{"id":4427,"date":"2021-04-11T10:28:37","date_gmt":"2021-04-11T17:28:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/?p=4427"},"modified":"2021-04-11T12:10:56","modified_gmt":"2021-04-11T19:10:56","slug":"cecil-b-my-father","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/archives\/4427","title":{"rendered":"Cecil B. My Father"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The person who makes a success of living is the one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly.<\/em> Cecil B. DeMille<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the time I was a wee lad, and no doubt before I was born, my\nfather insisted there was no difference in quality between the cheapest\nsomething and the more expensive versions of that something. I have no idea where\nhe got this cockamamie idea, but it shaped his life in many ways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He bought a series of the absolute cheapest gas-powered lawn\nmowers to use on the high grass in our orchard, and all these mowers were not\nonly ineffective against the grass, but broke irreparably within a year or two,\ntheir carcasses piled in an enclosure near the house intended for firewood and\neventually leaving no room for anything but the carcasses. When I cleaned out\nthis enclosure shortly before my father died, I found nineteen of these dead\ncruddy mowers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When my father was in his forties, he decided it would be fun and\ngood exercise to commute to his office by bicycle a few times a week, a distance\nof three miles. He bought the absolute cheapest bicycle he could find, made the\nround trip once, and found the going so difficult and unpleasant, he never rode\nthe bike again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When his trusty Karmann Ghia needed replacing, he read about Fiats\nin Consumer Reports<\/em>, which\nrecommended only one model of Fiat, and that one with reservations. But when my\nfather went to the dealership, he bought the cheapest model available, one that\nConsumer Reports<\/em> declared a disaster,\nand lo Consumer Reports<\/em> was right on.\nThat automotive mess cost thousands a year in repairs and fixes that could never\novercome the inherent flaws of the poorly designed machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creation is a drug I can\u2019t do\nwithout.<\/em> Cecil B. DeMille<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was sixteen, my father took my mother, my younger brother, my older sister, and me to Europe\u2014the only time I\u2019ve ever been. My father wanted to attend a psychiatric convention in Edinburgh in August and my mother insisted he take her and three of the four kids along, my eldest sister refusing to go. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In anticipation of our grand expedition, my father purchased a Super-8\nmovie camera, by far the cheapest one he could find (despite the grave warnings\nin Consumer Reports<\/em>) because \u201cthey\u2019re\nall the same.\u201d And because he waited, as was his habit, until the very last\nminute to buy the camera, he did not shoot a test roll of film before we\nembarked. He also bought a chintzy little editing system with the intention of\nputting together a masterwork commemorating our European adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We flew from San Francisco to New York and from there to Shannon\nAirport in Ireland. We then spent two days crammed inside a miniscule rental\ncar driving across Ireland to Dublin, during which journey we were almost\nkilled several times because my father kept driving on the wrong side of the\nroad. We then spent two lovely days in Dublin before flying to Glasgow from\nwhere we drove across the Scottish Highlands, crammed into another tiny rental\ncar, to Edinburgh where we spent a happy week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And all along our way, every chance he had, my father zealously deployed his new camera, often going to dangerous lengths to get just the right angle for his shots of us gawking at castles and lochs and statues and fountains, as well as scenes of Irish and Scottish people and their adorable houses and farms and photogenic ruins\u2014each roll of film giving my father three minutes of footage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In Edinburgh we were encamped at Mrs. Covey\u2019s Boarding House, and\nwhile my father attended his convention, we roamed about without him and his\nmovie camera, and we were glad. Mrs. Covey took a liking to me and every day spoke\nto me at length, though I understood nothing of what she said, except one time\nI caught the name Kennedy<\/em> in the\nwaterfall of her Scottish English, though I knew not whether she was speaking of\nthe deceased president or her neighbor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Edinburgh we took the train to London, a mode of travel I\nfound vastly preferable to flying or driving with my father who was forever\nslamming on the brakes and jumping out of our itsy bitsy rental cars to film\nsomething he thought would go well in his impending opus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we spent ten glorious days in London and I went to fabulous plays every night, sometimes with my family, sometimes with my sister, sometimes all by myself because I was sixteen and practically a grownup. In 1966 excellent plays abounded in London, and all<\/em> British actors were fantastic compared to any American actors I\u2019d ever seen. And you could get tickets at the door a few minutes before curtain and sit in great seats close to the stage for just a few dollars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1966 was also the year the Beatles came out with Revolver<\/em>, and I purchased two copies of\nthe British edition of the album (that had more songs than the American edition)\nto take home and wow my music-loving friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And every day my father shot many rolls of film\u2014our suitcases\noverflowing with the little round plastic canisters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we flew from London across the channel to muggy, filthy, glorious\nParis for ten days, and I had lots of time away from my folks, thank God. We\nstayed in an old hotel called the Hotel Moliere, and many mornings I would bid\nmy family adieu and head out into the unknown with my French vocabulary of\ntwenty words. My sister, fluent in French, sometimes consented to go adventuring\nwith me, and she would speak for us at cafes where the food was inexpensive and\ndelicious and our taciturn French hosts would become sweet and friendly when\nthe American girl spoke such beautiful French.