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“. . . BUT LOVABLE IN MANY WAYS”
A. Aubrey Bodine. After they were married Nancy
asked him what the “A” stood for. He told her “Aloysius.” The
only place I found the first name in his personal papers was on his 1930
passport - Aldine Aubrey Bodine. The first child had been named Henry
after Mrs. Bodine’s father. Ellen Bodine Walter says that their mother
was superstitious. She thinks that after the sudden death of Henry her
mother felt it unlucky to take a family name for the second child. The
names Aldine and Aubrey came from a book; the mother thought them
distinctive and euphonious. Evidently her son never liked the name
Aldine. His first school record lists his name simply as Aubrey Bodine.
Curiously, I cannot remember anyone ever asking him or the Sunpapers
what the “A” meant. His daughter Jennifer kept questioning him about
it. He teased her by saying that it was his secret. She was about ten
before she found out, accidentally (it’s given in Who’s Who). From
then on she called him Aldine. He seemed to prefer it to Dad.
Aubrey, of course, is a strange name for a man
and lends itself to misreading. But though it is distinctive and part of
one of the best known bylines in Sunpaper history, many,
including old acquaintances, could not get it right. They persisted in
calling him Audrey. When he had a funny picture made of himself - as one
with his head and hands in the stocks at Williamsburg - he would sign
the print “The Great Bodinski.” Nancy called him Aubrey much of the
time, “Bodine” when she was perturbed, and, affectionately, “Bo-dini.”
He gave the impression of being taller than he
was (5-10 ), had a trim figure, a no-nonsense air and a smile that was
warmer and more frequent than one might expect. His voice was flat and
twangy, with touches of an Eastern Shoreman’s drawl. He had a flair
for colorful expressions. As Bafford put it, “Once he described
something, you never forgot it.” He swore frequently and with fervor,
yet two of his favorite expressions were “Oh, gracious!” or “Good
gracious!” The red hair of his youth had softened to a sorrel shade
and after wearing it in a semi-brush for years he had begun to let it
grow a little.
There was a perpetual sharpness about his gaze
and he seemed to be taking in and assaying everything about him, whether
he was browsing in a country store or speeding down a country road.
He smoked corncob pipes which he bought by the
dozen. After a few nervous puffs he would put one pipe aside and begin
to stuff another, with Bond Street, the only tobacco he liked. He kept a
small screwdriver in the ashtray of his car and used it to jab furiously
at clogged tobacco as he sped along at 80 miles an hour.* James D. Dilts,
a Sun reporter, feels that he used his corncobs not only as a
trademark but also, when necessary, as a smoke screen. Asked a question
he did not want to answer, he would work up a good draft and then behind
a blinding, choking cloud of Bond Street wafted into the questioner’s
face make his escape. When he made interior pictures he would often have
a corncob pipe visible in the picture. I am convinced that it was a
symbol, just as Mathew B. Brady placed a pair of shoes in some of his
battlefield pictures.” But Bodine would never acknowledge this
other than with an enigmatic smile.
He was a fastidious dresser and he picked
bright-colored clothes that, although cut conservatively, were different
from what others wore. He favored loud striped shirts years before they
became fashionable. Shirts were one of his extravagances. He had more
than 50, most custom-made. When he got a new one he dated it with
indelible ink. “See this shirt,” he would brag. “Bought it 20
years ago and it still looks brand new.” (He probably had worn it only
twice.) He had about 25 suits, most of them tailor-made, often abroad.
He wore white shoes in summer, even after they had been out of style for
years; finally the only place he could get them was at a naval outfitter’s
in Annapolis. He was partial to English Lotus and Church shoes, Burberry
coats, Borsalino hats and Italian silk suits.
He never complained about what his wife spent
on clothes, jewelry or things for the house, but, like anyone else, he
had his idiosyncrasies about saving money. He never permitted more than
a 40-watt bulb in his house. When he and Reppert traveled they stopped
several times a day for coffee or a Dr. Pepper. At the first stop Bodine
would toss a quarter on the counter. At the second stop Reppert would
pay. If they stopped a third time, late in the afternoon, Bodine would
put his quarter out, telling the counterman, “Take mine out of here.”
If he liked something he wanted it in quantity.
Radios were a passion and he had one playing wherever he was-in the
darkroom, car, bedroom or kitchen. He tuned in classical music, but
purely for background; he seldom gave the music his full attention. He
probably had twelve expensive radios, all in working order, and he was
often talking about buying another. He was searching for one that would
bring in his favorite station, WOR, New York, clearly at any time, under
any condition. He liked its news coverage and commentary. On an
assignment in Pennsylvania he fell in love with the rooster pattern of
Pennsbury china, which he thought was becoming rare. He bought two dozen
of everything. This was 25 years ago; some of it has never been
unpacked.
He was an admirer of good handicrafts and often
returned home with hand-made quilts, bedspreads, samplers, hand-carved
eagles and homemade applebutter.
He bought the canvas for eight dining room
chairs and did most of the needle-pointing himself. He found it
fascinating and relaxing and hated to put it down. At a party the
conversation would flow around him as he sat silently, oblivious to all,
absorbed with his needle, yarn and design.
He was vain and conceited about every aspect of
his work. Complaining to a governor of Maryland, he wrote, “I get
around this state more than anyone else, know more people and have a
better idea of what’s going on, so . . .” He did not find it
immodest to say that he could do things beyond the capabilities of any
other photographer, or when turning in a picture to his editor to call
it the greatest one of its type ever made.
