We
came like the buffalo, in 1957, we families of engineers grunting across
America in station wagons full of kids, all heading for California and the new
green lands of the military industrial complex. Coming from places like New Jersey, Philadelphia, the
District of Columbia, we were off to see L.A.,
where your neighbor was always a cowboy and the girl next door a starlet. It was the Great Adventure, an
entire life's worth of memories, lasting through old age. But being California, it only counted
if you had a Bell and Howell Super 8 Movie Camera, with full motion and stop
action features.
Mom
bought Dad his Bell and Howell the Christmas we arrived. It was a foot-sized gray
metal box with a winder and an amber viewfinder with crosshairs on it like a
smart bomb. In the next twenty
years, Dad chalked up 25,328 feet of film, covering 142 holidays, 36 birthdays,
12 visits to the horse back rides, 17 trips to Disneyland, 246 picnics, and at
least one trip to every Park and Monument that the National Geographic Society
put in their magazine. Now and
then, he complained bitterly about the high cost of film, but somehow he always
found a way.
Each
of us had our own reactions to being filmed. Mom waved and blinked.
Teresa did her model's walk, complete with coy smile and hair pat. I posed like Napoleon. Mary ran up to the camera fast, waved
her arms frantically, like a tree in a high wind, and ran away. Finally the Three Little
Boys--JohnTomandMike--all did the same dance, which was not quite a wiggle, nor
a writhe, but somewhere in between.
It almost always started with a vaudevillian hop, then moved to a hoochy
kooch, then inevitably to a punch, and then to a full out brawl.
Here
are some shots: us in the
Sequoias, mugging before a number of large and very old trees; us at the Grand
Tetons and more trees--the scene shifts suddenly, Dad leans across the car, one
hand on the wheel , to take a shot while driving; all we later see is the
windwing, a few rocks blurring past, and in the distance, the vague white sense
of a mountain; us at the shore, Mom waves and blinks, Teresa does the model
walk, I do Napoleon, Mary waves her arms, JohnTomMike pummel each other. In the middle of a trip to Yellowstone,
Dad discovers the stop action feature.
Instead of frozen portraits of happy faces, we see a torrent of stills
rushing psychedelically by, and we like viewers of modern art, are dumbfounded.
In
1964, we prepared ourselves for our first trip to the Grand Canyon. We had already seen Yellowstone--we
rolled up the windows and made faces at the bears while Mom said
"Shoo! Shoo!" to the
bears and made brushing motions with her hand. The year after that we drove to Yosemite; I had brought 50
feet of cotton clothesline for my ascent up El Capitan. Dad quickly used it to pitch the tent,
so I was spared. All the while the
camera was churning away. But it
was not until '64 and the trip to the Canyon that Dad discovered the Great Pan.
It
happened like this. We were all
standing on the south rim. Mom was
telling us all to stay back from the edge. I was doing my best to get as close to the edge as
possible. The Canyon was so wide,
so deep, so grand! But the Bell and Howell Super 8 Movie
Camera didn't have a wide angle lens.
Dad had come up next to me and was shaking his head.
"How
do I get it all in," he
said.
"Do
like in the movies," I said while trying to throw a rock all the way to
the bottom and only half paying attention.
"Yeah,"
Dad said, nodding with determination.
"Yeah!" He had to get it all in. What was the use of coming to the Grand
Canyon if you couldn't get it all in.
The high cost of film was no longer a consideration. So started the Great Pan, nearly
half a roll of film. It started on
the extreme right, long before there was anything worth seeing, focusing on a
blue Dodge convertible in the
parking lot. Some guy we'd never
see again walked past carrying a six pack of beer. Then, it moved slowly leftward, stopping once at Mary, who
ran up to the camera fast and waved, then went on, soaking in the buff colored
rocks, the steamkettle clouds, the blue blue sky. It stopped again at Teresa doing her model's walk, then
moved on up the Colorado River, indiscernably picking up speed as it went. Grand visions are grand visions. Courage is courage. Dad had plenty of grand visions, but
when it came to the high cost of film, not much courage. The Great Pan picked up more speed as
Dad realized how much money was
passing with each whir of the shutter.
By the time he arrived at the extreme leftward side of the Canyon and
started back, he was racing, trying to get it all in with the least possible
cost.
Whenever
we are all together, sooner or later the home movies come out, and sooner or
later, we clamor to see the Great Pan.
Dad winces, sighs, puts it on.
It starts out all right--a Dodge, a man with a six-pack of beer, a few
feet of the Canyon. Then it speeds
up, the world blending together like a warp drive on a bad Science Fiction
movie. The trees, the crags, the
buttes, the family all blur together, until everyone in the room is closing
their eyes and looking away, seasick.
"Put
on the one where Teresa does her model's walk," Mary says.
Teresa
hides her face.