Oh Well

Most lives include at least a few stories of missed opportunities. Someday I'll tell the whole story of "The Ponton in the Weeds," about a glorious old Mercedes that should have been my first car. Alas.

John Hufnagel, in a Featured Comment to the previous post, mentioned that his brother's associates in Military Intelligence several decades ago bought cheap Polaroids because "government-issued Leicas were 'too hard to use.'"

Reminds me of a little story. (Sorry if I've told this before. I've told all my stories before, I just can't keep track of to whom.)

I went to photography school in Washington, D.C., at the Corcoran School of Art (now called The Corcoran College of Art and Design). The school is right next to the Old Executive Office Building, which is right next to the White House. My schoolwork required me to photograph frequently, and I loved to walk, so naturally I walked all over the city taking pictures.

One day I found myself moseying past the huge Department of Agriculture building on Independence Avenue, on the south side of the Mall, and, as was my wont, I went poking around a bit. Somewhere, somehow, I ran across one of those bulletin boards in a locked glass case. In it was a sheet of paper that said "Public Notice—Surplus Auction." I was a poor photo student at the time, so I thought, hmm, maybe I can score something for cheap that I can use.

So I asked, and was directed to a room somewhere off in the nether reaches of the vast building.

In the room was a paltry collection of the sorriest looking old crap you ever saw. Ancient desks and broken-down desk chairs, heaps of old forms and stationary supplies—I remember a mechanical calculator sitting on a pile of cardboard boxes that looked like it dated from FDR's Administration—and various contraptions and gizmos...spectography plotters, soil sample testers and whatnot. It looked like one of the most unpromising abandoned storage lockers on that show "Storage Wars," only a little neater.

Then I noticed a kind of crisply-made wooden crate barely visible beneath various other crap. It was about the size of a big footlocker.

"What's that over there?" I asked.

The fellow who had let me in shuffled through his papers. "Cameras of some sort," he said. "Navy stuff. There are a bunch of numbers here."

Could I see?

The manifest was marked:

US NAVY CAMERA STILL PICTURE KE7A 30 CT NEW, ELCAN f/2 66MM 30 CT NEW

After which was scrawled: "Outmoded, deaccession."

Know what those were?

I did.

Leicas.

KE7 was the designation for military M4's. And Leitz lenses—Elcan was Leitz's Canadian facility (they still make Leica lenses there, although now it's owned by Raytheon). Why U.S. Navy? No clue. 66mm? Never heard of that. Why were they at the Department of Ag? Also no clue. The ways of the Federal Government are mysterious.

Could I look? The fellow was amenable to the idea, but when we uncovered the crate a little more, it became apparent that it was screwed together. This discouraged him, and he decided we wouldn't look inside after all. It's funny—the visual of the crate with its top off revealing neat rows of pristine boxes is burned on my brain, but it's a sight I never actually saw. That picture exists just in my imagination.

Curiously, I was excited about my find, but only moderately. I really wasn't into old cameras all that much at the time...I was mostly interested in what I could do with cameras. But I'd seen old Leicas on the used shelves at Penn Camera, where we all bought our supplies, and I thought, well, I wouldn't mind using an old Leica. Especially if it was painted army green. Or navy blue. Or camo!

And if "30 CT" meant "thirty count," as I was pretty sure it did, I thought it would be a hoot, if I actually won the auction, to pass out Navy-surplus Leicas to my classmates for free! I was sure I could keep a few, give a few away, and sell the rest to Penn Camera, and come out the other side with a handy profit in my pocket.

I scraped together every dime I could put together and showed up for the auction.

It was a Thursday, as I recall. The place was dead—there were all of maybe seven citizens in the room. And virtually all of them were interested in the furniture or one of the pieces of technical equipment. (Afterwards, one guy, dressed in 1970s plaid pants, was very excited to tell me all about the great deal he'd scored on a perfectly good whatchamacallit. Did I have any idea what whatchamamcallits were worth? He was very enthusiastic, and told me much more than I needed to know about it. Nice guy, although maybe just a tad off.)

I won the crate of KE7's for $180. I think two other people made tepid bids, just on principle, but their hearts weren't in it.

But then when we were herded down what seemed like a football field's worth of endless corridor to another office to make payment, I ran into a little snag. I was told that my crate had been assigned a minimum of $300. My $180 wasn't good enough; I'd have to pay $300.

Which was fine, except I didn't have $300. I fell about $40 or $50 short of that.

