The Photograph—Updated, with an Additional Photo
I’ve just been re-introduced to my childhood self after a separation of nearly a half-century.
While I was living a busy, but tightly circumscribed, life in California going to junior high school, playing Little League baseball, and camping with the Boy Scouts, my self — or more precisely, my image — joined that of my childhood best friend and traveled the world. It was even viewed by millions during one of the iconic events of the 20th century.
And then, as I grew into adulthood and began my own explorations into the bigger world, my image retreated to the hermetic world of an envelope in a desk drawer … only to emerge decades later, almost magically, at the very moment I lost my final connection to our shared childhood.
My mother died last July after a long and remarkable life. I gave her eulogy to a large crowd at the museum that had been my late father’s dream, and for which my mother had been both a volunteer and the largest benefactor. I turned that eulogy into this column, which was picked up by across the Web and carried by blogs around the world. I also sent copies with the announcement to my mother’s long list of friends and family.
One of those notes went to Scott Christopher, the noted photographer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Scott and I had been best friends as boys in Falls Church, Virginia, and my mom had been like a second mother to Scott. In the intervening decades, she had done a much better of job than me of keeping in touch with Scott — so I knew that the news would affect him deeply.
I wasn’t surprised when, a few weeks later, Scott sent a touching note offering his condolences. But I was surprised — indeed, stunned speechless — by the image on the other side of the note: It was a photograph of Scott and me, deep in conversation, sitting on a fence at what appeared to be a farm. We looked to be about age eight.
This was no weekend snapshot taken with the family Instamatic. This was a professional photograph, with beautifully saturated colors, tonal balancing only a darkroom could achieve, and a composition that bore the mark of a master photographer. The instant I saw the image, I knew who took it: Frank Christopher, Scott’s dad.
Frank Christopher — “Cheetah,” we later called him — was the most eccentric, and intriguing, figure in my neighborhood. The housing development was called “Pine Springs,” and we arrived in 1957 after my father’s Air Force intelligence career had taken us from Germany (where I was born) to Spokane, Washington, and finally to an old government office building located where the Air & Space Museum now stands. Pine Springs was a new development of modest homes with interesting modernist architecture that stood on the edge of a seemingly endless forest stretching north and west to Tysons Corner (then just a gas station and road house) and beyond.
Scott and I played and explored in that forest. We caught turtles and crayfish, built forts, and brought home jars of tadpoles that would inevitably surprise us by turning into a chaos of tiny frogs in the garage and house. When we weren’t being Tom and Huck, Scott and I played in pick-up football and baseball games, or just took off on journeys by ourselves that no 21st century suburban child would ever be allowed to do. When Scott wasn’t at my house, I was at his, and when we were apart we still found a way to connect — including a tin can phone with a 300 foot string.
It was, as Scott has written, “truly magical.” It began the moment the school bell rang and continued until we were ordered inside from the growing darkness — and often not even then.
Into this self-contained little world, where an entire day could be spent looking for four-leaf clovers or attacking a huge wasp’s nest or damming a rain-choked street gutter, adults only made brief … and mostly unwelcome … appearances. My father, like most of the other dads, awoke to a cough and the click of a Zippo lighter, a quick breakfast, then was off in our ’48 Jeepster or big-finned ’57 Chrysler in his brown suit and skinny tie to the “office” — only to return in the early evening, pour himself a cocktail, and, after dinner, fall asleep in the Eames chair while watching Huntley and Brinkley.
But Scott’s dad was different. I would sometimes see Frank Christopher, still lying in bed in the afternoon, watching movies on a black & white TV with a busted vertical hold. Or he was off playing golf in the middle of the day. But then, other times, he would disappear for several weeks at a time, his departure a flurry of activity. I knew that he carried a camera with him, but I don’t remember him ever taking a photograph. And when I did see one of his prints — “Strike Three,” a 1959 photo of Scott in oversized hand-me-downs taking a mighty hack which was one of the most honored images ever taken of childhood sports — I completely missed the artistry and laughed at the fact that Scott had missed the ball.
Really nice read I enjoyed it. Great Photography. You were lucky to be exposed to what I take away as positive experiences in your young life. Frank had ‘spoke well’ in this photo. There “are” many zig-zags in life and
although it sometimes seems like an ‘uphill’ battle, if we have faith and courage, we usually come out on the other side a much wiser, stronger and better person for it.
Michael,
Thanks for sharing that amazing story of friendship and freedom that many of us experienced growing up in the 60s and 70s. You capture the essence with your well-crafted words framed by the photo of two boys sitting on a fence. I often wonder if my three kids will have the relationships and pleasures of times less organized and safer found in years gone by.
