Bill was a collector. All you had to do was open one of his garage doors to see that. It was a three-car-plus garage, but you could only count on one bay containing a car. Jeanie insisted that the bay closest to the house proper was reserved for her car.
There could be
another car or two in there, but it would take a goodly while to free it from
all the stuff piled on and around it in order to get it out of the garage.
Two or three times
over the years, many of us pitched in and helped Bill clean up his garage so
that we, the high school faculty, could hold our annual end-of-school party there. One year we even took up a collection and
hired the DJ who did the high school prom to set up and have a dance for our
party in Beamgard's garage.
For a while the
garage would stay neat and organized, but the “rot” always came back and navigating
inside the garage would be an arduous task.
One of our number once volunteered to clean up and organize Bill’s
garage for him, if. . .if he could keep one of every tool that Bill had duplicates of.
Bill’s habit was
to look for a brief while for a tool or gadget in his garage, but when he
couldn’t find it, he simply went downtown and bought another. He had duplicates and triplicates of quite a
few tools.
The garage clutter
attested to the many hobbies that Bill indulged in. Cars and working on cars were lifelong hobbies. Flying took a close second. But he tried many others. His Brother Rod once said to him, "Bill, if you started right now today working on all the projects you have started, you wouldn't live long enough to finish them."
One of the other things he tried was photography. Back in the day, that meant buying film in
cannisters designed to fit your particular camera. The film came in a yellow box from Kodak, or
later from Fujifilm in a green box.
You put the film
in your camera, clicked the shutter and wound the film two or three times to
get the exposed film out of the way. Then you took pictures till the film ran out,
usually 8, 16, or 32 frames in my experience.
Then you rolled
the film back into the cannister and removed it from the camera. You filled out the form, enclosed a check and
the film cannister, and sent it off in the mail. In a week or two, you would get a fat
envelope in the mail containing your prints.
Alternatively, you could take the film to the local drugstore and they
would send it off.
Many times, it
took weeks or even moths to use up a roll of film. By the time you got it developed, you forgot
what shots you had taken.
Bill thought he
could improve upon that. He read up on
film developing, ordered the chemicals for developing colored film, along with
proper trays. One of our acquaintances
had an enlarger which Bill borrowed.
One night, Keith Ross who in his prime
stood over six feet and weighed upwards of 250 pounds, Bill, and I found
ourselves packed into Bill’s bathroom. It
was the only room any of us could muster that had running water, apparently a
necessity for developing film, and no windows to let in light and spoil the
developed film.
We stumbled over
each other in the dark trying to develop three rolls of film, one provided by
each of us. Not a pretty picture for
sure.
About the only
other thing I remember from that night was that one step in developing colored
film required the processor to select a gray square from a sizable grid of
colored squares. Keith and Bill laughed
heartily when I selected a pink square (looked gray to me). When everything was done, they agreed that I
had the most colorful print, three floaty toys, red, yellow and blue, floating
in the toilet bowl where number one daughter had put them.
I was convinced that whatever the cost and
delay in getting film professionally developed was worth it. I never tried developing film again.
I’m pretty sure
that the chemicals and trays found a resting place in Bill’s garage where they
remained until they were no longer useful.
Bill would have been among the first to try digital photography. He had the first mobile phone in the country
and must have been among the first to use a cell phone to take a picture.
Bill collected a
lot of things. Perhaps his best
collection was a collection of friends that loved him dearly and would do lots
of things for him. Thus it was when he
took on the challenge of building a four-place hangar at the airport, he had
lots of volunteer help.
Lions Club was
also dear to Bill’s heart. He went
through several offices, including district governor and sight chairman. When he was sight chairman, his garage was a
collection point for all the used eye glasses gathered by Lions in our region. There must
have been thousands of them by time Bill finally took them to Garden
City to be cataloged and sent off to distant lands.
As a Lion, Bill
decided the state of Kansas needed a “Sight Bus” (now called a "Mobile Screening Unit," which also does other health screens such as for diabetes), a mobile unit with the equipment
to do all sorts of tests on folks’ eyes, all at no cost to the “patient.” That project took years, but again, Bill had
a collection of friends who helped him get it done, and get it done he did.
I was fortunate
to be one in his collection.
