripod legs slipped and put the camera at an angle, causing me to reset and lock them again. The locks slipped again, and the whole process started anew. In the end, I took about four shots, only one of which was close to what I wanted to get.

Zandy's

A while ago I mentioned that I had a job as a photographer/videographer at a Catskills resort when I was in my late teens. One day, I got chastised for taking shots of things that weren’t paying customers, and it’s one of those things I think about almost every time I press the shutter. I know I shouldn’t, but I do.

In light of that, I drove around a little bit more after this, wondering why I take pictures at all. What I was doing was nonsense.

 

But the more I thought about that, the more I came to the conclusion that I shouldn’t worry about that. Sure, not every image, not every story is going to be a winner, but that shouldn’t stop anyone from doing anything. Nothing’s perfect that first time out, so why stop?

Water Tower

Red Steps

Permanent Odor Removal

Maybe it’s nonsense, but it’s all important. Even if it’s a failure, you can build on it to become a success. The work, just like life, is always to be continued, because if it stops, then it truly is meaningless. All through the winter, I’ll be trying to take some more shots just like these, and some of them will be OK, some of them may be good, but there will always be something new.

Get It While It’s in Season

My father woke up one morning and said, “I need some french-fried lobster.”

Not only is the first line of a novel I will not write, but it is also a fact. I might have been a teenager when that fateful morning occurred, but if I was, I would have been in just under the wire. Having spoken the words I need some french-fried lobster, he got into the Toyota and started it up. Mom and I followed him to the car, figuring it was best not to let him go on this quest alone.

He knew of only one place in the world where such things as french-fried lobster existed. The previous summer, we had made our way to the Jersey shore and found a place called Howard’s in Beach Haven, for whom this was a specialty. We arrived on Long Beach Island, found a hotel, made our way to Howard’s, had dinner, stayed the night, and drove back.

Howard's

In my adult life, I have been plagued by the phrase Oh, I can’t do that. I think to a certain extent we all suffer from it, even those that jump out of planes for fun. It seems too simple: I want to do this, no one will be harmed if I do this, all it will cost me is time and effort, and in the end, I’ll have a story that will last the rest of our lives. And yet, we resist. That seems like a lot of effort for lobster.

But my father does this. And we have this story.

So when, for his 73rd birthday, he requested a return trip to Howard’s (with a stop-off at Rutt’s Hut for lunch), who were we to deny him?

Mom and Dad at Rutt's Hut

It had been years since my Dad had been to the Jersey shore. We talked it over on the way there and it was possible that our fateful midnight ride to Howard’s had been the last time they had gone. My great aunt had a place on Brigantine when my Dad was a child, and that, we determined, had prompted our first visit. I remember seeing Atlantic City, circa 1978, saw the Boardwalk, saw a few other places mentioned on the Monopoly board, and that’s pretty much all I remember.

There’s a reason why it doesn’t cost that much to put up a hotel on Baltic Avenue.

I think the second time we came was when Great Adventure (now Six Flags Great Adventure) opened. They had a drive-through zoo, and the camels spit on the car. That’s pretty much all I remember.

We stayed in Toms River that year, and made trips to Long Beach Island (where Dad found Howard’s) and Manasquan. I remember Manasquan because we had ice cream there, and I got to eat ice cream on the beach, and when you’re under 10, there is nothing else in life.


Driving into New Jersey with my Dad up front and my Mom and Laura in the back, I became conscious of what the shore might be like on the weekend before Labor Day, the de facto end of summer. Resistance crept in. This could be crazy. Everyone could be on the beach for one last blast. The traffic might be at a standstill.

And yet, these notions, whether they would prove to be true or not, pale in comparison to this fact: we drove all the way from Upstate New York to do this, and we conquered it. Thirty years ago or not, we fought through all this once before, we can do it again. You got nothing.