Mr. Malone, thanks for a wonderful, poignant recollection of your childhood, a great friendship, simply adorable memories, and for sharing all with us!
May God bless you, your friends and your families.
Mr. Malone:
A boyhood in Virginia is better than a lifetime almost anywhere else.
Amen! If only for the rich and proud history that was taught in Va. schools. It’s nearly nonexistent in Tenn.
Nice balance of the two haystacks at the top of the picture against the two boys at the bottom of the picture. It repeats the symbolic narrative of two friends huddled in friendship at different points along the journey. Perhaps the father photographer was telling the son to never let this friendship go and it could be as rich in the latter years as it was in the early years.
Beautiful story!
A great story and a great photo!
What picture(s)..??
You are bound to hear from my husband…Frank Christopher was a friend of his. Your story will bring back lots of memories for him. We have a copy of the baseball picture hanging in the office downstairs. Beautifully written, good to know how Scott turned out!
Beautiful. I sat and thought long and hard after reading this, thinking of my childhood friends. Thank you.
Michael, Thank you so much …
I played second base long Scottie ( the hawk) at Maryland!
I am sure you know the story of why His Dad nicknamed him the “Hawk”
Great to hear about your friendship with him and what he is doing these days!!..
I grew up in Richmond Va and am proud to say I had childhood friends like this,,,,, it reminds me of the movie Stand BY ME…… the true friends you make when you are 9, 10 ,11, 12,,, are so true honest relationships..
Doug Daniel
ddaniel613@aol.com
I have written a book on my childhood in Evansville, IN, during WWII to which my Dad and his brother had gone as Marines, and my mother’s brother in the Army Air Force. I was raised in a neighborhood such as these described above, playing baseball in the trucking company lot on week ends with a stick and lump of coal and later real bats, balls and gloves; playing hopscotch and kick the can; roller skating with skate keys hung around our neck on a string on the grocery store front sidewalk a wonderfully smooth patch of cement; telling ghost stories in the back yard with a flashlight under a tent made from a sheet, so scared you couldn’t close your eyes after you went up to your room. I am now in the care of Hospice, and a dear friend from those halcyon days is coming to visit. We were next door neighbors and went to school together and told each other secrets I would not reveal to this day under pain of torture. God bless those days and my ability to remember them so fondly.
Definitely a bit of nostalgic memories. I was born in 1951, and as kids we did a lot of things (even in a city environment) that I don’t think today’s kids ever experienced. We were outdoors most of the year, no grown ups watching over us. We played football in the street and learned to get out of the way of cars, played on the “Vacant Lot” (capitals intended, that was the way we referred to it)down the street and even trespassed on federal property in the woods. We hunted rats at the dump with single shot .22s and climbed over wrecked aircraft in a dump at the South end of Bolling Field (when it was still active). We had a lot of fun and didn’t realize that we were not well off.
Wow! You really brought me back to my blessed childhood growing up in the fifties and sixties. Summer days and best friends; do such things exist any more? You are more than a technology writer.
Very nice, and reminiscent of my childhood in Montgomery county Maryland. What a place and time to grow up in – we were very fortunate.
Does anyone have a link to the “Strike Three” photo?
Link to the photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/anythreewords/4443582426/
This photo was taken By David Gallagher on March 17, 2010 in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA, US, using a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi.
I doubt this is the correct link.
Wonderful story. I can relate. My uncle, the family shutterbug, took a great photo of my sister and me at ages 3 and 4, on our grandpa’s front porch swing, engrossed in conversation. Those days were precious indeed.
i don’t have a picture of me playing sports as a kid, despite my 40 work week at it. i give pictures away from my kids games. hope the digital image is seen 40 years hence to help remember like a petite madeleine.
the power of images is awesome. thank you for a wonderful remembrance
Memories of my last summer in Burlington, Mass., before we moved to Jacksonville, Fl., in 1966 kept flashing through my mind as I read your beautifully written essay. Our life on Leopold Street was as idyllic as any kid could ask for and though I have not seen my neighborhood buddies since that afternoon when we left for Florida, there have been countless times in the intervening years that I have closed my eyes and thought of those days and I am forever eleven years old playing little league baseball at the park and pick up sandlot baseball down by the bowling alley, swimming in our small above ground pool and camping out in the backyard, catching turtles and bull frogs at Murray’s pond, picking wild blackberries and bringing them home for mom to make muffins for the gang, playing hop scotch, kickball, dodgeball in the street and croquet in the front yard, hiking through the woods where wandering minds and spirits could spend a whole afternoon exploring and only travel a few blocks and after supper going for bike rides until the street lights came on signaling it was time to head home where we had to play in the yard until it was time to come inside. For the life of me, I just don’t think it could have been any better and I have never doubted those moments were real and with the passage of time more precious and sweet.