In his personal files he kept what must have
been every fan letter he ever received. If a knowledgeable person
praised his work - in a rejection letter the picture editor of Look, for
example, raved about his shots of the birth of a baby - he made photo
copies to distribute, and better preserve the comment. He must have
saved every clipping that mentioned his name, even a two-line agate
listing for a lecture in a Woman’s Club calendar. Sometimes he had
five or six copies of an article, or reproductions of one of his
pictures, in his clipping files. When the Sunday Sun art critic
commented favorably on a one-man show, Bodine not only preserved six
clippings but had the composing room draw 20 or 30 proofs on gravure
paper which would last longer than newsprint. Carroll Dulaney, who wrote
a column for the Baltimore News, said that the illustrations for the Gas
and Electric Company’s yearbook “have those soft, warm tones that
society photographers affect.” Even though the photographer’s name
was not mentioned, Bodine saved six copies. This was in 1932, long after
he had begun getting his name in the Sun, but the occasion was
probably the first on which another Baltimore newspaper referred to his
photography.
Bodine was an authentic type. A character.
Eccentricity personified. He was usually contrary, often obstinate and
always different. A psychiatrist summed him up as “tense and
perfectionistic.” Jennifer termed him “the world’s first hippie.”
(“He dressed the way that pleased him without regard to current
fashion. He picked a life style that suited him. And he always did and
said what he wanted. That, years later, became the hippie credo.”) A
man who knew him well called him “a queer duck,” then hastened to
add “but lovable in many ways.” Those who knew him casually or by
reputation tolerantly attributed his quirks to artistic temperament. He
was shy and often withdrawn. He did not make friends easily, or, more
likely, did not want to be bothered with many. The few that he had he
treasured and treated with affection and respect. To the rest of the
world he was often unpredictable, abrupt, short-tempered, inconsiderate,
insulting and mean. Some thought him boorish, and some went as far as to
call him a crusty old bastard.
When Helen Henry, who has a Southerner’s tact
and courtesy, would learn that Bodine was to accompany her on a Sunday
Sun assignment, she would often telephone ahead to prepare the
subject for a possible Bodine outburst. She had learned from experience
that he could put a woman on the verge of tears by a frank comment on
her taste or a peremptory command that her furniture be immediately
rearranged so he could make a “decent” picture.
In Western Maryland he once stopped in a
restaurant in the middle of the afternoon for coffee. The section with
white tablecloths was closed off; the part that was open had oilcloth on
the tables. Bodine sat down in the closed-off section. When the waitress
told him he would have to move he refused. “I never sit at an oilcloth
table,” he said. He ordered coffee and when it came without a spoon he
created such a fuss that the waitress threw it at him. His companion
said, “Aubrey, you’ve done the impossible. That woman is Amish, a
member of the gentle people. You made her lose her temper; that’s
unheard of for them.” Neither the fit of temper nor the criticism of
his behavior fazed him. “You just think she’s Amish,” he replied,
“because she’s got one of those caps on. Anyone can buy one in a
ten-cent store.”
He alarmed and upset many, including friends,
with his extreme opinions on any conceivable subject, but particularly
on political and social issues. He had a simple, unorthodox - wild is
perhaps a better adjective - solution for any problem, no matter its
complexity. His solutions usually included eliminating the opposition in
some vindictive, diabolical and bloody way. Politically he probably
stood to the right of Ivan the Terrible.
Bafford believed that Bodine was “an
introvert, always trying to prove himself. Mencken was his god and he
tried to imitate him in many ways, especially by shocking people. As a
boy he felt that if you worked for a newspaper you had to be tough. That
was Mencken’s attitude too.” Bafford summed up Bodine as a “combination
of Mencken and W.C. Fields.” That is too pat a characterization and
does not do justice to Bodine, who, despite a gruff manner and a sharp
tongue, was essentially good-hearted. I think he firmly believed
everything he said. As a boy Reppert’s son Peter often accompanied
Reppert and a photographer on interesting assignments. When Reppert
asked him if he could choose the photographer, which one would he take,
Peter, too young to remember names, replied, “The one who cusses a
lot.” Years later Peter was to make a perceptive observation. “To
like Mr. Bodine,” he said, “you have to love him.”
The first time Ruth Reppert met Bodine it was
at her home during Christmas holidays. When she came into the living
room Ralph introduced Aubrey. He was standing in front of the tree so
absorbed in examining the ornaments that he did not turn around. All he
said was, “You stupidly hung the pretty ornaments in the back and put
the ugly ones up front.” And he began moving the ones he liked best to
the front while all waited to go out to dinner along with Mrs. Bodine,
who had been left in the car.
Bodine seldom offered a compliment but he
always said what he believed. In an Eastern Shore mansion he was shown
some English prints. He examined them and announced, “They’re
probably fakes.” He was not wisecracking. He had been asked for his
opinion and since he considered himself an expert in most art matters he
gave his opinion.
Years ago Maclean Patterson snapped several
pictures of his father, Paul Patterson, which he thought turned out well
because, he said, “for once they didn’t show him snarling.” Mr.
Patterson was president of the A.S. Abell Company, publisher of the Sunpapers;
he called Bodine to his office. Maclean, who was managing editor of the Sun,
was there. With the pride of fatherhood and more than a touch of the
authority and majesty of his position, Paul Patterson handed the
pictures to Bodine. “Don’t you think that’s good photography?”
he asked. Bodine had a one-word answer: “No.”
Reppert and Bodine were doing a story on a
kindly old man. Before they got to the business at hand he asked them to
step into his den. His hobby was carving letter openers which looked
like Irish setters with their tails extended. He had been industrious;
there were 200, maybe 300, Irish setter letter openers lined up on
shelves around the room. “What do you think of these?” he asked. It
was obvious that he was fishing for a compliment from the famous
photographer, something that he could mention proudly when he showed the
collection to others. Bodine took in the collection at a glance. “What,”
he asked the man, “does your wife say about this crap all over the
walls?”
Bodine hated mediocrity, aerosol shaving cream
cans, road markers that did not give distances or mountain heights, the
photographs of Wallace Nutting (a New York photographer), the paintings
of Maxfield Parrish, subscription cards tucked into magazines,
bookmobiles, broadloom rugs, paper plates, the Kennedys (Joe, Rose,
Jack, Bobby, Teddy and the sons’ wives and children), and composition
shingles (“Why did you ever let them put that damned oilcloth on your
house?”).