It was nothing. There was some traffic, but it soon thinned out the closer we got. The sun was out and the world was generally at peace. We drove down the island, stopping at a few places of interest, including John Maschal’s Country Kettle Fudge. We stopped there all those years ago, I could remember, and it wasn’t that much different. Dad bought fudge, which is what he does, and we walked down to the bay, where there’s a boat landing, and watched boats pull in.

John Maschal's Country Kettle Fudge

Dock

Boats

All four of us

I decided to drive down to the end of the island while we waited for Howard’s to open. There’s an overlook to the beach which was new, and plantings on the dunes, which were new. It didn’t take long to realize this was all rebuilt, had to be rebuilt, after Sandy.

New Planting

The Dunes

All that was left was our minor victory, to once again conquer the french-fried lobster in all its elusive (maybe not) glory. There was waiting line, but a mere trifle, for this battle could and would be won, to bed! For we rise at 9:30…

Line for Howard's

Oh, never mind. This looked like it would take a while. While we waited, I figured I might as well take some pictures around the neighborhood.

Bay Bikes

And then, to food and to make merry and to sound like a waiter in Medieval Times…Huzzah!

French Fried Lobster

That’s the stuff.

I’ve been kind of joking about it, but it’s true. We all harbor these foolish resistances and tell ourselves that we can’t do things, even at the smallest level. Yes, jumping out of a plane when you’re afraid of heights seems like a crazy thing, especially if you don’t have a parachute, but it takes your fear and it crushes it. Those fears, whatever they may be, will stay with you no matter what you do. Despite what we think, they will never go away. But if you neutralize them, conquer them as often as you can, you won’t be paralyzed by them.

Yes, it’s a small thing. But that night all those years ago when we went to Howard’s on a whim, we told You can’t do this to shove it.

Thanks, Dad. Happy birthday.

My Dad

 

A Lot Else, You See What I Mean

Originally, when I wrote The Path Walker Evans Took, I had this idea that I would write a post solely on what Walker Evans, if he were still alive, would take pictures of today. This post was to feature several pictures that I would take myself: a) in color, because I personally don’t think he would have continued to be bound by the confines of black and white, and b) on my iPhone, because in the latter days of his life, he had taken to the latest technology, the Polaroid instant camera.

This post will never happen.

You see, in all the research I did for this, I came across a list he wrote in 1934 a list of picture categories: things he had shot, and presumably, wanted to shoot. I had read Evans’ list before, and I had planned to make this the basis of the pictures I was going to take. It went as follows:

  • People, all classes, surrounded by bunches of the new down and out.
  • Automobiles and the automobile landscape.
  • Architecture, American Urban taste, commerce, small scale, large scale, the city atmosphere, the street smell, the hateful stuff, women’s clubs, fake culture, bad education, religion in decay.
  • The movies.
  • Evidence of what people of the city read, eat, see for amusement, do for relaxation and not get it.
  • Sex.
  • Advertising.
  • A lot else, you see what I mean.

The next logical step was to take pictures of these things, or failing that, their 2017 equivalents. I even started in on this project, when I took this shot of a person sleeping in the park.

Sleeping in the Park

Deep down, there was something wrong. Something was holding me back from writing this post, and I didn’t know what it was. I had written down the 1934 list in my notebook and I went back over it. Was there something on there I didn’t want to photograph?

I continued on until the end, and there it was: A lot else, you see what I mean.

There’s so much more than a list could hold.

Damaged
Walker Evans, Damaged, 1928-1930

Here is a picture I couldn’t get out of my head. Evans took it in the late 20s, a few years after he wrote this list. Technically, it would fall into his Advertising category I would guess, but I thought about the circumstances that brought about this picture. It was most likely unplanned. Oh, he might have followed these two guys down the road until he got to their truck, but Evans didn’t wake up that day and say to himself, “Today, I’m going to find a few fellows and take a picture of them loading a sign into a truck.” He had his camera, he was in the city, and all of a sudden, this happened. He had to be ready for it and he was. This is the result.

