Children and props make for Happy Valentine’s Day photos. I made these photos about 34 years ago. They’re two of my favorites, even without the “artsy” effects.
Happy Valentine's Day
in holiday
holiday
The case of the missing turkey
The photograph shows my brother Kevin standing in awe of me, the master engineer and painter, painting our toybox red, one hand in my pocket, and not a drop of paint on my clothes.
Or my brother stood there thinking, "What BS, we didn't ask for a toybox, and if we did, it certainly wouldn't be fire-engine red! And who lets a 5-year-old paint in his street clothes? And, what about that hat?"
Anyway, a few weeks later, the day before Thanksgiving, the toybox became the temporary home of a half-frozen, 12-pound turkey corpse.
Turkey moocher Hairy. It was his first mug shot and last turkey, as far as I know. This was also one of my first photographs.
My mother started her day by placing the frozen turkey to thaw in the kitchen sink. In the early afternoon, she dragged my brother and me to the grocery store. We lived in Hastings Ranch at the time, so stores were not exactly close by. But I can’t imagine being gone for more than an hour.
When we returned, the turkey was missing. My mother was dumbfounded. Had someone stolen her turkey?
She couldn’t believe Hairy, our 8-pound cat, could drag a 12-pound frozen turkey out of the sink, across the house, into our bedroom, into our closet, then up into the toy box. But there is no other explanation (my brother neither confirmed nor denied his involvement). And the cat had nothing to say about it.
There’s not much more to the story than that. And while I can't remember the details, if I were to guess, my mom cooked the turkey, didn't wash our toys, and I started losing my hair at 18.
Hairy lived on till he was 13 or 14. I don’t know what happened to the toy box.
On the third day of Christmas
Three days after Christmas, we go to PetSmart at Delta Shores in south Sacramento to pick up supplies for the animals. In the parking lot, a Tesla BLARES Christmas music. An older gray-haired fellow whose countenance resembles Quint from the film "Jaws" records the event with his phone.
We watched for a moment while the great white's headlights flashed in time with the music (see embedded video from another Tesla fan, minute 5). As the song progressed, the windows and trunk started opening and closing with the tune. A few other people stop to record the event. While this is going on, Stephan jokes, "That's a horrible car alarm."
Finally, the song finishes and the car stops flexing. Quint notices me. Like a shark, he circles over to begin a conversation. He's the car's owner.
Knowing that I am the flame that attracts all the world's kooks, Stephan and Fabienne quickly make their getaway into the store. I'm used to it. So I wait to see what this is all about.
I introduce myself, wearing a mask, with Stephan's joke. "That's one heck of a car alarm!"
Not amused, he says, "That's not the car alarm." I guess he didn't see me smile.
He began to Teslasplain the technology involved. "Yada yada yada downloads, yada yada yada Canada, yada yada yada 2021, yada yada yada 30,000 miles, etc." In my head, I'm asking him, "Does it do meatloaf?" To which he’d reply by playing “Bat Out of Hell” or some such tune out of the car’s tires.
In the end, we parted on good terms, probably because I didn't confuse him with my thoughts about his car being a toaster oven and probably because I didn't iPhonesplain that the best car-porn videos are shot horizontally.
Happy New Year!