He had a deep hatred of:
The coddling of prisoners: “If I were warden,
I wouldn’t spend more than five cents a day on their food. They’d
get dry bread and water. No books. No movies. No TV. Just bread and
water. And they’d work for that. There’d be no repeaters in my
prison.”
Race horses: “Damn it, they’re fed better
than you and me, bedded better than you and me, and they never do a lick
of work. There ought to be a law requiring all race horses to pull a
plow for two years, with certificates to prove it, before they’re
allowed to race.”
Antivivisectionists: “These stupid sob’s
hinder medical research and advancement. If they needed an operation
that came about through research on dogs, I wouldn’t give it to them.
If it was my hospital and someone came in with acute appendicitis I’d
make them fill out a form: Name . . . address... age . . . are you an
antivivisectionist? If the patient was I’d toss a bag of herbs on the
bed and say, `Here, you stupid bastard. Chew these.”‘
As noted in the introduction, he liked his
work, the Sunpapers and Maryland. He also liked shad roe; every
spring he impatiently began ordering it weeks before any restaurant had
any. He liked the Saturday Evening Post in its heyday, slot
machines, roadside stands-which to him were true Americana - applebutter,
country ham, Christmas Eve, a slam-bang mystery story, hand-knitted
argyle socks, and Moxie, which he always drank out of the bottle.
He loved to swap. Mencken ordered many
portraits of himself and his wife. Bodine was reluctant to bill him. He
proposed that in return for a set of prints Mencken give him one or more
autographed copies of his books and he collected a number that way,
gratefully inscribed. The Maryland Historical Society wanted to buy some
of his photographs; he said he would not take money but would appreciate
a free membership. Rembski asked if he would make color shots of
portraits he painted; he said he would if Rembski would paint his and
Nancy’s portraits.
If Bodine bought something he usually wanted
his friends to buy it too. Evidently he felt that he had selected the
very best and his friends could benefit from his excellent judgment.
When he wore Lotus shoes his friends were to wear them too. (“Get rid
of those Thom McAn’s. Do you want to look like Adlai Stevenson?”)
When Jennifer was small he discovered the craftsmanship of J. B.
Ebersole, of Intercourse, Pa., who made beautiful Pennsylvania benches,
chairs and rockers for children. He got a set for Jennifer and without
asking his friends who had children ordered sets for them too. “If you
don’t want them, I’ll buy them back,” he said. “But,” he
cautioned, “by the time your kids grow up these will be museum pieces.”
He used the same tactics with books, magazine subscriptions, electric
drills, an English cabinetmaker’s saw, a new type of floor polisher
and Aunt Minnie’s home-made preserves. When he got his free form
cement statues from Federalsburg he got one for me too and placed it on
our front steps.
But he did not like anyone to select anything
for him. Anne Williams took along a Val-A-Pak on a vacation she spent
with the Bodines. When they returned, Mrs. Bodine commented on the
amount of clothing it held; she said she was going to get one for her
husband. From another room he overheard this and shouted, “Don’t you
dare!” Nancy, who knew how to ignore him when she wanted to, said it
was just the thing to give him for Father’s Day. “If you do,” he
yelled, “I’ll burn it.”
Once, though, shortly after they were married,
she ignored him and suffered the consequences. They had been spending a
weekend at a guest house near Salisbury. Early Monday morning Bodine
tapped his sleeping wife on the shoulder and said, “I’m ready to go.”
She dozed off. When she got up she inquired about her husband. No one
seemed to know where he was so she assumed he was off making pictures.
When he did not return by noon she suspected what had happened. She
called the Sun and learned that Bodine had arrived in the office
about 9 a.m.
She, of course, was upset that he would go off
and leave her. She was also disturbed because that evening she was
entertaining Seeber Bodine and his wife for dinner. She was fuming about
these things as a taxi drove her into Salisbury, where she would get a
bus to Baltimore. To make matters worse the cab driver was talkative. In
a friendly, small-town way he wanted to know why she had been on the
Shore. She told him she had accompanied her husband, who worked for the Sunpapers.
“I know lots of newspaper people. What’s
his name?” the driver asked.
She was still so angry that she could hardly
bring herself to speak his name, but somehow she snapped, “Bodine -
the photographer!”.
The driver responded with a big smile. “I
know Mr. Bodine well,” he said in an admiring tone. “One of the
finest gentlemen I’ve ever met.”
He wanted his own way, and he always got it.
Even if it took months.
The first picture he gave our family was “Winter
Sunrise.” We were proud of it and hung it in our living room. Bodine
had not applied the gold toning evenly and one side of the picture had a
ragged edge. This was noticeable only under close scrutiny but it upset
him. He kept urging me to have the print rematted to cover the uneven
line. It did not bother me. In fact I enjoyed his stewing over this
minute flaw in his workmanship. When he realized that I would not do
anything he ordered his wife to take the picture back to where I had it
framed and demand that the job be done right. She said that if it
bothered him that much he should take it back. This dialogue took place
whenever they stopped by. One night he took the picture off the wall and
said he would make sure Nancy got it fixed the next day. The picture sat
in the Bodine house for months and became a test of wills. Only when he
started to take it out of the frame-to burn it and the mat, he
claimed-did Mrs. Bodine take it to be rematted. Bodine did not boast of
his victory when he returned it to us, but he hung it with an air of a
job well done. Thereafter whenever I noticed him contemplating it I
detected a glint of triumph in his gaze.
We had his picture “Snow Around Fence”
hanging on our largest wall. After a year or more we decided to vary the
arrangement, moving it to a corner of the living room and putting a
painting in its place. A few days later Bodine happened to stop by while
we were out. He studied the new arrangement and then put “Snow Around
Fence” back in the prominent position. He told our children, who were
home, that the room was much more attractive that way.
