Beginning a Memoir

Growing Up in the Dark
By
Ken Bailey

Introduction

He wasn’t my real father. But in a time when second marriages were less frequent and even less discussed, everyone assumed he was. He would adopt me and give me the Bailey name after a fourteen year trial period. But even though the name was slow coming, Marvin Bailey instantly introduced a four year old me to a world I would have never experienced if my Mother had gone with my choice, Bob DeJohn.

Bob was a friendly fellow who brought us a television over a single weekend. He was a salesman at Sears Roebuck and somehow swung this miracle in a day when televisions were as new and foreign to my world as champagne or a club sandwich. As a three and one half year old, I had never seen or even heard of television. With a bright Houston sun shining outside, I spent that entire weekend inside in front of a magic box that would someday consume the majority of my working life.

These two men who, as far as I know never met, introduced me, within a six month period, to the two worlds that would launch my imagination and experiences for a lifetime. Film and Television.

Now, lest you think I hadn’t been around before the age of four let me set you straight. I had seen two movies, The Stratton Story and my favorite (of the two) Singing in the Rain. But television was different. On a table in my Grandmother’s bedroom/living room I watched my first TV show, The Lone Ranger. Now think of this, right there in our house, not having to dress up in a little suit that made me look like a very short Clark Kent without glasses, not going downtown, not standing in line and not waiting through boring newsreels and coming attractions and a great cartoon to see the movie movie. Right there, right then, on a table in my Grandmother’s living room/bedroom The Lone Ranger and Tonto rode Silver and Scout across the table from one edge of my Mother’s white starched table linen to the other. All this in glorious black and white on a screen about the size of a volleyball. To this day while the story (most Lone Ranger stories were the same) eludes me the feeling of the miraculous is still with me.

I feel a little sorry for now seven year old Emily and four year old Allie Grace to have never experienced life outside a digital world. But I’m sure they will experience their own miracles and that makes me smile as much as did the field of gray, waving General Mills grain at the opening of that Lone Ranger.

My first meeting with Marvin Bailey was not as pleasant. He offered me a stick of gum. Bob DeJohn had brought the miraculous into our home. Marvin Bailey brought Spearmint. It wasn’t even Juicy Fruit. At that moment I committed an act of defiance that, as I know of, was something very unusual and something my Mother would never have allowed. I threw the gum wrapper on the carpet of our entry hall. The first words I remember Marvin Bailey saying to me, although he probably said something when he offered me the gum was, "Pick that up!" I ran off as fast as I could.

Thinking back on it, he must have cared for my Mother a great deal to strike a bargain that would include a four year old, ungrateful litterbug. But the secret to my agreeing to the union, like I had a vote, was once again, television.
My Mother and Marvin took me to a small, pleasant brick house not far from downtown Houston. This location was to be my home until college. In this house I would change from fat to thin, awkward to athlete, and from go carts to girls.

The agent of change was in a large mahogany cabinet in Marvin Bailey’s living room. There, behind a burled wood door lived 21 inches of diagonal magic. Its name was Zenith. And I was suddenly okay with the entire arrangement.

CHAPTER 1

I seldom lied or "told stories" as my Mother preferred to call it. I knew God frowned on lying. But by high school I had learned how to "create impressions" that while not direct lies often led to a misunderstanding of the facts that was intended to benefit me. Later on I was to learn to call this by another name, marketing.

Mrs. Strusand was an English teacher with a second responsibility. She was in charge of the school newspaper. I never heard her referred to as the Editor, but that was actually her role.

In my junior year I had made one of many mistakes. This one was taking a study hall. I had completed my electives and the idea of doing my homework during school seemed like a good idea. There was one problem. I didn’t do homework. I did marketing. So there I was stuck on a beautiful spring afternoon looking out the window daydreaming as I often did. The study hall teacher was constantly trying to bring me back to geometry or at least reality. No one in the sixties that I knew of could spell A.D.D. much lest knew what it was. Then I was just easily bored.

