Jeff Spahr-Summers
14: Casper
(part one)
In Cape Town I
found friendship again, however, I have to jump forward to
begin the story. About a year ago I heard from my old friend
(once he found me online), after leaving college he became a
well placed member of the active resistance movement in South
Africa. I hadn’t heard from him in many years, he’d even been
in exile for a time after some of his comrades were killed in
a police raid. I think he was a little disappointed that none
of it surprised me in the least. I’m not certain whether I am
supposed to mention him at all. This, however, I’ve decided is
quite impossible … without him there was no Cape Town. I’ll
call him Casper.
Casper was an incredibly interesting guy of many talents. He
was a fledgling writer like myself (his father was a
novelist), he was a photographer and he was also on the
editorial staff of our school newspaper Bayonet.
He was brilliant. We hit it off immediately. From the day we
met we were nearly inseparable. The two of us began producing
Bayonet by ourselves (practically speaking
[although there were other editors]). It was us who compiled
content, did layout and then printed all of the issues on an
old carbon printer. We then stapled the issues together and
some of the girls in our class distributed them throughout the
school. Bayonet was the first place that poems
of mine ever appeared in print.
Casper’s house was right above a rock outcrop on Clifton
Beach. His backyard overlooked Clifton Bay. He had a darkroom
in his basement, so I immediately became his eager assistant
with everything photographic. He taught me how to use his 35
mm Canon camera and all of his darkroom equipment. We used
mostly black and white film although occasionally we
experimented with color film (which was much more time
consuming to develop). We also spent a lot of time in his row
boat, rowing around the rocks between Clifton and Camps Bay.
Sometimes he would drop me off on the rocks when I was in the
mood to write. Sometimes we would row outside the bay into the
open ocean, get out of the boat and just swim. Sometimes other
friends and I would overpower Casper, highjack his boat and
surf in it (we quickly discovered that it took at least three
of us … one on each oar and one in the back for balance).
Invariably, we would sink the boat in shallow water and have
to raise it back above the surface. Mostly we talked in the
boat, about anything and everything … from girls to music to
writing to photography to politics to awareness to freedom to
politics and more.
14: Casper
(part two)
Once I was invited to go on
holiday with Casper, his sister and his parents. We spent the
first night in an old English-like Tavern surrounded by
horses. The next day we arrived in Arniston, where we stayed
the second night. Arniston was a sleepy old fishing village of
little white houses dwarfed by an old white two story hotel.
On one side there was the ocean, complete with cliffs falling
off directly into the water. On another side were huge sand
dunes. Casper took pictures of everything; me and his sister
climbing the cliffs about the ocean, the little houses (we
hardly ever saw any people), the dunes where I walked off into
the distance to provide a single set of footprints moving away
from the camera.
Back in Cape Town, practically
everything we did was photographed either by Casper or myself.
He shot pictures; when I did Gymnastics, when we lazed about
with our friends on Clifton Beach, or hung around school. To
this day, I carry a camera with me wherever I go (at least in
my car) because of Casper. I became such a camera hound that
Dad finally broke down and bought me a professional model 35mm
Canon, which I picked out in Hong Kong (during the first leg
of our trip from Johannesburg to Los Angeles). It was the
first of many! I now own five cameras, all different makes,
models and formats ... but the only one I really use regularly
is my current analog 35mm Canon. Casper didn't drink or smoke,
and only once ever came along with me and my drinking buddies
out on the town. Casper wasn't about the drinking, and I
needed desperately to not be about the drinking, so when we
were together we just didn't.
I was so happy in Cape Town that I doubt I would ever have
left of my own accord, but I was underage still, and finally
Dad transferred back to Oklahoma (I suspect to avoid my having
to do Military Border Service [which I would have had to do
when I turned 18]). My going away gift from Casper was the
free use of his camera and unlimited film for two weeks (which
we then also developed ourselves). He also gave me a going
away party on Clifton Beach one night. He and his family saw
us off at the airport in November, 1976. I still have the
pictures of us all saying goodbye, with me (of course) crying
freely. In 1977, Casper came to visit me in Oklahoma for a
time, and we had a fantastic visit, and that was the last time
we saw each other (although we continued to write letters and
send pictures to each other for a time)!
Read the
Poetry of Jeff Spahr-Summers
Jeff Spahr-Summers:
Free Verse—alphabet,
Pantoum Four, playing the bass ukulele, From Table Mountain,
kissing the sun, Letter to the Ravenwood King, Headphones, The
Fog, oh! darling, The Surprise, i want you (she's so heavy),
morning paper, Mother Has a Dream, golden slumbers, maxwell's
silver hammer, june, i don't want goodbyes anymore, next to me