One more personal anecdote. While doing a story
on a country circus with Augusta Tucker, the novelist, Bodine kept
ordering her to hold lights and do other chores to help with his
pictures. After several hours of this she got angry and spunkily told
him, “I’m not working for you. I’ve got a story to write for Hal
Williams.” He gave her one of his cold stares and replied with
infinite sarcasm, “Hal is nothing in the world but an editor. I know
what’s good when I see it. Now come back and help me in the mirror
house.” Augusta refused and asked him, “What’s the matter with
editors, Aubrey?” “Not a thing in the world,” he replied, “except
that they sit on their asses in ivory towers and don’t know a damn
thing about life.”
He had a quick turn of mind and was fast with a
comeback. When the Sun building at Charles and Baltimore streets
was being torn down, employees who had worked there went back to get a
souvenir. Most took a brick, a piece of marble from the business office
counter, a door knob, or some such prosaic memento. Not Bodine. He went
to the men’s room he had used and pried out a button that flushed the
urinal. It was marked “Press.” On a Shore assignment he and Reppert
were in the marshes and had to walk a mile. or more along a primitive
road to get back to their car. They passed a crude house built of
concrete blocks. The man lounging on the steps taunted them, “Hey,
fellers, where’re your fish?” “Where,” Bodine yelled back, “is
the stucco for your house?”
He was an inept story teller, though, either
forgetting the punch line, getting it so twisted that it made no sense,
or, more often, laughing so hard that he could not finish the story. He
was always puzzled that his friends never laughed at jokes which he
considered uproarious.
His humor was both subtle and broad.
When he, George and Bafford were traveling in
Nova Scotia, he put his view camera, tripod and bulky equipment box in
the back seat and always made sure that he had the seat next to the
driver. The man in back was so hemmed in by the equipment that he could
not move. He was sore about Bodine’s lack of consideration but to keep
peace said nothing. On the last day Bodine had them stop at an antique
shop. He pretended to buy a Boston rocker and a rusty parrot cage, took
them to the car and told George, “Make room for these, and hold the
parrot cage. I don’t want it scratched.”
When Jennifer had her first date with a college
man, one from the Ivy League, she fretted about getting him in and out
of the house fast to avoid a possible embarrassing confrontation with
her father. When the doorbell rang, Bodine popped into the living room.
He had taken off his coat, tie and shirt and put on an old vest over a
tattered undershirt. He was shoeless and had thrown a dozen empty beer
cans on the floor around his chair. He put a bottle of gin on the TV set
and tuned in a bowling program. Then he sat back to meet his daughter’s
date.
The beaux of Jennifer and Stuart, his
stepdaughter, had tough going with him. Michael Moore, who married
Stuart, had been courting her for a long time before Bodine gave him the
slightest recognition. One Sunday while Bodine was watching a golf
tournament on television, Michael leaned on a nearby chair to watch too.
That night he excitedly told his parents, “Mr. Bodine finally noticed
me! He sent me to the drug store to get him some tobacco.”
A friend of Jennifer’s was ordered by her
father to crack some rocks in the back yard. Being a city boy he made
the mistake of using the blade of the axe to do it. The boy never heard
the last of that, and Bodine told the story often as an example of young
people being unable to perform the simplest tasks. But that same day,
Jennifer said, her father ordered her to take two checks to the hospital
where her mother was a patient and have her make out a deposit slip
because he did not have the faintest idea how to do it.
He liked nothing more than to trade insults
with old friends. B. E. Sullivan, who runs an antique shop in New
Market, Md., could match him insult for insult. The two would spend a
pleasant afternoon in the barn with Bodine ridiculing Sullivan’s wares
and Sullivan poking fun at Bodine’s pictures. Bodine addressed letters
to “Sullivan’s Junk Shop.” Sullivan wrote to “A. Bodine, Box
Camera Editor, Sunpapers.”
Only one man, a locomotive buff, ever managed
to bully Bodine and get away with it. After a Bodine locomotive picture
was published this man would write, saying something to the effect that
it wasn’t too good a picture because there wasn’t enough smoke or it
didn’t show all the drive wheels, but since it was of Engine 307 he
would like a print. Not just an 8 by 10, but an 11 by 14, and gold
toned. No mention of payment. Bodine was so taken by the man’s gall
that he usually mailed the print and never sent a bill. If he was slow
in getting the print off the fellow would send a sharp note. “I wrote
you two weeks ago about that picture of 307. Haven’t got it yet. What’s
the matter? No time for old friends?” Bodine never received a note of
thanks, but sometimes got a postal card telling him to take more pains
in packing and mailing the prints because one had arrived with a bent
edge. Bodine got a kick out of the letters. Once he told Reppert, “I
fixed the old bastard this time. When I sent him the ten pictures he
wanted I put a note in with them, `You tight S.O.B. When are you going
to send me postage?”‘
Bodine carried on a large correspondence, which
his wife typed for him. Much of it was routine business about his
pictures but a surprising amount dealt with wide-ranging matters. He was
vitally concerned about Baltimore and Maryland and was usually prodding
someone to do something to make them better and more beautiful. After
the Japanese cherry trees in Mount Vernon Place were destroyed by
vandals, he wrote to the Japanese ambassador and Mayor J. Harold Grady
and arranged to have the trees replaced. He urged the state to set up a
crafts center in Western Maryland to sell the work of Appalachian
craftsmen. He wrote to Albert D. Graham, then chairman of the board of
the First National Bank, “Around the corner from my house is a group
of interesting old houses which I am told belong to your bank. They have
just been painted a very attractive brick red with a coat of green on
the woodwork which is a pleasant departure from the conventional white
or cream. My suggestion is that the painters leave well enough alone and
do not ruin the appearance by putting white stripes over the brick to
indicate mortar. The stripe painting seems to be an ancient custom in
Baltimore but they give a false appearance and fade in a month or two,
thus giving a shabby appearance.” (Mr. Graham was so impressed with
the suggestion that he inspected the work and said he thoroughly
agreed.)
