The Forty Year Cycle

It's strange how fashions go through cycles. There were the flappers in the 1920's with their short skirts. The hippy era in the 1960's saw a return of showing a lot of leg. We're going through another revival now. It seems to skip a generation, and resurfaces once more.

I'm just relying on memory here but I think her name was Nancy. The world was full of optimism back then. If you weren't fighting in Viet Nam the world was a safe place to be. Or maybe it was that all the troublemakers opted to join the army rather than do jail time and few were on the streets. Anyway, it was safe to be on the streets, and people hitch hiked every place. I was driving home from a shoot on Miami Beach one evening when I spotted this cute girl hitching across the causeway. She got in my VW Microbus and as I drove her home we exchanged phone numbers.

Two interesting things had recently happened. One, I got hold of a couple of rolls of Ektachrome Infrared film, the original E2 Process version, which gave some really strange color effects with foliage. Two, I had gotten a bargain on a Canon 19mm lens for my Leica. Canon had just introduced a retrofocus 19 for the Canonflex so you could view through the lens and still had a brand new 19mm that used a seperate viewfinder, with the mirror locked up. I walked in to Walter Gray Photorama on Hollywood Blvd. one day and Murray Spitzer said "Wait'll you see what I have!" He offered to throw in a Canon Lens Mount Converter B so the lens would fit the Leica, and the lens came in a nifty compartment case complete with viewfinder. "One hundred dollars, complete" Murray said. "Sold", I replied.

I loved that lens. Finally it was stolen about 1990. But at that time, 1968, it was a cherished new posession, I had the I.R. Ektachrome, I bought an orange filter as suggested by Kodak, and Nancy and I went up to Greynold's Park. The stone steps are near the little bridge. I shot some color and I shot some B&W, both there and elsewhere in the park. Come Monday I brought the Ektachrome to the lab. Kodak suggested bracketing exposures, so I only had maybe a dozen shots on the roll that were correctly exposed. This one just stood out, the color, her pose, the exposure, everything was perfect. For years I had a 16x20 print framed in my living room. Eventually, like most color prints, it faded. Eventually, like most people you meet in Miami, I lost track of Nancy. All that's left is the color slide and some memories of another era, another time. Nobody hitch hikes anymore, but those short little skirts are back in fashion once again.