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Recalling details of places been and things seen near 40 years ago presents its own set of challenges, not the least of which is accuracy of reporting. While my goal here is to represent my recollections as accurately as memory will allow, that accuracy has definitely been impacted by the burden placed on it by the growing number of years my long-term memory has been expected to account for.  

Memory is a double-edged sword: the price we pay for the luxury of forgetting the sting of painful episodes is the annoyance and frustration of learning to cope with undesired lapses of memory. If anyone with knowledge of the topics detailed in my account should find erroneous details sprinkled about, please know they are not the result of poetic license so much as faulty memory.

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Terry and I were enjoying a long lunch together on a typically gray afternoon at one of her and Dave’s favorite eateries, a place called “Fat Freddies.” The diner featured large picture-windows aimed seaward from which could be seen the re-purposed tin dredge that sat at anchor a couple of miles offshore. The talk of the town when it had made its debut, the contraption rose several stories in to the sky, making it visible from afar.

In fact, the dredge was the first thing that had come into view when Dave and I had flown in from Anchorage and Dave had proclaimed, “We’re almost there.” From 30 or so miles away, the outline of the crane’s derrick could be seen rising from the greyed-out horizon long before the town’s buildings had come into view.

The dredge was a hub of activity. Helicopters could be seen twice daily ferrying workers to and from the site at 12-hour intervals. There was no absence of applicants for positions, the  good pay luring workers despite the long shifts. With commitment and perseverance, a man so inclined could earn enough money to accumulate considerable savings over time.

The dredge had been towed across the Pacific all the way from Singapore, where it had originally been utilized in a tin-mining operation. The sight of the device, looming large in the distance, had been the  source of much speculation and rumor since its arrival.

Being situated offshore meant this dredge was working gravels that hadn’t been accessible to the earlier miners. The gold yielded, therefore, was more plentiful than that recovered by the land-based operations.

The table at which Terry and I were seated during our lunch was set back 15 to 20 feet from the picture window. Another table, at which a handful of people were enjoying a meal, sat beside the window, directly between us and the view outside.

I’d struck on the idea of composing a photograph showing the dredge framed by the window in order to create the feel of peering outside through a portal. For my idea to work, however, it required there be no people in the foreground. Not wanting to bother them, I decided, with Terry’s generous acquiescence, to see if we could wait them out, hoping they would soon be finished and on their way.

The diners had other thoughts, apparently. As their gathering drew on past the two-hour mark with no  signs of wrapping up, I began setting up my camera on a tripod where I could operate it while remaining seated at our table in order to not appear too obvious. When, after a while, the diners remained engrossed in conversation, I began taking some preliminary shots to obtain the correct exposure and desired composition.

I had decided to use black and white infra-red film for the project, wishing to create an artful, dreamy look.  

In 1981, it must be noted, digital cameras, like cell phones,  were still a thing of the future; the instant gratification afforded by them was, though longed for, something still in the realm of dreams, or science-fiction. The best one could hope for was, by skill and planning, a correct exposure could be obtained. The uncertainties were compounded when using B&W infra-red film, since achieving the correct focus while working with the longer wave-lengths of light associated with that medium was more a matter of art than science.

With the window-diners firmly ensconced in their positions, and not wanting to inconvenience Terry any further by remaining still longer, I decided to aim my camera at them instead, hoping that the stopped-down aperture would allow enough light to record the  presence of the dredge rising beyond them in the distance.

When all was said and done, the dredge did not appear in the resulting images, but the best shot achieved my goal of capturing a photograph with the dream-like look I had envisioned.

Tim Konrad

(To be continued)