As much as I wanted to take shots that checked all these boxes, I knew I couldn’t. I read a quote from the great photographer Paul Strand, which underlined what I already had been feeling:

“Your photography is a record of your living – for anyone who really sees. You may see and be affected by other people’s ways, you may even use them to find your own, but you will have eventually to free yourself of them. That is what Nietzche meant when he said, ‘I have just read Schopenhauer, now I have to get rid of him.’ He knew how insidious other people’s ways could be, particularly those which have the forcefulness of profound experience, if you let them get between you and your own personal vision.”

I can take pictures that can resemble what Walker Evans did, but in the end, I wouldn’t be true to him and I wouldn’t be true to myself. I would be following a recipe instead of becoming a chef. In the end I realized I had to come up with my own list.

The modern-day equivalent for this list, in my case, is iPhoto. Pretty much all my pictures are in one iPhoto folder or another, but it is high time I reorganized. Obviously some of these titles will be shortened, and I may name a folder “The Hateful Stuff,” just because I like the sound of it.

Coca Cola Ghost Sign, Phillipsburg, NJ1. Signs (naturally). Neon, old, broken, ghost signs, evidence of the past.

Sunflower with Cobwebs2. Flowers. Dead or alive.

Diner Sign

3. What doesn’t belong.

Lackawanna Viaduct

4. The American road.

Long Point Barn

5. Barns, farm life, the decay of the old and what it looks like now.

Zion Church

6. Churches: the buildings, outside of the building. The evidence from outside the church of what can be expected inside.

The Movies

7. The Movies

Proud to be a Trump

8. The remnants of an American election.

Skaneateles Bakery

9. The good stuff.

The Struggle is Real

10. A lot else, you see what I mean.

Death of a Flower: Protea

For this series, I’ve been trying to find flowers that stay upright as long as possible. The idea of a drooping, wilted flower is really appealing at first, until you realize that, for the most part, wilted flowers pretty much look the same. I went with sunflowers, and loved the result. I started to look for more flowers with hearty stems, and one day, while at the nursery, I found something I didn’t know existed in nature.

Pincushion Protea, day 1Behold, the pincushion protea. They had two of them, and it didn’t take a second for me to decide that this would be my next subject. I saw the hearty stems, the strange, unearthly center and the curly tendrils on the outside, and I was entranced. This one pictured above also had these wonderful ribbon-like portions woven through it. I couldn’t wait to see what results this would bring.

Pincushion Protea, day 1, TwinsAt the nursery, the woman who checked us out lamented, “I love these. We don’t get them in that often. Unfortunately, they don’t last.”

I assured her that it wouldn’t be a problem.

Pincushion Protea, day 1I took this shot on day 1, and I loved the look of it, the almost mirror-like effect. So much so, I decided that for these flowers, I would shoot a similar shot during each session.

The woman at the nursery was quite right. By day 6, the pincushion proteas had already transformed.

Pincushion Protea, day 6The color had faded and the head had dropped. The beautiful extensions had become disorganized, like unruly hair. I was a bit concerned that the entire flower might just snap off, but it held firm. I carried on with the matching mirror shot—an amazing difference between the two.

Pincushion Protea, day 6I continued on through to day 10 with the proteas. I might have continued further, but the fact was, they had already become what they were to become.

Protea, day 10

As with all of the flowers I’ve used as subjects, the human qualities stood out, and deepened as the days passed. Their heads remained high, almost proud of what they had evolved into. The leaves became arms, spread out, almost as if to say “I’m here!”

Pincushion Protea, day 10

I was so happy with this last shot that I had a large version printed and now it hangs on our wall. Despite the fact that I don’t have another picture of what this looked like on the first day, it has a fascination all its own. Even if you don’t know what a pincushion protea looks like fresh, you can imagine it in your head, looking at this picture.

But just for reference, here’s what they look like, side by side.

Pincushion Protea, day 1Pincushion Protea, day 10

Here are some of the others in the Death of a Flower series:

Found: Seriously? Another Couch

“There’s another one around the corner,” Laura said.