Bodine urged on the governor that mileage be
indicated on all state direction markers (his campaign resulted in the
State Roads Commission’s decision against that being reversed). He
complained to many authorities - this was in the early Forties - about
the lack of pollution control in Baltimore.
One of his strongest campaigns, one that was
pure Bodine, was waged on behalf of an 86-year-old woman who lived in
Frederick. His first letter was addressed to the mayor of Frederick on
May 10, 1945. It was a long one and said in part, “Recently while
visiting your lovely town I made a magnificent documentary photograph. A
picture that will be considered a masterpiece by my contemporaries.
Unfortunately, the subject was one of the most pathetic but courageous
individuals I have ever met.” Bodine gave her name, address, a
description of her house (“a magnificent example of poverty and
antiquity”) and an enumeration of her ills, and added, “During our
conversation I showed her one of my 16 by 20 photographs of Frederick
and was due for another jolt when she said that she could not see it.
She said that her blindness kept her from attending church but she tried
to abide by the Ten Commandments.” The letter concluded, “It is my
sincere hope that you can prevail upon some doctor or county health
authorities to give her some physical relief. God only can help her
soul.”
The mayor did not get around to replying until
August 13-three months later. What he wrote then was a typical letter a
politician would send to a complainant who was ineligible to vote for
him. It concluded, “When you come to Frederick again do drop in my
office. I would like to meet you and show you the city.” The delay and
the tone of the reply infuriated Bodine. He dashed off letters to the
editor of the Frederick News Post and the director of the Maryland
Department of Health. The three page single-spaced letter to the latter
concluded, “If no effort is made to better things for Mrs. I will
endeavor to find out where the fault lies. My first step will be to make
some portraits of her-life size and personally take one to Governor O’Conor,
and simultaneously send a copy to you and to half a dozen other top men
in the medical profession, such as my friend, the late Dr. Hugh Young.
After that, I will follow up with prints to every church nearby,
regardless of creed or color, and that, I am sure, will bring some
action . . .”
It did. Within two days the director of the
Maryland Department of Health, the county health agent, the mayor of
Frederick and their aides visited the woman to see what they could do
for her. This frightened her and angered her relatives; they thought all
these authorities, for devious reasons, were conniving to put her in a
home for the aged. The old woman herself said she was perfectly happy
where she was. She refused to budge.
There is one other fact to add. When Bodine
exhibited the picture of the sunbonneted old woman standing in the
doorway of her crumbling house he added an element not in the original
scene. With his great skill he had dubbed into the dirty window a vase
of flowers.
Despite his indignation in the Frederick case,
he was uncharacteristically mild in the action he threatened to take.
Usually his suggestions were more violent and sanguinary. When a group
of “evil and selfish scoundrels” wanted to license Bay fishermen
Bodine wrote to the state comptroller condemning this idea and
proposing, “Let’s use these characters for crab bait this summer.”
The punishments he most frequently proposed for those at odds with his
system of law and order were floggings or hangings in a public place,
usually War Memorial Plaza. His solution for a Chicago railroad strike
was voiced something like this, “They’ve already got the stockyards
there. The weather [this was February] is 8 below and they’ve got that
wind off Lake Michigan. So I’d make all the strikers take their
clothes off and herd them into a stockyard pen. Naked. Then I’d spray
them with fire hoses. I’d say, ‘When you simple sons of bitches get
some sense in your heads you can come inside and stand by the stove.’
[Then a long puff on the pipe.] We wouldn’t have another railroad
strike for 50 years.”
He wrote Senator Herbert R. O’Conor in 1949
recommending that the Taft-Hartley Act not only be kept on the books,
but made stronger. “If Congress continues to appease these labor
racketeers,” he fumed, “millions like myself will have but one
alternative, and that is to rally around someone strong enough to thwart
these brazen few who allegedly control millions of workers who have no
say as to what is right and wrong. This would mean a dictator or
whatever you may call him. The idea is not a pleasant one, but if things
continue to get worse this will be far the lesser of two evils.”
Later the population explosion worried him and
he railed, “The trouble with this world is that there are too damned
many people. What humanity needs right now is another Hitler.”
Bodine’s day began early. If he was on the
Shore or in Western Maryland on assignment he often would be up at
daybreak, prowling a back road, sniffing the air like a hunting dog on
the scent. A corncob pipe was always in his mouth, no matter the hour.
In winter he wore a hunting cap with the ear flaps hanging loose, and in
a heavy rain he clomped around in muddy boots and a poncho, sometimes
hanging his black focusing cloth over his head. By 6 a.m. he might have
made his pictures. He was ready for breakfast and the Sun. He was
in a foul mood if he could not get the paper, even in so remote a spot
as Cape Charles, Va., the southernmost tip of the Shore, at 6:30 a.m.
The circulation manager then got hell. (The circulation manager had
mixed emotions about Bodine’s excursions. His pictures were great for
sales in the areas where they were taken, but Bodine’s nasty notes
listing twelve or more places where he had been unable to buy a Sunpaper
were ulcer-producing.)
Bodine would work a 10 or 11-hour day if
necessary, particularly if the pictorial possibilities were good. He
never tired of touring Maryland and searching for new spots from which
to portray its beauty.
He seemingly knew every restaurant, diner and
lunchroom in the state. He had his favorite spots for blueberry
pancakes, calves liver and bacon and sweet potato pie; he would drive 60
to 80 miles out of his way to eat at one of these.
