Pops

This is one of the NYC street photos in my files.  I just selected it at random.  It is an unusual street photo, I think, in its proximity to the subject.  It is more portrait than street.  And I have tons of them.  They are very impressive printed large--32"x24".  I can envision a gallery full of them, huge portraits of strangers walking by.  I find the unengaged human face fascinating.  I was influenced by Mark Cohen I am sure, but he was more aggressive in his photos as he often used a flash.  I didn't disturb the subject in any way, so all the faces are lost in thoughts. . . of what, we'll never know.  

Yesterday, I met a real character.  I had to go to the paint store to buy the little liners for the paint tray.  When I walked in, there was man in a tank top waiting for his paint to be mixed.  I joked with the guy behind the counter that I should have bought two of the liners yesterday.  The man in the tank top said, "They come in handy."  

I smiled. 

He was a thick boned guy, thick all over.  He was broad in the shoulders slathered in mature fat that hid what was an obvious physical power.  He looked at me out of the corners of his small eyes made smaller by squinting and the thickness of his skull.  His head bobbed and weaved as he spoke through thin, tight lips that curled in a provocative smile.  He was eyeing me up, being friendly in a way I was familiar with from growing up in a bad neighborhood with some very brutal people.  He was the kind of guy who would walk into a bar in Texas saying "steers and queers" for the hell of it.  

I smiled.  

"Yesterday I watched a young guy hitting the bag in his backyard.  I noticed he kept dropping his right hand.  He looked at me and asked me if I wanted to spar and I said sure.  When he dropped his right, I caught him good and set him back about four feet on his ass."

He said all this like he was telling me what he had for breakfast.  But when he illustrated throwing his punch, I noticed he bent his knees a came up with a twist of the hips.  Yea, he knew how to throw a punch.  

"Wow.  Gloves or were you just bare knuckles?"

"Just these," he said making a fist.  "I asked the kid how he liked getting knocked down by an eighty year old."

"Impressive.  Were you a fighter?"

"I fought Golden Gloves when I was at Ohio State.  I lost to this big black guy, Cleveland Williams.  He was taller than me and I thought I could go under him, but he caught me and won the fight."

"Cleveland 'Big Cat' Williams?!?"

That seemed to irritate him a bit . 

"No, Cleveland Williams.  We went out and had some beers after that.  He was a good guy.  The next time we fought, I beat him."

"That accent doesn't sound like Ohio."

"I grew up in Cincinnati."

"Sounds more like Kentucky, maybe."

"I was born in Kentucky." 

"That's some pretty bad boys down there."

"There's bad boys everywhere," he said.  

"Yea, but I have some cousins from Kentucky meaner than hell.  If there is nobody else around to fight, they fight each other."

"I went down to Looavul--Looavul, not Louisville, with a friend of mine.  We walked into the bar and he said straight off, 'You know the difference between a pretty woman and an ugly woman?  There ain't nothing but ugly women here.'  And the fight broke out.  And when it was over, we all sat down to drink together and everyone was friends."

"My uncle was a boxing promoter in Dayton."  

He nodded and was quiet for a minute.  Then he said, "I was signed up for the Marines.  When I went down to Paris Island for training, I got drunk the night before and shot somebody.  I did five years for that," he said looking at me out of the corners of his slitted eyes.  "I was in the prison in Huntsville, Texas.  That was a very rough place.  Somebody dies there every day, but you never hear about it."

"I guess you tough in there," I said.  We were outside now and he was getting into his van with the painted advertising on the side.  He was an eighty year old ex-boxer, ex-con bad boy still working hard for a living.  And I believed what he said.  He could still knock a man out.  There were some twisted genes in there somewhere that made him what he was.  

I held out my hand and said, "My name's C.S."

He took it without much enthusiasm and said, "I'm Pops."  

"Maybe I'll see you around. . . ."  

He was the kind of guy I was familiar with growing up,  a guy always looking for trouble, and he knew how to find it.  

I take my mom to the doctor this morning.  God knows what will happen there.  It is with her primary care physician, and the two of them do not get along very well.  I'll have my work cut out for me, I'm sure.  The carpenter is continuing his work today. The price is rising.  He put back the washer and dryer in the little cubby and I painted the shelves, but that is all I could manage.  My nerves are bad now, and when I asked him how much he would charge to paint the house, he kind of winced and said. . . "It would be a lot.  There is a lot of prep work to do."  He wasn't encouraging.  I may have to do it myself, and I can, but climbing a ladder to paint the second floor apartment scares me now.  That's a horrible admission, but I'm already broken badly.  I don't like ladders in the first place.  Thinking about all the work I have to do on this old wooden house put me over.  I did what I could do and collapsed.  

Still, I had to make dinner for mom.  She didn't eat much.  She went to bed early, then, a bit later, so did I.  

I'm trying to calm my nerves, trying to find something to give me peace.  Debussy on guitar seems to help a bit.