Thank you Frank Christopher for having the presence of mind to capture that moment of light and time which would touch countless souls and you Michael for sharing Frank’s humanistic masterpiece of photography.
Great story and picture, Mike. At age 94 I spend a lot of time thinking of my childhood. Recently I have been sending one of my daughters a lot of notes about things that happened in my life. One day she will put them all together. Memories are a wonderful thing; especially in the middle of the night when I lay awake for 2 or 3 hours just thinking.edna
I am very fortunate to still, at age 73, to have an ongoing relationship with my childhood “best friend”. We live in adjacent states, and are able to meet each other in the City once a month or so.
But I do have something to add to the “nostalgia thing” in the story and the comments. I think we tend to romanticize our childhoods and to mentally edit out the bad memories. I’ve heard it said that “Anyone who carries on about how happy they were as teenagers, doesn’t remember Algebra”. At age 73, semi-retired, with two beautiful grandchildren and my wife of 42 years at my side, I am happier now than I ever was when I was younger.
1. I don’t obsess about what others think about me.
2. I don’t carry on relationships that I don’t enjoy.
3. I don’t allow anyone to send me on a guilt trip.
4. I eat when I’m hungry, drink when I’m dry and sleep when I’m tired.
5. I don’t have the compulsive desire to “get ahead” or compete.
6. I don’t worry about anything. “Que Sera, Sera”.
Although I enjoyed my childhood, more or less, it was nowhere near what I have now.
Imagine a world where boys get their very own fishing pole at about six and a .22 rifle at about ten. Imagine taking your quarter allowance and going down to the local market to purchase a cup of night crawlers, two Baby Ruths and two Nehis and going to the stock pond with your one and only best friend to fish. You’ll be gone literally all day. Your parents are not worried about you because you were safe in those days. Whether or not you catch any fish is irrelavent. When you get tired of fishing, there’s skipping rocks, climbing trees, swimming, catching snakes or any number of “boy” things to do that are infinitely fascinating. When you get home after dark, you realize you are famished and mom has something ready for you to eat. Then it’s bath, bed and do it again tomorrow for three whole luxurious months of summer!
Just thinking about what my own son will never have is enough to make me cry.
A touching article, and it brought back memories of my own boyhood on James Island, SC. and my childhood best friend.
I too played baseball as a kid, but didn’t go anywhere with the sport. I wasn’t very good at it though I enjoyed it a great deal. So, the mention of the Frank Christopher baseball image that’s so iconic without a link to see a small replica of it, is little frustrating, unless i missed something.
Please someone post a link to it, Google image search came up dry for it…
John Mood
That was a time when boys were allowed to be boys and girls were allowed to be girls. And both sexes learned how to be adults by spending much of their time alone with other children (sometimes even outdoors!); learning how to cope, working out friendships and conflicts without minute-by-minute adult-controlled scripts and supervision…just like life had been for millenia. After 15 or so years of it, young peole were ready to marry, raise families and, a rare few, to invent the future. It seemed to work out pretty well for a couple of hundred years.
Last night in a restaurant, I was struck by a young man with an attractive young girl eating at a table a few yards away. They didn’t speak. The man was intent on his cell phone, spending 90% of his time texting away; the young woman likewise. Not, I suspected, to each other.
Other than the fact that the young man had shorter hair and was bigger, they both might both have been women. I call it Facebook America; where women are women, and men are women too. In this America, men don’t solve problems, and women don’t raise families; but for both sexes, the outlets to exchange inanities and whine to hundreds of other inane whiners are limitless.
I sure hope Mr Malone spots this and reads it as it combines so nicely with his beautiful story that our whole family enjoyed. It was like watching a great movie.
This summer I drove to my childhood neighborhood, stood by the river we spent many a summer day and wept. But as Mr Malone stated at the same time I was so happy that I experienced such freedom and adventure.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703959104576082434187716252.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_lifeStyle#articleTabs%3Darticle
Thank you for sharing your touching story, Mr. Malone. I think the lesson here is that paradise is never truly lost; it lives on within us, ready to be re-experienced and shared anew. Here’s hoping your story will prompt others to look within for their paradises, too.
