Helen ~ First Roll In The Minolta Autocord, Ever!

The three story tenement house at 3 Willis Terrace behind the Roxbury court house was cheap. Paul Band and I moved there in the summer of '64, splitting the $40 a month rent for the two bedroom ground floot apartment. Gas and electric extra, "heat" was from a kerosene "stove" in the living room, and about nobody we knew had a phone. Or a car for that matter! Public transportation was plentiful and reliable and we were but a block away from Roxbury Station, a covergance of bus routes, trolly cars, and the subway system. Fifteen or twenty cents would take you anyplace in the metropolitan area. I also I had a little Honda motorcycle.

Inexpensive perhaps, but any way you cut it it was two grades below what we'd refer to as "moderate income housing" these days. It was a slum!

The apartment was on the first floor too. Moving in that seemed a godsend, not having to schlep stuff up stairs. As winter set in we discovered the downside. Heat rises. When you live above a heated apartment some of that heat warms your place. When you're directly over an unheated basement it gets cold!

There was a dysfunctional couple upstairs with a husband who couldn't hold a job. They had a bright and pretty daughter, Helen, who was a high school senior. I wanted to marry her, mostly to avoid the draft, but Helen didn't want to get tied down at 18. A few months later I married Stephanie and we moved to New Bedford. I have no idea what happened to Helen after that.

This was the very first roll of film I shot with the Minolta Autocord. I'd bought it second hand for a bit under $40. Out of nostalgia mostly I recently got another one and started using it. Helen, where are YOU these days?