A Photographer's Journey By Boswell: A non-fiction biographical memoir -- mostly with pseudonyms -- in the third person

By Dennis Cox

Who is Boswell? 

Boswell is the pseudonym for an award-winning freelance photographer, stock photo agent, fashion and travel poster designer, book publisher, and former photo tour operator with an engaging, and sometimes controversial, story to t

• Language: English
• Publisher: Photo Explorer Productions
• Release date: Mar 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9798218152819

Book preview

Chapter One

Starting from Nowhere

Boswell grew up in a very, very small town, a virtual butt crack in the countryside. It wasn’t the ass hole of America’s Midwest he thought, but it must be close. If you were using a large rectal thermometer to take the temperature of the earth, perhaps it could be inserted here.

There were a couple dozen houses clustered in rural Butt Crack, as Boswell came to call it. Local businesses were comprised of the three-stool and single-table Alpha’s restaurant run by a short scrawny woman everyone knew as Alphie, an auto body repair shop run by the father of his friend Claude in their junkyard of a back yard, and a building of glazed concrete blocks that Boswell’s dad bought and opened as a general store.

Both sides of Boswell’s family were entrepreneurs, mostly small business Republicans. His father learned a trade as a meat cutter after surviving the Great Depression during which he and his brother hopped trains to Texas only to quickly turn back upon finding jobs unavailable due to an outbreak of cholera. Following employment at a couple of independent groceries, he became the manager of the meat department of a Kroger’s in a small college town. It was there that he decided to go into business for himself, something he long wanted to do. His opportunity came when the building became available in Butt Crack. Although mother was reluctant to move to nowhere, Dad couldn’t pass it up.

Boswell — only a year old when the move was made — barely remembers his father working in his store. A slim man with thinning hair in his early forties, Dad was a workaholic who tried to make the most of supplying the locals with everything from groceries to a small selection of dry goods. Bulk cartons of cookies and boxes of nails sold by the pound are most remembered by Boswell, particularly the nail boxes in the back of the store used by locals like rotund, denim-bib-overall-wearer Puny who came to sit and spin aint never dun heered tell that un ba-fore stories while drinking multiple Dr. Peppers from the store cooler.

Despite help in the store from Boswell’s mother and his three teenage brothers, Dad neglected his health while working very long days. The young Boswell remembers faintly the late evening when several people were in the house talking quietly about being too late to save his father’s life. Dad was a chronic smoker, but it wasn’t smoking that killed Boswell’s father. He had suddenly been stricken with a kidney disease, untreatable at the time, but routinely curable only a few years later.

* * *

Soon after his father died, Boswell was off for his first day of school with a lunch bucket containing a sandwich, cookies, and a thermos of lime Kool-Aid. School was a small three-story brick building on the edge of Butt Crack with twelve grades, elementary through high school, but without a kindergarten. So first grade began at age five for Boswell in the classroom of a stern authoritarian teacher. Mrs. Parker commanded her class at a black slate chalkboard with a pointer stick that she used to discipline students for incorrect answers. Once forcefully tapped on his head by Mrs. Poker, he never forgot or forgave. Boswell would thereafter deplore all forms of bullying and unjust treatment by people in positions of authority.

* * *

There were four classrooms and a music room for the first six grades on the second floor of the school building. The second and fifth grade classes were split with each half sharing rooms with other grades. The slowest half of learners in the second grade stayed in the room with the first grade class and the smarter second grade kids shared a room with third graders. It was likewise for fifth graders sharing rooms with either fourth or sixth graders. Thus Boswell, considered a smart kid, benefitted by spending two years exposed to third grade material while in the second and third grades and two years of sixth grade lessons while in the fifth and sixth grades.

Boswell found a passion in the fourth grade that influenced his future. He was fascinated with his geography book, most specifically by the photographs. All of the photos were credited to Ewing Galloway. He assumed that was the photographer’s name and Galloway had been everywhere in the world taking the photos. Boswell wanted to be E-wing Galloway, as he mispronounced it. Much later he discovered the photos were actually by numerous photographers for the Ewing Galloway agency, a collection that totaled over 400,000 images in the 1950s, the most of any photo agency in the world.