Probably the only admission he ever made that
one of his theories might be wrong came in connection with an eating
place. The theory was that you could always find where good food was
served by seeing where truck drivers stopped. “There,” he
maintained, “you’ll get not only good food, but big portions.” One
day he and Reppert had not eaten lunch by 2:30 and were hungry. While
looking for a place to eat they passed a large crossroads restaurant
with two dozen trucks parked on the lot. Bodine zoomed right by.
“What’s the matter with that?” Reppert
asked. “Lots of trucks.”
“I’ve been there,” Bodine replied. “Food’s
terrible.”
“What happened to your theory?” Reppert
inquired.
“It’s not infallible,” he admitted.
“If they don’t have good food, what brings
in all the truck drivers?” Reppert wanted to know.
“A waitress with big tits,” Bodine grinned.
Bodine had fun poking around in country stores,
looking for bargains or things no longer stocked on city shelves. The
best Christmas present he ever got his wife, he claimed, came from such
a place. It was an old-time zinc washboard. One Christmas he gave
friends with patios bricks from Williamsport debossed with the greeting
“Merry Christmas.”
Though he drove fast, Bodine never missed a
thing along the road. One day he slammed on his brakes after passing a
country store with a broken bench on the porch. After examining this he
was convinced that it had been hewn out of a chestnut log, was at least
200 years old, and probably was priceless. After 20 seconds of what he
considered small talk, he said to the storekeeper, “I’ll take that
broken bench off your hands for $15.” The storekeeper did not reply.
Bodine had another Dr. Pepper and tried again. The man shook his head.
“Last week,” he said, “another city feller offered me $300.”
Bodine and Reppert spent a good part of each
day on the road scavenging the countryside. They would occasionally buy,
but more often pick up, weathered wood from a rotted wharf, blistered
glass from an old barn window. bent hand-made nails, cracked jugs, parts
of a dismantled still, broken wagon wheels, wormy fence posts, strands
of rusty barbed wire, and squeaky garden gates. After one three-day
expedition they could hardly make it home, Bodine’s car was so
weighted with treasure.
Bodine hated to be on the road back to
Baltimore between 4 and 5 p.m. He always seemed to be behind a gas and
electric or telephone company truck. He would rage, “Those bastards
don’t like to work after 4 p.m. If they get back to the garage too
soon they might get another job. So they drive at 11 miles an hour to
get there at 5 p.m. exactly!” He hated to be behind a Howard Johnson
truck at any time; he claimed the company’s safety program prohibited
its trucks from traveling more than 40 miles an hour. He traveled at 80,
or more.
If Bodine spent the day in the office he began
his routine by throwing most of his mail away unopened. Not in just any
wastebasket, but in the vicinity of the most prominent wastebasket in
the Sunday department. His theory was that no one sees what’s inside a
wastebasket but everyone sees what’s discarded around it. He took
particular delight in littering the floor with press releases from the
Red Cross, the National Safety Council and any organization he remotely
suspected of being liberal. The more mail he threw away, the more he
got. His friends delighted in adding his name to the mailing lists of
organizations that would inspire him to new and more imaginative
denunciations.
The best practical joke ever played on him
developed when he came into the office wearing an expensive new hat for
the first time. He left the hat on a cabinet next to Reppert’s desk
when he went to get a cup of coffee. Reppert tried it on. It fit. Then
he noticed that Bodine had neglected to have his initials stamped on the
sweat band. He had an artist quickly letter “R.R.” there in gold
ink, and the hat was put back where it had been. When Bodine picked it
up Reppert yelled, “Hey! We’re good friends, still I don’t want a
photographer walking around in my new hat.” He pointed to the initials
“R.R.” Thoroughly mystified, Bodine was about to give up the hat
when laughter from the staff gave the joke away.
The Sunday Sun has a staff of about 30,
including editors, copyreaders, writers, photographers and artists.
Outside of his fellow photographers, the editors and some of the older
copyreaders and reporters, Bodine did not know most of them by name and
seldom bothered to speak to them. He had a few friends and ignored
everyone else. One whose company he enjoyed was Hervey Brackbill,
assistant Sunday editor and book editor. They lunched in the
cafeteria when Bodine was in town and took coffee breaks together. After
Brackbill retired Bodine ate at a nearby restaurant with Reppert,
Malcolm Allen, assistant Sunday editor, and John Stees, the
cartoonist, who spent much time baiting him on the controversial subject
of the day. He invariably recognized the ploy and in turn baited them.
But occasionally they got him ranting on some subject that galled him
and they would come back to the office with a new Bodinism. Almost next
door to the restaurant was a nearly-new shop operated for the benefit of
Mercy Hospital. This fascinated Bodine and he knew when deliveries were
made; at those times he would lead his luncheon companions in to inspect
the merchandise, picking out suits, knicknacks, and prayer books for
them. He was always on the lookout for an old shirt to wear while he was
painting.
He relaxed by puttering around his Park avenue
house. He paneled one wall of the living room with old doors, refinished
much of the woodwork and did most of the painting. He invariably started
painting the bathroom or replastering the kitchen the day his wife was
entertaining her bridge club or having a dinner party.
Members of the family were assigned household
repair work and this had to be done in a time he specified. Stuart was
once invited by friends on an expense-free trip to New Orleans. Her
stepfather said she could not go until she had finished scraping the
woodwork on her assigned side of the living room. It seemed like an
impossible task to accomplish in the few days before she was to leave.
Nevertheless he was adamant. She made it, but tenants, neighbors, boy
friends and her mother had to pitch in to help her meet Bodine’s
deadline.
He left his personal touch in many ways at 805.
He scratched his initials and the date he bought the house on a living
room window. When a section of sidewalk was replaced he used his wife’s
cookie cutters to decorate the wet cement. He had William A. Oktavec,
the East Baltimore screen painter, reproduce scenes from Bodine
photographs on his screens. The day Jennifer was born he cracked a hole
in the front walk to plant an elm tree in her honor. In the bathroom he
painted a mural in imitation of her first attempts at art. (Here too he
kept framed her reports from the Roland Park Country School. These were
not the usual sterile report cards but letters from the headmistress
giving detailed accounts of the pupil’s progress and shortcomings.
