By Pat Cashman

The other day, I found an old photograph in a box from my mom’s house---after all, she never threw anything away. She was the type who even saved calendars, figuring that if 1956 ever rolled around again, she’d be set.
But the old photograph really was a keeper: A picture of my great, great Irish uncle. But whether the man was really all that great, great is hard to tell from the image. It shows a solitary figure, in black and white, sitting uncomfortably and unsmiling on a rickety wooden chair. Faded writing on the back of the photo reads: “Maurice Hunt, around 1906. This is the only photograph ever taken of him.”

Phyllis Diller once said that photographs of her always did an injustice because they looked just like her. But when you’ve only got a single image to go by---like the one of my Uncle Maurice---who can say whether it really captures the person?

His eyes are hollow, his nose large and his round ears stick out like a pair of satellite dishes. He looks rather unhappy, as if his chair has a seat cushion made from a porcupine pelt. A pair of eyeglasses is lying on his lap---which may explain why his gaze is slightly off-camera.

His arms hang limply at his side, as if his hairy knuckles made his hands too heavy to lift. He wears an ill-fitting suit---or maybe the suit was fine, but the body was ill fitting.

His shoes are out of view, so maybe he didn’t bother wearing any that day. He may not even have had regular feet. Maybe cloven hooves? Can’t tell from the photo. (However, if a guy is going to have hooves, make mine cloven please.)
And so the only photo apparently ever taken of Maurice Hunt reveals nothing else about him. There’s no evidence of how he sounded, walked or smelled. If he had peculiarities or tics, the photo doesn’t offer it. Whether he had knock-knees, a hairy back, chest tattoos or a navel piercing is unknown.

Did he like corned beef, strong coffee, pudding or loud music? I do---and since I’m related to him, my preferences might have been his too. He never had the opportunity, but I still hope he wouldn’t have downloaded any Michael Bolton tunes.

It’s amazing to compare Uncle Maurice’s times to ours. My granddaughter---a mere five years old---has already been photographed more times than our last five U.S. presidents put together.
By digital camera, cell phone and video-cam---from the moment of her birth---she has been continuously chronicled giggling, screaming, sneezing, grinning, pouting, eating, bathing, scratching and drooling. There are even photos of her filling (her diapers). At her someday-wedding reception, the requisite photo slideshow will provide plenty to make her blush.

Maybe a camera will one day be invented that not only sets a perfect focus every time, but is incapable of taking an embarrassing picture. This would surely help out lots of TV reality show stars.

In my mom’s old box, along with the photo of Uncle Maurice, were also hundreds of me---from early black and white snapshots, to blurry Polaroid’s, to full-color studio portraits. I was my parents’ first kid, so they delighted in my every move---from that initial spoonful of Gerber’s strained peas, to my first stab at toilet training.

But then, a second kid came along. His photos are far fewer. I was novelty; he was a sequel. Even in the photos he does appear in, I’m also in the frame.

By the time my parents had delivered their fifth and final child, their camera had pretty much become a paperweight with cobwebs. In fact, my youngest brother claims that there are no existing family photos of him at all. He plans to knock off a liquor store just so someone will take a mug shot.
Poor guy. Even his passport only has a drawing of him.

Groucho Marx once said that he didn’t have any photographs of himself. “But you can have my footprints,” he said. “They’re upstairs in my socks.”

As for Uncle Maurice, there is a persistent family rumor that he’d once “taken to his bed---and stayed there for fifteen years.” He apparently wasn’t sick, just sleepy---because after fifteen years, he got out of bed and strolled to a pub.

And then perhaps---suitably liquored up---he staggered over to a photography studio for that one and only photo in 1906.

pat@patcashman.com
Pat can be seen on the new TV sketch show “Up Late NW” airing Saturdays on KING 5 and throughout Washington and Oregon. He also co-hosts a weekly on-line talk show: www.Peculiarpodcast.com