So I commenced one of those exercises in futility with which you might be familiar...trying to reason with a bureaucracy. I had $260, more or less; would that do? No, sir, it says $300, and I don't have the authority—. Could I buy half the contents of the crate for half the $300? No. For the whole $260? No. Who decided on the 300 number? Could I talk to that person? (Right, like that person would be easier to reason with.)

Could I pay what I had and come back later with the balance? Sorry, sir, but the United States Department of Agriculture Requisition and Supply (or whatever it is; I don't remember) is not set up to accommodate layaway shopping for the convenience of citizens.

And so forth, and so on.

So could I just come back later with all the money? She didn't see why not.

Eight days later, I got my paycheck from my part time job, and I showed up back at the Ag Department with $300 in my hot little hand, and high hopes. I had won the auction, after all, and bureaucracies remember details like that.

I got shuffled from one room to the next, one functionary to another. Finally someone found the papers.

The verdict? Failed to sell at public auction. Discarded.  

What? Discarded?!? As in, thrown away? When?

Yesterday. I.e., one week from the auction date.

Where?

Well, you know how that goes, too. I couldn't quite give up on it right away, but I had to face facts eventually. My crate of Leicas had gone to oblivion.

More's the pity.

Ever since then, from time to time, I think about them. Somewhere, buried deep in one of the landfills around Washington, D.C., there is a well-made, screwed-together wooden crate of brand new, never-used Leica M4's with matching 66mm lenses—poor virgin cameras that never got to take a picture. Slumbering, they are, deep in the Earth.

Another one that got away. To quote my old friend Paul Kennedy, who was a teacher at the Corcoran at the time: "You know what they say: Oh well."

Mike

UPDATE from Michael Perini: "Elcan designed the Leica Elcan 66mm ƒ/2 ultra-high resolution lens for U.S. Navy. According to some literature, the lenses were used by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) during the Cold War."

More from Japan Camera Hunter. (Thanks to Michael.)

UPDATE #2, April 2: Okay, I admit it—this post is almost entirely fiction. April Fool. Hey, I can't take the day off on two holidays in a row, can I?

I did hear a rumor of a guy scoring some used military Leicas at an Ag Department auction when I was in photo school, but that's as far as the facts go.

How did I do, though? This was my biggest fiction project in a while!

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

LJ Slater: "That's one of the most gut-wrenching stories I've ever heard, and that's no joke! Too bad about the date today, though."

Mike replies: What, are you referring to the fact that it's Otto von Bismarck's birthday?

Dennis: "66mm ƒ/2...the missing portrait lens for APS-C! I can see why you'd still remember that story so vividly. My stories run more along the lines of opportunities that I should have passed up."

Hugh Crawford: "You know that 70mm Combat Graphic I keep going on about? That came from the Department of Federal Property Disposal Assistance at a Signal Corps base that closed in N.Y. in the '70s. I bought that and a 4x5 olive drab Speed Graphic, both in fitted Halliburton cases, plus a Leica M3 with a 50mm Summicron, for six dollars apiece. They had huge piles of them (I later was told that most of the Combat Graphics in existance, 2,000 or so, were in that pile), not to mention 4x5 and 8x10 enlargers in fitted suitcases and so on.

"The only problem was that I could only buy as much as I could carry because I had hitched a ride with a volunteer fire company, and two suitcases plus a Leica was about it. Still have both the Graphics. The Leica got stolen, but I never really liked it. Not bad for $12 though. I went back a couple weeks later with a friend who had a 501c(3) tax exempt organization to do a little more shopping, but they had cleared out the 'camera junk' to make room for thousands of hospital beds."

Mike replies: And you know who designed the Combat Graphic? Hubert Nerwin. No kidding.

Rick Wilcox: "Mike, I was a U.S. Navy Photographer's Mate back in the early '60s stationed in Naha, Okinawa. The base lab had a pretty good compliment of Leica M3's, 4x5 Speed Graphics, and Rolleiflexes. Not a bad lot.

"But one day I discovered, on a back shelf, during a pre-inspection cleanup, the find of the century. A 4x5 Graflex Super D,  the original single lens reflex. I was elated. When I looked at it in the light, I noticed a 'F.U.R.' tag on it. That was Navy supply jargon for 'Failure and Unsatisfactory Report.' The tag included a checked box indicating it was earmarked for destruction. This was nuts, I thought. I went to the CPO (Chief Petty Officer) and asked if I could have it. Short answer: no. Fine. Could I buy it from the Navy? No. I was livid. Even then, at 20 years old, I knew this was a collector's item. Still is, or could have been. I went round and round with the powers that be, but to no avail. I watched on the appointed day when that camera, along with several others, were summarily smashed and destroyed with repeated blows from sledge hammers. The hammers were (purposely, I'm sure) yielded by Navy supply depot personnel, who could have cared less about any, and all, old cameras. I ranted and raved about the stupidity of the process and got put on report. I was later scheduled to  have a Captain's Mast. I would have ended up spending most of the rest of my enlistment in the brig, had I not come to my senses and 'seen the error of my ways.' I recanted my opinion of my section leaders, was forgiven and sent on my way. That single experience killed whatever thought I had entertained about a military career.