Every smart answer I could think of flooded into my head. In this case, though, I knew what she was talking about. As you know, Allentown has been littered with old couches waiting to be picked up for the morning trash. This was the third in a month.

I strapped the camera around my shoulder and headed up the street. Laura had spotted it out of the corner of her eye, so she didn’t see that it was not one couch, but a loveseat jammed into a couch.

Couch on Couch CrimeSo, all tolled, we have had four sightings in The Season of the Couch. Stay tuned. I’ll probably find another one tomorrow.

Summers by the Lake: Remembering John Margolies

Last week, I saw an innocent little item Mod Betty had put on her Facebook page concerning the John Margolies collection that the Library of Congress put out recently. John Margolies passed away last year, and the LOC was providing those interested with a look at over 11,000 images he had taken over the years of roadside architecture and signage. The name seemed somewhat familiar, so I did what we all do, I went to Google with a bunch of questions about John Margolies, and they provided the necessary information on who he was, and examples of his work. The picture Google put next to the name stopped me dead in my tracks.

It was 1989. I saw an ad in the newspaper for a waiter position for a resort called Scott’s Oquaga Lake House. My only previous work experience had been a summer at McDonald’s, and I wasn’t prepared to go back to that, so I called the number on the ad and set up an interview. The place I was going was in Deposit, which was over 20 miles from my house, but this was truly a case of beggars not being able to be choosers. I needed a job, any job.

Scott’s Oquaga Lake House sounded like the perfect place for me to work, and in a lot of ways, it was. It was minimum wage, no tips, and I could stay in a room on the campus (for a fee) and eat my meals in the kitchen (for another fee). I could start right away, so I started right away. My first paycheck was upwards of 50 bucks all tolled.

Scott's Dining Room
Scott’s Dining Room, John Margolies

It was still early on in the season, so the dining room was about half-full at mealtime. Most of the early season visitors were elderly folks who had come down from Canada in a bus. Only one person really stood out, the man sitting alone near the salad bar. From first glance, you could tell there was something different about this guy. At the age I am now, I would recognize him as someone who is consistently observing, but then I couldn’t tell you anything about him.

Well, not completely true. I knew he always came alone, always came to stay for weeks at a time, and was very infrequently seen outside of mealtime. It’s possible that someone said that his name was John Margolies, but I didn’t remember. Someone said he was a photographer. One of the maids told me that he always taped the drapes shut when he came. Maybe he was using his room as an impromptu dark room? I thought at the time.

I never knew what kind of a photographer he was. I was 18 and lost in my own self too much to care about anyone else, so in all the times I waited on him, I never asked him.

Scott's Casino Interior
Scott’s Casino Interior, 1978, John Margolies

Scott’s was a throwback. Actually, that’s not necessarily true, Scott’s just hadn’t changed. The picture above was taken in 1978, but it could have been 1989, because it honestly looked the same. I was there for two seasons, and I left with more stories than I could possibly relate in the space of one blog post.


It’s fairly evident from the Library of Congress collection that during the summers of 1977 and 1978, John Margolies went to great number of Catskill resorts. Most of the pictures look like they may have been taken for brochures, with men and women seated around pools in bathing suits, lobby shots, pictures of the owners.  There are quite a few people in these shots, but when I read his New York Times obituary, this was what was said:

Shooting in color with a 35-millimeter Canon FT, he strove to capture his subjects in consistent attitude: unsentimentally, against a cloudless blue sky (for which he often had to wait), devoid of the visual irritants like people and cars.

Visual irritants such as people. The phrase stuck in my head. Certainly this wasn’t true for these pictures, but over the years, especially in the 1980’s, the New York Times description was dead on. Very consistently a blue sky, no people, all taken with the same camera, with the same transparency film.