My friend Tommy, came to the rescue. He wrote for the school newspaper and told me there was an opening for a photographer. What a great opportunity to get out of study hall and my name in the newspaper.
I went to see Mrs. Streusand. I told her the truth that my father was a professional (actually regionally famous-but kids never know that) photographer and then I "creatively impressed" upon her that as the son of a professional photographer wouldn’t it make sense that I too was a gifted photographer. This juxtaposition of fact and question was a technique I learned from Perry Mason. Who says television is not educational.
Either out of desperation or marketing she bought it. I was suddenly a staff member. This was great, I thought. I would go to my fathers’ studio and get one of the great guys that work there to give me a few pointers and.. While I was thinking this Mrs. Strusand was talking. The first word that got to my gray matter was, "tonight". "Tonight!" what was tonight. As my mind surfaced I heard "get a few shots of the band and we will run them Friday." "Shots, Band, Friday!" "What Band?" "What Friday?" Not day after tomorrow Friday.
I was still trying to sort out Mrs. Strusand’s assignment from my imagination. when I arrived at Bob Bailey Studios. I worked there most days delivering photographs to big oil companies downtown or ad agencies in the suburbs. I had learned how to get around Houston, but I had not learned how to take pictures. I had shot pictures like everyone with a Brownie. But at those few times the subjects were either too far away or headless. I was pretty sure Mrs. Strusand would not be pleased with a tiny headless band in our school auditorium.
Bob Bailey Studios in 1964 was a very busy place. There my father and multiple photographers, darkroom personnel, secretaries and finishers worked to create images for Houston top companies. In other parts of the building on Allen Parkway near downtown Houston, my uncle Bob Bailey and his crews produced corporate and sports films.
I caught a break that afternoon. One of the younger photographers was between afternoon assignments. I confessed to him what I had done. He took pity on me. It could have been because I was the boss’s son, but he and most everyone I remember from the studio were kind, gentle people who loved their craft and sharing with young, eager and sometimes desperate novices. The young photographer loaned me one of the studios twin-lens reflex cameras. He loaded it with film. Attached a strobe light. Taped down a couple of switches so I wouldn’t accidentally change a setting and return with no picture at all. He then told me to bracket the "F" spot. (This means to shoot at various aperture openings allowing more or less light to strike the negative) And then he sent me on my way.
When I arrived back at school I looked, at least in my mind, like an official photographer. I carried a professional looking camera, strobe light and adopted heritage.
Backstage I was greeted by, not a band but, a young guy in an overly large business suit. He was the band and my first subject. He played the drums. He struck a fun pose with his foot up on his stool and his hand on his chin. Not the first time such a picture had been made. What was unique was this was my first real photographic shoot and there was something else different.
In 1964 the Beatles were enjoying world wide success. This was not one of the Beatles. Not even close. But by that year John, Paul, George and Ringo were starting to grow their hair long and it was catching on with other performers. This drummer was the first male I had ever seen in person with long hair. I mean hair that hung down passed his hand on his chin. The drummer struck his pose and I nervously began cocking the shutter and firing. I thought, hopefully to myself, Did the strobe go off? Is the lens cap on? A really good question for a twin lens camera like I was shooting because it had one lens on top that you looked through to focus and another lens directly below that was actually the lens that exposed the film. One could actually look through an uncapped lens and shoot a lens-capped non-image.
I did remember to bracket my exposures. I couldn’t wait (and neither could Mrs. Strusand) for me to get to the studio and develop the negatives.
From the time I was a little kid I spent hours in the darkroom. Watching the magic of drowning images appear on sheets of plain white paper. The memory of the smells of the chemicals, the mood lighting and the vision of those emerging pictures makes me smile to this day.
I loved it the day someone put a sign on one of our darkroom doors that said, "Don’t open the door you’ll let the dark out." I have thought about that often in my faith walk. And I take joy in the fact the dark never overcomes the light.
Most people have seen the green or red lit images of a darkroom but when we were developing negative film we did it in complete darkness. Complete darkness is a quiet, long time of anticipation and concern. It is, especially, if this is your first assignment and if the results is the only thing that stands between you, study hall and Mrs. Strusand.
I shot twelve exposures on a roll of film just over two inches wide. In the dark I rolled the film on to silver spools designed to keep the surface of the film from touching the rest of the film as it was spooled. The spool was then dunked into a stainless steel tank containing developing solution. With its top on the tank sat on countertop in the dark and the old sweeping-hand styled timer was started. The timer was coated with a grit created by chemicals in the room and the moving hands were coated with a phosphorescent paint that emitted the only sense of light in the room. Each complete rotation of the hands took one minute. With each rotation I would agitate the developer in tank like a bartender shaking a James Bond martini.
After eight minutes the irritating noise of the timer’s buzzer pierced the silence. Then the developing reel was wetly fished out and placed in a fixing solution called "hypo". About a minute or two in the hypo and the moment of truth arrived. I switched the light on and as uncoiled the wet film from the spool. As it unrolled I held it up to the naked light bulb to see if I could see an image. Any image.
I had shot all twelve frames. I had bracketed. But all I saw was dark clear film. Maybe a dot of image here or there. But then near the center of the reel, I could see one image. Out of twelve tries I had gotten one. In baseball I would have been batting .066. But this wasn’t baseball, this was magic. I hung the three and one half feet of film in our drying room and clipped a metal weight to the bottom to make sure it didn’t curl. As soon as it was dry, I took my one image to the printing darkroom.
Earl Foster was a wizard with black and white printing. Earl was as kind a person as I ever met at the studio. As a black man in the fifties in the south, I am sure his life was filled with the same challenges as every of person of color faced in those embarrassing and wrong-thinking times. But to me he was a friend and a wizard. I took Earl by one surviving image and he showed me how to print. Earl would push timers, wave dodging wands and his large hand over the easel that held the blank photo paper. These odd gestures painted the paper with light. When Earl "souped" the first print it faded up at the same rate my chest expanded. I thought it looked great. Earl pulled it from the developer and through it in the trash. My chest return to normal if not a little sunken. "Too light" the wizard said. The next attempt looked even better. By the time it swirled in the current of the wash and took the rollercoaster ride around the heated aluminum dryer I thought, "Skip Johnson eat your heart out." I would have said "Ansel Adams eat your heart out," but at the time I did not know who he was. But Skip Johnson had been the school photographer before me and at this point in my development Skip was good enough competition.
Friday morning I rushed my photo to Mrs. Strusand's classroom/newspaper office. She was very impressed. I was officially the new school newspaper photographer. Mrs. Strusand asked me, how the others pictures looked, and I told her that we had looked at the choices and determined this one was the best. For the remainder of that year and my senior year I learned all I could about making pictures and motion pictures.
Two years after high school Skip Johnson died on a ship off the coast of Viet Nam.
TO BE CONTINUED