"To this day, I still find it hard to get rid of a camera. All my old, unused cameras are stored inside a built-in bench seat under an upstairs bedroom window in their original boxes with original documents. Not one of them has a tag or sticker resembling a dreaded 'F.U.R.' tag. I guess this could be considered hoarding."

Mike replies: Let's call it "preservation" and call it even, Rick!

Bahi: "Yours was the only April Fool I've fallen for in years. Not only did I believe it, it didn't even cross my mind that it was anything but true. And I read it twice. Shocking."

Mike replies: (*chuckle*)

Chris W: "I was taken in by your tale partly because of a story told to me by a former boss. He was a radio operator in Lancaster bombers during WWII. When hostilities had just ceased, his plane was ferrying supplies across Northern Europe and they got ordered to accept the surrender of a German airbase in Norway. The plane landed at the airbase and the German commanding officer formally surrendered to the skipper. The Germans noticed that the plane crew were smoking and lamented the fact that they had run out of cigarettes weeks ago. It just so happened that the plane was carrying crates of cigarettes as part of its cargo and they agreed to a swap. And what did the Germans have to exchange? You guessed it—a crate of Leicas!"

Comments

[GRJ]

At least they didn't try to make you pay the $300 plus a "disposal fee." That would have been a real kick in the . . . .

[Dogman]

I feel ill.

[Eli Burakian]

Wow, what a crazy story. I can't believe they didn't tell you how many days you had.

I too have been bumping up against bureaucracy recently, and it's totally maddening. Smart people divest themselves of rational thought as in favor of the short-sighted and often arbitrary "rules."

Well, let's hope the rodents of DC found those cameras and have put them to good use.

[Daniel Fealko]

Please, Mike, tell me this is an April Fools' joke. If not, I think I'm going to be sick, even though it wasn't my loss.

[Animesh]

Please tell me it's an April Fool's joke.

The alternative is too painful to imagine.

[Ed]

30 x 20.000 in todays money....600.000....ah, at least you saved 40 bucks.

Ed.

[Steve Jones]

Don't worry, you can always go to eBay and pick one up for US$20,000 to US$35,000, although those have the more common 50mm Elcan.

[Marc]

This is truly horrifying
Reminds me of the 100's of warbirds that were chopped up for scrap fresh off of the assembly line after WWII
Now would be worth millions

[icexe]

The same bumbling incompetence that could have scored you the deal of the century on those cameras also worked equally well to take them away.

This story makes me want to cry.

[Steve]

Wow. That's amazing. I thought that I had a good story about passing up a KE7a body for $700 when I was in grad school at RIT in 1974. Best deal I ever got was for a model A Leica in a junk shop in Brewer, Maine. It cost me $35. I held on to it for about seven or eight years and sold it to a collector in Japan for around $800. Wish I still had it.

[John Hall]

That story almost made me ill.
Not because things should be kept just for the sake of keeping them, but because bureaucracy so often seems to see disposal as cheaper than re-use.
I have a similar story about some old Leitz microscopes...

[Will]

Saddest story ever written?

[Harry Lime]

I think I'm going to be sick...

:-)

[Chris]

Only a government operation would refuse getting some money for surplus stuff and instead pay someone to haul it off to a garbage dump...

[Stephen F Faust]

Ouch.

Heartbreaking, although I have to ask--if the government knew that anything that failed to sell would be discarded, why on earth would there be assigned minimum prices? Isn't $1, or in this case, $260, better than $0? I guess, as you said, the ways of the Federal Government are mysterious.

[Caleb Courteau]

This was painful to read Mike, but a good story all the same.

[toto]

Now that's one that really got away. Estimates go upwards of $20K+ for one in mint condition. Brand new? Who knows.

'Discarded' could mean that some lucky chap got paid to haul the stuff away!

Happy April Fools', by the way.

[David]

April 1st, right?

[Steve O]

April Fools, Right?!

[Jim Metzger]

Thanks Mike,

Now I have another reason to lie awake at night...

