One of the first things I did when I started Boston University was join the staff of the school’s Daily Free Press. Five days a week during the school year the paper published between sixteen and twenty-four pages and had five thousand copies on campus by sun-up. I was a staff photographer my first semester, and when I returned to Boston after my cadet cruise aboard the sail training tall ship Westward, the editor in chief made me photography editor and asked me to build a darkroom in the paper’s offices in the remaining month before the fall semester.
I liked building darkrooms. This would be my third. First things I needed were a professional enlarger and a large drum print dryer. When I worked at Kranzten-Gould studio in New York after high school I was introduced to Cass Carr, a Jamaican bandleader known for his photographs of Bettie Page and known as a used photographic equipment dealer. Cass’s midtown place of business was a vast fourth-floor dimly-lit open warehouse where the layers of dust were probably older that Cass himself who, at age sixty-five, rarely moved from his high-backed stool at his counting desk. If it was ever made for commercial photography, you could find it in some corner of Cass Carr’s warehouse.
I estimated the equipment would cost twelve-hundred dollars and I knew Cass ran a cash business. Leaving my prized Rollei SL-66 camera as collateral, the editor put the cash in my hand and gave me a look that said, “I trust you, I think!”
I wanted every cent for equipment, so I decided to save the train fare and hitchhike to Manhattan. It was summer and the weather was clear and at sunrise the next morning I stuck my thumb out at the Mass Pike entrance near Fenway and made it as far as the Bronx in three rides by noon. Then my plan hit a snag. My ride dropped me off at an exit of the Cross-Bronx Expressway that had no corresponding entrance. I knew nothing of the Bronx. I needed to find an entrance to the expressway or a subway station, but I didn’t have a clue. I was in a neighborhood of dilapidated high-rise public housing with no shops in sight. The few people on the sidewalks looked nothing like me and they walked quickly away when I tried to ask directions.
I was walking on a zig-zag route through the streets trying to move parallel to the Cross-Bronx when a group of five guys about my age walking, more like sauntering, along the other side of the street came to a dead stop when they saw me, crossed over, and surrounded me. Yeah, OK, they were gang-bangers, but in 1972, I’m not sure I’d even heard the term. But it’s what they were.
With a strong Latino accent, the guy I pegged as the leader of the pack said, “What’cho doing here?” His attitude was, ‘In my face’, but It was what I had expected, so it didn’t make me shake in my boots. (Yes, I was wearing boots. It was the early ‘70s!)
I said, “I’m lost. I’m hitchhiking to Manhattan and was dropped off here, and I really don’t know where I am. Can you tell me where I can find a subway?” I smiled. And smiled.
The leader said, “You don’t know where you are? That’s a helluva thing. Well I can tell you, you’re someplace you don’t wanna be!”
I said, “Yeah, I’m kinda getting that feeling.”
Leader said, “What’cho name?” I told him. He said, “I’m Carlos. You hungry?”
“A little bit.”
“Okay! You come home with me, and my mother gonna fix you a nice lunch. Then we’ll walk you to the subway and see you get on without no trouble.”
What was I to do? I followed Carlos and his gang, who by now had all introduced themselves, patted me on the back, and treated me like their long-lost brother. Carlos had draped his arm across my shoulder and I decided that, at least for the moment, I should just go with the flow and hope I wasn’t acting like a lamb being led to the slaughter.
We walked to the nearest housing tower, passed through a graffiti-filled lobby that reeked of urine and mildew, climbed six flights of stairs because no one thought to even see if the elevator was working, made our way down a grimy, dimly lit hallway, and stopped in front of a door that had probably seen its last coat of fresh paint before I was born. Carlos knocked.
The door swung open and the sweetest, kindest smile greeted me on the other side. Carlos’s mother invited us all in, and she was glad to meet the stranger her son had pulled in off the street. She fed us bologna sandwiches and milk, and I was bombarded with questions about college, Boston, and my travels, which I tried my best to answer without sounding too privileged. Carlos’s mother lamented her son couldn’t afford college and hoped for a better future for him. Carlos never lost his good humor.
After lunch, the gang did as they had promised. They escorted me to a subway line that would take me straight into Manhattan and sent me off with a request. Would I please tell everyone how nicely I was treated in the Bronx?
I made it to Cass Carr’s place in time to buy the equipment I needed. I was lucky enough to find another Omega D2V enlarger, some good lenses, and a print dryer, all within my budget including the packing and shipping of the gear up to Boston. I paid up and discovered I had enough left for train fare home! I was never so glad to sink into a coach-class seat on an Amtrak train.
I finished the darkroom in time for the fall semester, when the returning members of the board, all now seniors, sacked the editor in chief and gave me the job. I appreciated their vote of confidence, but I was still a freshman and didn’t know a damn about running a daily paper or being an editor in chief! I lasted one semester and I made finding my replacement my top priority. By the start of the second term The Daily Free Press has a senior from the School of Communications at the helm and I hung up my green eye shade and arm garters for good. Still, it earned me the right to put Editor in Chief of Boston University’s Daily Free Press on my resume.
Everything changes with time. Film cameras are a nearly extinct; the art of wet-chemistry photography has become an exotic pursuit, right alongside alchemy. I can find a few references to Cass Carr, which pleases me. He should be remembered. The oddest change is that BU’s Daily Free Press, while keeping its name, is now a weekly. Perhaps the name is just another ‘alternate fact’. What are they teaching these kids in journalism school?
I’ve never been back to the Bronx except to traverse the nightmarish trench of the Cross-Bronx Expressway going from somewhere to somewhere else. But I will say this: I was treated very nicely in the Bronx.
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