Very touching. It brought tears to my eyes. Not for my childhood memories and friends (which were the idyllic 60s/70s style), but for the childhood and friendship my boys are lucky to have.
The best thing that could have happened to us as parents is one thing we couldn’t have planned – the boy across the street became their best friend. He came over to watch a movie last night and is still here after a day of sledding and a snowball fight and some made up games in the basement. The three are now teenagers (13 – 15) and head out on bikes in the summer. Swim in the river with other friends. Built the goofiest go-kart out of PVC. When we go to Maine to visit friends, we take all three and they sleep in the loft in the barn. Yes, things have changed since we were young, but the magic of best friends is still alive.
Bonus is we have found that having a true best friend across the street has kept the social networking friends at a lower priority. No need for playdates or scheduling. Less drama. It’s the best thing that ever happened to us as parents.
What an amazing piece. There is a quality about some little boys that transcends time and place. Many of his descriptions fit perfectly my childhood relations with friends fifty years ago. In a world seemingly gone crazy, this story is an oasis. Thanks.
From the opening paragraph I was instantly taken back in time…I have all of my elementary school class photographs with everyone standing or sitting at attention (or something resembling that) with a freshly starched shirt and bow-tie, or cowboy tie, or neatly ironed dress…every now and them I drag out the old photograph album that my late mother meticulously maintained for me, and my children I assume, and look at the photographs…my childhood immediately returns in a flash…I feel better, but am saddened that those times indeed are gone….just like the fence in the photograph life and time moves on…you may not know where it will take you but the journey becomes your life…yes, I too wish I were still sitting on a fence somewhere with childhood friends!
“The neighborhood was silent and asleep … except for a little face in a distant window: Scott crying and waving good-bye.” How terribly poignant. I suspect this beautifully written sentence evokes deeply touching memories in most boys, now men. Probably girls too although they seem to live more congenially with their emotions.
Hi Everyone:
I’m very pleased to see such a strong and personal response to this column. The piece has also been picked up all over the blogosphere. In response to your requests, I’ve contacted Scott and he is having a .jpg created of “Strike Three”, which until now has never appeared on the Internet. As soon as I get it, I’ll post it at the end of the column.
Best,
Mike Malone
Beautiful column, extraordinary photo. Life is beautiful at any age (at least up to 62 by my own personal experience); but it doesn’t get any better than it was be at 6 and 8 and 10 in the 1950′s. Sure, we forget the day we arrived at school to realize we had forgotten to do that part of our homework owed to our toughest teacher. And we forget the details of the day we had to be rushed to the hospital. But the rest. . .
Mr. Malone,
You don’t know me, probably wouldn’t have reason to or miss not. Just an anonymous reader, someone who will never really rise to your level or notoriety and fame (yes you have that, we are reading and writing to you after all). I would like to think you do enjoy having your work really touch people and make a difference. I am sure that it does, at least for me. I read your story with my best friend in mind. We have traveled different roads together if that makes any sense. We talk maybe every month or so. He took care of my parents after I left home to join the military. Buried both my folks, I came home to carry his Dad’s casket after Basic Training. We were closer than most brothers, and still are. We don’t get to see each other as often as we would like, caught in this whirlwind of life just trying to stay one step ahead. Your article took me back though. We all shared the memories you related in some way or fashion in the 60′s and 70′s. Whenever I get home to Bethlehem PA, I go to the “swamp” where we spent many a day fishing and having fun. I go to the park where we played ball, hockey in the winter. I visit the places and relive those days. It keep me grounded, safe, alive. Like I belong to something even if it is the past. I don’t really keep in touch with a single family member anymore, don’t know them, that;s unfortunate I guess. But I have my memories or me and my best friend. Those days weren’t all great as someone stated but the memories are. Thanks. Oh and I love you John, like no other eight year old could love a friend! See you soon.
Excellent story and pictures. Thank you.
When I first saw the house, some thirty plus years ago, where we would eventually raise our two sons, before even going inside, I chose it for the pond which it abutted, so that whatever children we were to have could have the Huck-Tom thing on that pond. And fortunately, after many twists and turns in the fence, it has all worked out. They are off living their lives, but I’m still here, feeding the woodstove, enjoying the pond, the woods, a different wife, the grandchildren via her, and to a small degree, starting the whole thing over again. I have many pictures of all those childhood moments we shared and occasionally look at them. They are certainly special, but also that was then; this is now.
Hats off to you Mike Malone!! Scott Christopher is my cousin. Chris was my Uncle. You have captured them both so well. Thank you!!
Thousands of miles away in Australia and it could be the same fence and the same best friend. Thankyou