Jim

[Jon Levi]

All I could think in my honest mind is, "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!" Wait a minute. It's April Fools Day! Oh no no no!

[John Morris]

If this is true, then it's truly sad.

If not, then it's a beautiful story, completely consistent with your normal written voice, and much truthier than, for example, the story about the retired Navy dolphin oral history project ( http://www.npr.org/2013/04/01/175956386/oral-history-project-hopes-to-preseve-memories-of-navy-dolphins).

[Mark]

My God, I must be the most gullible person around. I just came off another April Fool's joke on a different site, so I clicked over to TOP thinking "Let's see what Mike has hatched - perhaps a new 4x5 waist-level DSLR or something." And then I read, thinking "no April Fool's today, just a story about a surplus auction." Halfway through, I'm hooked. By the end, I'm saying to myself, "Uh oh, and I was fully prepared."

[Animesh Ray]

Yeah right! What a day it is today!

[Sarge]

It's April 2 here, if that be an excuse.
Completely taken by the tale (crate markings quoted in bold type:). I was going to comment that Stephen Gandy got 'em.

[Ernie Van Veen]

Very cruel! I had a knot in my stomach... a knot! ;-)

[hugh crawford]

"Mike replies: And you know who designed the Combat Graphic? Hubert Nerwin. No kidding."

I could have sworn I mentioned that on the previous post ans something about how similar it was to the radioactive Kodak Instamatic 814 rangefinder camera with a thorium oxide Ektar 38mm lens and a spring motor drive.

[Roger Bradbury]

About ten years ago I worked at a government wind tunnel site, DERA Bedford, which pretty much closed down while I was there. There was a sealed bid auction. I came away with a Wrayflex camera, a Minolta 9000AF kit including the motordrive and the rare EB-90 100 exposure back, and some taps and dies.

I paid about £108 for the Wrayflex; I'm not sure now if it was a Mark 1a or Mark 2, but I took it to a classic camera shop and got £500 for it, a fair price at the time.

Just recently I have been preparing the Minolta gear for Ebay. The camera, motordrive, and back run off a total of 14 AA cells and six LR44 button cells. Good grief!

The metric fine tap and die set is very useful for working on Japanese motorcycles, but I have never used the huge taps, dies, and handles that I didn't realise were part of the lot when I made my bid.

The site did aerodynamic tests on Concorde models, and the 8' X 8' supersonic tunnel had, I'm told, a fine record for consistency. I met the (retired) man who had designed the ogee shaped wings on Concorde. A lot of work was done on the Harrier at Thurleigh airfield a mile away, but when you see an early Harrier, actually a prototype, hovering in a wood it was filmed at nearby Twinwoods airfield where Glenn Miller took off for his final flight.

[HT]

You got me hook, line, and sinker. Although part of me did think, "Wow, that's impressive that he remembered EXACTLY what was written on that manifest..."

[John MacKechnie]

When I was in college in the late 60's, the army surplus rumor involved Indian Motorcycles packed in drums of creosote for $50. Great grist for the fantasy mill. There was also the Jeeps packed in creosote rumor. We had a lot of cool rumors back then....I think.

Mike, Looks like you snagged a couple of folks with your April Fools story. Nicely played. My all time favorite was the NPR story about exploding Maple trees. You might want to check that one out.

[Dennis]

Nice one ! NPR didn't get me, but you did :)

[Roger Bradbury]

I did once read in the British Journal of Photography around ten years ago about a pallet of Hasselblad lenses that had been built with slightly radioactive elements. When it came to disposal time, the Ministry Of Defence had someone wave a Geiger counter over them. As a precaution they were crushed.

[Ed]

Lets hope Steve Huff didn't read this post....PTSS therape is expensive these days :-).

Had me fooled though.....but having worked for the Dutch Airforce via Compaq, I know a thing or two about NATO style military cost effectiveness and the hillarious effects that can have....if you are not the one footing the bill but the one writing it, and that's at least was no april's fool.

Greets, Ed.

[givememoneyu]

This is not an April fools day joke! is it?

[Chris]

D'oh! And here I thought I made the whole day without getting fooled. Well played, Mike!

[Eolake Stobblehouse]

Good story, but I have to put in a little formal complaint: to my mind, to be called an April FOOLs' joke, a story has to be at least a bit outrageous. So the person can laugh and say "of course, I was a fool for believing that". So far as I can tell this story was entirely realistic.

BBC had a video of a group of pinguins who could fly. It was very well done. But if you understand aerodynamics just a little, it's clear that they simply can't, with small flappers for wings.