Springfield

The Woods

My stepdad had an old broken Canon SLR in a bag deep in the back of the closet. I wasn't really allowed to mess with it which might have been a result of anything I got my hands on I felt I was supposed to take it apart and see how it worked. I'm sure I could have fixed it and started learning photography years and years earlier. Probably would have went to SVA and jumped around LES as an 18 year old assisting and shooting little assignments for XXL.

Instead of spending my time behind a super awesome SLR pretending to be Gordon Parks I ended up spending the majority of my middle school days in this place, The Woods. We spent all of spring, summer and fall building bridges, forts, tree houses, and mini dams. Testing the water-resistance of M-80 firecrackers and the M-80 resistance of crawdads. Other than prep for The Goatman there was just loads of time to play and build things.

The Goatman? Half goat half man. He or it lived in the huge old mansion past the corn fields with his shotgun and pack of vicious doberman pinschers. They could pop out at anytime and maul you to death if you got too close to his property! I mean, neither I or anyone I knew has seen him or the dogs but we definitely heard them all the time. Good thing we rarely left home without our slingshots, bb guns and Rambo knives (with the in-handle survivor kit) and plenty of small creatures to shoot at to keep our aim sharp.

These are a few pictures from a couple years ago. I went in to look around and in the back of my mind I couldn't help but think about The Goatman. Maybe this would be my chance to finally shoot him.