Anyone using the bathroom could not help but learn how Jennifer was
faring in school.) When she graduated from the University of Maryland in
1971, she insisted on hanging the diploma in the bathroom “because
that’s where Aldine would have put it.”
In the first floor hallway on the stairs he
hung a small gallery of his pictures: “Oyster Dredgers,” “Snow,
Park Avenue,” “Snow Around Fence,” “Drip,” and a portrait of
Mencken. In the corner of the dining alcove he had a large screen
decorated with a blowup of one of his photographs of Mount Vernon Place.
Occasionally he took a picture of Jennifer, but
these were not the conventional father-daughter snapshots. One day when
she was three or four her crying disturbed him. He told her to shut up
or he would throw her in the fireplace. She did not, so he sat her down
right where he said he would. He grabbed an anchor chain from the back
porch and draped it across her lap. Then he took her picture. It showed
a teary-eyed child sitting in the ashes with smudges on her face and
dress, seemingly chained to the andirons.
Although Mrs. Bodine is an extraordinarily fine
cook, her husband preferred to dine out several nights a week. His
favorite restaurant was Marconi’s, but he went to many others too,
usually small, unostentatious ones. He wanted coffee as soon as he sat
down and became angry if he did not get it immediately. When ordering he
inquired if Roquefort dressing came with the meal or cost extra. He just
wanted to know. He seldom had it with his salad.
Much of his evening was spent reading. He read
the Wall Street Journal (he clipped stories from it for his friends),
Saturday Review, murder mysteries (if it was a poor mystery he tore the
pocket-book in two so no one else would have to endure it) , and a wide
variety of serious subjects. He and Brackbill exchanged books on
exploration, archeology, natural history and the Latin-American lands.
Brackbill was impressed with Bodine’s range of interests and what he
got out of the books. (In a 1945 resume Bodine had written, “I
consider my principal education has been derived through acquaintances
of superior intelligence, constant reading and extensive traveling.”)
He went to bed early but slept fitfully. During
the night he would read, listen to WOR or prowl through the house.
During one early morning ramble he bumped into Jennifer, also a light
sleeper. He started asking her about God, but soon switched the subject
to furniture and had her crawling under and around his favorite pieces
so she could see how well they were made.
His medical history probably weighed four or
five pounds. He suffered from hypertension (a 1952 report noted, “patient
usual hyperkinetic rather jittery self”), recurring violent headaches,
diabetes (discovered in 1950 ) and in 1964 diabetic neuropathy, a
degenerative disease of the nervous system which caused him increasing
discomfort and pain. He saw many doctors but his favorite was Dr. John
Eager Howard, professor emeritus of medicine at the Johns Hopkins School
of Medicine. Dr. Howard, who had treated Bodine since 1950, was to
observe after his death, “I was terribly fond of him, but I never
understood the man. And I’m not sure that anyone else did either.”
But he did understand him well enough to note in a 1964 report, “I do
not believe I shall ever be able to regulate the patient properly with
his disposition and way of life, and it certainly would not be
justifiable to make him give up his occupation on the grounds of
significant benefit to the diabetic complications.”
From 1950 on he was in Johns Hopkins Hospital
nine times. From these visits came three stories. Once he complained to
the nurse that he could not read in bed because of the poor light.
Twenty minutes went by and nothing happened. He jumped out of bed and
went to the office of the president of the hospital, picked out a
reading lamp from the reception room and carried that back to his
bedside table.
During another stay he lugged his cumbersome
view camera and tripod to the roof of Marburg to photograph the
Baltimore skyline by moonlight. There, a bathrobe whipping about his
legs and his hospital identification tag shining in the moonlight, he
was found by a security guard. “Patients aren’t supposed to be out
here on the roof at 2.30 in the morning taking pictures,” the guard
said, lamely, but not able to think of anything more appropriate.
Bodine, of course, ignored him. Suddenly it dawned on the guard. “Are
you Audrey Bodine?” he asked in a different tone. Bodine nodded. “Well,
in that case,” said the guard, “it’s certainly okay.”
Another night he became restless and stalked
through the hospital in bathrobe and slippers. When he came to the lobby
of Blalock, which is decorated with enlargements of his photographs, he
noticed that he had never signed these. He borrowed a pen from a passing
nurse and began autographing each picture. The nurse called Phipps, the
psychiatric clinic. “I think one of your patients is down here,” she
reported, “pretending he’s Aubrey Bodine.”
In 1969 the Bodines moved from Park avenue to a
house on Circle road in Ruxton. Here he had a chance to display the
curios collected over the years. In the front yard, near a wooden bridge
and old garden gate, is a gas street lamp painted in pastel colors and
fitted with old street signs for Park avenue and Gilmor and Lanvale
streets.
On the front porch are a large bench carved
from a chestnut log, a shoemaker’s last mounted on a wooden block, and
a number of jugs plugged with corncobs, mountaineer style. The house
number appears five times on the mail box, the street lamp and three
times on the house. At a corner of the house is a 15-foot wooden barber
pole, the last one in Baltimore according to Bodine. He told children
who watched it being installed that he was opening a barber shop in his
garage. That night Ruxton cocktail parties buzzed with the rumor.
Mounted on the roof of a potting shed is
something that looks like a Rube Goldberg contraption. Stew calls it a
“smogmaker.” Bodine had fashioned it out of stovepipe lengths,
camera parts and odds and ends found in his garage. In the window of the
shed is an oil painting of St. Therese of Lisieux that he picked up at
auction for 85 cents.
The walls of the breezeway are decorated with a
small ox yoke (two larger ones hang outside), Mexican plates, fireplace
utensils, horse bits and parts of harnesses, an anchor chain, a hay
fork, the side of a fruit carton that held “Bodine Arizona Girdled
Grapes”-and at least 20 more items. A potbelly stove stands in a
corner and ox-cart hubs serve as small tables.