Mrs. Smith was Boswell’s teacher for both the fifth and sixth grades. She was his favorite and he felt that he received special treatment from her, until he didn’t. Unwilling to tolerate foolishness in her classroom, Mrs. Smith frequently slapped students in the face for misbehavior. This occurred commonly for Donald, the class clown. No one in the classroom was spared, although Boswell thought he was the exception. It was not until everyone in the class except Boswell suffered teacher’s indignation that he messed up and also suffered the consequence. Although he couldn’t forget the humiliation of being slapped, he did respect Mrs. Smith for her fairness and encouragement for him to excel as a student.

Boswell was popular among the kids in his class, however he wasn’t spared being branded with a dubious nickname, Beaver. Ostensibly it was due to buckteeth, which Boswell felt was a humiliation he did not mentally nor physically deserve. Nevertheless, the name Beaver Boswell stuck until junior high, but his hurt feelings persisted long after manifested by his unfailing shyness.

* * *

Classes for junior and senior high were on the school’s third floor, except for boy’s woodshop and girl’s home economics classes held in the building’s basement. The school also had an attached gymnasium of cigar box dimensions. The mid-court stripe was two stripes at the opposing free throw lines, making getting the ball into the front count after baskets just a few quick steps. Going out of bounds meant hitting a padded wall under each basket or the knees of spectators seated on a row of wood bleachers on the sidelines.

Opposing schools declined to play basketball in the Butt Crack gym, so all games were scheduled away on a full size court at a slightly larger school. Boswell’s most memorable competitive moment as a basketball player came in the fourth grade. He blames it on the spaciousness of the full size court being disorienting. It came when a ball was passed inbounds to him. As he turned around he was surprised to find the court wide open to the basket. He quickly drove for a layup, only to discover that he had scored for the opposing team.

Later as a prospect for the junior high basketball squad, Boswell regularly stayed after school to practice. Often when the whole team wasn’t practicing, he held his own scrimmaging one-on-one with a kid named Warren. Two years behind in school and the same height at the time, Warren was to grow to the height of six-feet, eight inches. He was a dominant force locally, once scoring 71 points in a game, and later played for a mid-major college including making a losing appearance in a NCAA tournament.

Boswell attended the school in Butt Creek through the ninth grade. His basketball ambition cut short in grade eight by a ruptured appendix and peritonitis that nearly killed him. Later he became an assistant manager for the high school team during his final year at the school. Basketball wasn’t his sport in any event since baseball was his real love.

* * *

Some aspects of growing up in Butt Crack were pleasantly memorable and others, not so much. There were those days in March spent flying kites, in summer wandering through pastures of hay and clover or tramping across fields of soy beans, and autumn days playing in fields with corn stalks towering overhead. In mid summer he would often walk up to five miles and back on blacktop roads under the sweltering heat of a hot sun to visit friends for a day. Most unforgettable was the time in winter he fell through the ice while sledding on the crick running near town, followed by a numbing mile-long walk back home.

After Boswell’s father died, Mom hung on to the general store with the help of his oldest brother, Ward, who had just graduated from Butt Creek High. Nevertheless, the attempt to keep the store open failed, leaving Mom with only Social Security survivor’s benefits. Ward soon was hired at a brass factory where he worked for many years while building a plant nursery business that became the biggest under one roof in the state. Boswell’s other two older brothers picked up farm work during summers while he helped out by earning spending money mowing lawns and delivering newspapers, sometimes to irate customers who wanted their papers carefully placed inside their front doors and not to their dismay, tossed on their porches by the efficiency minded Boswell.

* * *

Boswell’s first exposure to photography (pun intended) came as a member of the 4-H Club, an organization that functioned primarily for farm kids to showcase the family livestock. Other aspects of rural life not involving farming could also be studied. Members chose hands-on projects on a subject – electricity, forestry, soil conservation, gardening, photography, etc. – to make displays for exhibition at the annual county fair. Boswell was quite successful winning several blue ribbons and a few grand prizewinners that went on to be rewarded additional ribbons at the State Fair.

