Army buddy Dane N. poses on the observation deck of the Empire State Building during a weekend visit to New York City in 1971. He and I were Army classmates at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, learning how to repair mobile cryptographic equipment.

This picture of Dane belies the jovial person that he was. He had the canny ability to mimic the gestures and expressions of self-important emcees, TV pitchmen, and the like and we shared many laughs over it. You might say he had a BS degree that had nothing to do with “bachelor of science.”

Being in Manhattan on a weekend was a lot more fun than being at Fort Monmouth on a weekend (duh!), which is why we were in the Big Apple. Getting from Fort Monmouth to Manhattan was easily accomplished by bus or train and I made several trips there during the 38-weeks I was at Fort Monmouth.

Both Dane and I enjoyed the same ironic fate after completing training: both of us were sent to Germany and neither of us ever touched the equipment we were trained to repair, partially because we were assigned to units that could not use our expertise. I considered that a blessing because I had trouble understanding electronic theory and thus hated it. Dane and I got in touch in April 2014, the first time since 1972.

The way this image got to the Web is interesting. In 1971 I bought Kodak black-and-white film in bulk rolls (probably bought in New York City) and wound it into reusable film cassettes at Fort Monmouth. The film was either Kodak Plus-X or Kodak Tri-X. I took a few rolls of film with me to Manhattan and exposed it using a Honeywell Pentax H1a camera with a standard lens. Later, in a photo lab at Fort Monmouth, I developed the film and made a print. The print stayed in boxes for decades. In April 2014 I photographed the print (using my iPhone 5) as it laid on my desk, edited the image with Lightroom, and uploaded it to PBase.
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