In 1960 Bodine bought a gilded wooden eagle in
Marblehead, Mass., and immediately became a passionate collector of
eagles. No one has had the patience to count the ones in the Bodine
house but they must number in the hundreds. Several are of museum
quality. Eagles decorate an old wall telephone in the kitchen, mirrors,
pipe racks, even the cup-holder and guest-towel ring in the powder room.
The Bodines loved fine furniture. An ancient
sideboard from the Wilson family and a corner cupboard Mrs. Bodine
bought at auction are collector’s items. Several small tables were
made by their friend William Weaver, a noted Baltimore cabinetmaker.
Bodine’s prize possession was a Hepplewhite tambour desk that he
bought during the Depression for $450. He said he wanted it so badly he
would gladly have paid $1,000. The living room walls display portraits
of Mr. and Mrs. Bodine painted by Rembski. The most unusual wall
decoration is a copper label stencil for Melvale pure rye whisky. It
came from Mencken’s basement. The house, which is also decorated with
many works of Yardley, several Aaron Sopher sketches and a painting by
Herman Maril, has an air of quiet charm. An enumeration of its
furnishings does not do it justice.
Bodine did not have much opportunity to enjoy
his Ruxton home. His diabetic condition had worsened, the neuropathy had
spread from his legs to his hands, he suffered some little strokes and
from angina. But he never complained, no matter how weak or ill he felt.
He was thin and drawn, his speech was slurred at times, and he had lost
much of his old sureness. But somehow he came to the office almost every
day. Unable to do major stories regularly, he volunteered to take any
minor assignment to be of help. People were surprised and flattered to
find A. Aubrey Bodine turning up at their homes on routine assignments.
One flustered woman whose recipe was being printed in the magazine
gushed, “I never dreamed Aubrey Bodine would take a picture of my
chocolate snuffle.” Without a smile he replied, “I’ll stoop to
anything.”
He enjoyed “I Remember” assignments. These
were not taxing-all he had to do was snap a picture of the narrator-and
he liked to listen to the old-timers reminiscing with Reppert, who would
later ghostwrite their stories. Bodine sometimes interrupted the
interview to give his version of the event. Often his recollections were
more interesting than those of the subject and Reppert wove them into
the “I Remember.”
Mrs. Mary McKinsey Ridout of Annapolis had been
the subject of such an interview. After Bodine’s death she wrote to
the Sunpapers to say how much she had treasured the visit. “They
came to our home to do an “I Remember” story about my father, Folger
McKinsey. [As the Bentztown Bard he wrote the “Good Morning” column
for the Sun for years. After a cup of coffee Mr. Bodine had a
fine nap in a deep chair in the sunshine coming in our living room
windows while Mr. Reppert and I talked about my father. And then Mr.
Bodine made a photograph of me while he mumbled in a delightful way
about his old broken down beloved camera.”
In July, 1970, Bodine celebrated his fiftieth
anniversary with the Sunpapers. He had dreaded retirement but he
began mentioning it more and more because of his failing health. He was
having difficulty walking and manipulating his fingers because of the
neuropathy. Sometimes other photographers had to thread his film for him
and do other tasks requiring dexterity. He had difficulty writing and he
kept track of this diminishing ability by signing his name every day on
a piece of paper he carried. Some days the signature was almost
illegible; he dreaded being asked then to autograph his books.
I asked what he would like to do before he
retired. He could not think of any project that excited him. I suggested
that he photograph his favorite scenes in Maryland, taking as much time
as he needed. He thought that a fine idea. About six weeks later he
brought in a stack of photographs. I flipped them over as I placed them
on my desk. “No,” he said with a smile, “You’re starting at the
wrong end.” I flipped them back the way he had presented them. It was
a magnificent set of pictures, some of his best work in a year or more.
I stopped halfway through to tell him that. He motioned impatiently for
me to continue. The last picture-the one he had wanted to me see
last-showed the burial ground on Deal Island. “Now turn it over,” he
directed. On the back he had written “THE END.” He was smiling as he
walked out of the office.
We scheduled a cover and six pages for these
pictures, which turned out to be his last major assignment. This issue
of the magazine was about to go to press on October 28, 1970. That
morning Bodine had planned to make a picture of a church spire but “the
light conked out,” as he put it, and he came into the office. He said
he felt fine and he was looking for something else to do.
An hour later while working in his darkroom he
became ill. The company nurse called his doctor and and told him she
thought he had suffered a little stroke. Bodine, who was resting in his
chair, picked up a darkroom towel within his reach and wiped a tear from
his cheek. Then he sat there resolutely until the ambulance arrived. He
died that afternoon at the Johns Hopkins Hospital from a massive stroke
He was buried in Green Mount Cemetery as he had
ordained.
In “The Face of Maryland” he had written,
“I like to wander through old cemeteries, particularly Green Mount
because it has unusual grave markers, including an upside down bathtub.
This picture of Green Mount won a national award. I used the prize money
to help buy one of the few remaining lots in the old section where any
type of marker is acceptable. If I want to put an iron tripod and camera
on my lot I may.”
When he bought the lot he, typically, wanted
his friends to buy one there too. He urged Reppert to do this and
Reppert replied, “But, Aubrey, I’ve got a cemetery lot.”
“Sell it,” Bodine ordered, “and get
yourself a decent one.” The cemetery salesman’s pitch was still
fresh in his mind.
“Some cemeteries sell you one plot,” he
said, “then plant you somewhere else. Some places plant them three
deep. If they want to put you in a creek bed, they do it. How the hell
are you going to complain?”
He drove on in silence for perhaps ten minutes.
Then, taking the corncob pipe from his mouth, he remarked with finality,
“Nobody is going to set my ass down in a goddamned swamp!”
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