Dutch Mill Motor Court
Dutch Mill Motor Court, Malta, NY, John Margolies

That was, until I kept looking at the Scott’s collection. Yes, there were plenty of shots of the lake, of various buildings, but then there was this one, of owner Ray Scott in his old car, taken during one of the summers I worked there:

Ray Scott
Ray Scott, by John Margolies

Scott’s meant something for John. It seems fairly evident, from the frequency he stayed there and the amount of pictures he took, that the place was a refuge for him. As I looked through this massive catalog, I felt bad that I never asked him about it when I had the chance.

The second year I was there, I got to be the staff photographer for the month or so before the actual staff photographer came in from California. I had no training at all. Ray basically handed me the camera and said the film goes in there and you press the little button to make the pictures happen. I could do that. The day before the tour buses were to go, I would drive in to Binghamton to get the pictures developed, hang around for a few hours and come back. Then they would tack the pictures to a billboard and the groups would come through and order as they saw fit.

The first group of pictures I took didn’t go over so well. Not that they weren’t good pictures, but in my training session, the question of what I should take pictures of never came up. Ray saw them, curled his lip, and growled something to the effect that I had taken pictures of nothing. That wasn’t especially true, but pictures of woods and flowers around the Scott’s Campus would hardly sell to people who were buying pictures of themselves. So I shrugged my shoulders and took pictures of the Canadians as they stood in large groups, and life continued.

Oquaga Lake
Oquaga Lake, John Margolies

I was relieved of my photographer duties in late May of that year and resumed the life of a lowly waiter. John Margolies continued to show up for weeks at a time, sitting at his solitary table, and socially, this is the extent of where our paths crossed.

A few months ago, I got a book to read for our trip to Japan, but I decided it would be more interesting if I spent the flight hurling into a bag. Long story. At any rate, the book, which I eventually read after gastric distress had passed, was Geoff Dyer’s The Ongoing Moment. One of the points of this book is the intersection of themes and subjects within photography, that some photographers, although they have never met in person, meet in their pictures. So as I went through the huge catalog of images, I wondered which ones we had in common.

The answer was: surprisingly few. Although he spent a great deal of time in the Northeast, as have I, the subjects he chose were, thankfully, recordings of signs and locations that are no longer with us. But some remain.

Red Robin Diner, 1988
Red Robin Diner, 1988, John Margolies

The Red Robin Diner is still in Johnson City. When I visited it in 2012, the white panels had yellowed considerably.

Red Robin

The Clam Box in Ipswich, Massachusetts has been one of my favorites for years. My parents have visited there as long as I have memory, so whenever I’m in the area, most likely you’ll find me there. John Margolies took this shot in the 80’s:

Clam Box
Clam Box, Ipswich, MA, John Margolies

The New York Times’ statement about devoid of the visual irritants like people and cars came to mind when I saw this. However, the shot I took in 2011, is more representative of what the experience is like:

Clam Box of IpswichSchell’s in Temple, PA, north of Reading, has been a mainstay. When I saw his shot, I was sad and a little disappointed that the extra features on the sign no longer exist.

Schell's
Schell’s, 2013
Schell's
Schell’s, John Margolies

Finally, I checked the collection for Wildwood, but one of the only ones to come up was Laura’s Fudge. Again, I thought it was a cool sign now, but back then, even cooler.

Laura's Fudge, Wildwood, NJ
Laura’s Fudge, 2014
Laura's Fudge, 1978, John Margolies
Laura’s Fudge, 1978, John Margolies

I’ll be going through some more in the coming weeks, I’m sure, but if you’re curious, here’s the link to the archive: loc.gov

I got to see a time on my life I never thought I would see again. All the pictures I took at Scott’s that spring of 1990 (I’m sure) made their way to the trash-heap just as soon as the Canadians pictured made it back to Canada. I’m so grateful to be able to remember these summers once more.

Scott's Show Boat, John Margolies
Scott’s Show Boat, John Margolies
Scott's Barn, John Margolies
Scott’s Barn, John Margolies