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Versailles my father shot many rolls of film, and at Chartres he\nshot two rolls just<\/em> of the\nstained-glass windows. And everywhere we went he risked life and limb to get the\ndramatic shots he wanted for his impending masterwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our last stop in Europe was Amsterdam and way too much Van Gogh.\nThe highlight of Amsterdam for me was wandering around in the red light\ndistrict at dusk and seeing the prostitutes sitting in their windows, knitting\nor playing cards in their scanty outfits, waiting for horny customers to ring\ntheir bells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was an airline strike at the time of our European sojourn,\nand only American Airlines was flying from Europe to America. As we were about\nto board our homeward flight, my father was nowhere to be found. My hysterical mother\nsent me into the vast duty-free market to find him, and after a frantic search\nI found him far from the boarding area standing at a magazine stall flipping\nthrough Popular Mechanics<\/em>. We then\nran to the jet where my mother was throwing a crying fit to hold the plane for\nmy unapologetic father. The stewardesses and captain were furious with us, but\nwe made it aboard and took off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lastly we flew from New York to San Francisco, but not before my\nfather shot roll after roll from atop the Empire State building and in the\ncolorful hubbub of Times Square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Home at last, my father had those hundred-some three-minute rolls\nof film developed, set the first roll on the viewer of his chintzy editing\nmachine, cranked the film through the little viewer, and thrilled to see his\nopening shot. And then there was nothing more on the roll until the last few\nseconds when images appeared again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was true of all the rolls of film he\u2019d hung from bell towers, so to speak, to shoot. A few seconds of imagery at the start, a second or two of imagery at the end. Did he throw the film away and admit that perhaps there was<\/em> a difference in quality between the cheapest something and the more expensive versions of that something? Nay. He edited all those tiny fragments together and created a title shot (after he got the camera repaired, sort of) of a piece of paper on which he wrote in sloppy cursive Our Trip To Europe<\/em>\u2014his movie a five-minute fever dream of tiny fragments he projected on the living room wall one time and never again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A year later, he made another movie while on a Sierra Club base\ncamp trip in the Wind River Range in Wyoming. And this time the thrice-repaired\ncamera actually captured images on the film. However, being a profoundly crummy\ncamera, the colors were wonky. Everything green came out turquoise, lakes and\nrivers were pinkish, and human skin was a hideous orange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet from this nauseating color blend he pieced together a movie\nand showed it to a gathering of people who had been at the base camp. The movie\nwas ostensibly about a girl who doesn\u2019t want to go on a trip into the mountains,\nbut she eventually falls in love with the majesty of the oddly colored wilderness.\nThe film starred my sister for the first half, but then she quit the production\nand my father found another girl at the base camp to star in the second half,\nwhich was confusing since this other girl looked nothing like my sister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best part of the film was the beginning. My sister runs across\nan expanse of sand and trips and falls, and as the camera tracks beyond her, we\nsee scratched in the wet sand The Trip<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father never used the movie camera again, and for the rest of\nhis life continued to buy the cheapest one of everything he ever bought because\nhe knew, as a person who knew everything, there was no difference in quality\nbetween the cheapest something and a more expensive version of that something. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

fin<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not So Sure<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The person who makes a success of living is the one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. Cecil B. DeMille From the time I was a wee lad, and no doubt before I was born, my father insisted there was no difference in quality between the cheapest something and the more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6632,6631,6046,6622,6623,6626,6628,6630,6625,6627,9,6629,33],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4427"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4427"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4433,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4427\/revisions\/4433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}