Boswell made photos for his photography display — and sometimes other projects — with a small Kodak Brownie Bullet, a plastic box camera that used paper-backed 127 black & white film. The simple mechanisms of the camera offered ease of use but little sophisticated control. Waiting for up to a week for 3x5 inch black & white prints to be returned from the drug store five-miles away was also required, so impatient Boswell soon lost interest in photography.

* * *

Perhaps the most unforgettable trauma inflicted on Boswell as a child was when his mother gave away his dog. She said it was to keep a local farmer from killing Ruff, a border collie. Well, Ruff did like to herd sheep. It was a natural instinct characteristic to that particular breed. But the farmer stupidly thought the dog, obeying its natural inclinations, was trying to harm his flock. So the farmer shot at Ruff one day. Boswell’s mom responded by secretly sending him away, given to a man Boswell later learned picked up stray dogs and cats with dubious motives in mind. Haunted by the thought that his dog ended up as an experiment at a nearby college, Boswell figured Ruff ended up no worse off, but at least benefited medical education. He was still pissed at his mom, nevertheless.

* * *

Most of the roughly eighty-five inhabitants in the town of Butt Crack and those in the nearby countryside considered themselves devoutly religious Christians; well maybe just Christians in name only. Some even attended the two small churches in the community, both sanctimoniously Baptist. Few could explain the doctrinal differences, if there were any between the two, although one was missionary Baptist which Boswell presumed meant looking down upon heathens in foreign lands that needed saving from eternal damnation.

Boswell’s mother, like her mother, was a dedicated churchgoer. Attending Sunday school and church services weekly with Mom was obligatory for Boswell. He was also frequently dragged along on Thursday evenings to a strange group confessional session called giving testimony. That appeared to him as an exercise in religious hypocrisy where sinners praised the Lord for being forgiven their transgressions, sometimes while they were still being contemplated.

Summers always meant a two-week course in Bible School for Boswell and the children of the local religious community. During these sessions pressure was repeatedly applied to the youth to be born again until they relented. Failing to pledge to follow Jesus meant subjection to group pressure from kids who had joined the flock. Boswell resisted for a time, but finally gave in to the pressure, was baptized and placed on the membership roll at Good Shepherd Missionary Baptist Church where his name will presumably remain throughout eternity.

As Bowell’s mom taught a Sunday school class of teenagers — all girls as it was — he was brought along when she took the class on outings. On one occasion when Boswell was eleven, the group spent an evening at a drive-in theater viewing the movie Bernadine starring the teen heartthrob of the time, Pat Boone. Despite the film’s reputation as being done in good taste — without Pat receiving as much as a kiss — Mom was soon humiliated by being denounced from the pulpit for corrupting the morals of her band of young girls.

The denouncer was a newly hired preacher recently graduated from Bob Jones University, a southern Bible-thumping school that according to BJU’s catalog exists to grow Christlike (sic) character that is scripturally disciplined, others-serving (and) God-loving. Apparently this bully’s character wasn’t sufficiently indoctrinated in Christ-like behavior by the school’s propaganda. Or perhaps he had no clue that Pat Boone was to become well known and praised for his Christian piety. In either case Boswell wasn’t sure if there was any distinction. He had learned what to expect from fundamentalist Christians who apparently understood little of the fundamental teachings of Jesus.

* * *

Hypocrisy was abundant in Butt Crack. During Boswell’s junior high school years a Boy Scouts of America program was briefly organized for youth in the community. Boswell took being a scout seriously and soon attained First Class status. He began earning merit badges including one for taking leadership in organizing a model campsite demonstration to raise donations at the popular annual summer Butt Crack Fish Fry. It would be assumed that the adults in charge as scoutmasters would be exemplary examples of upstanding morals and good temperament, not irresponsible hedonists or abusive petty tyrants. Assistant scoutmaster Grover — known for his philandering and drunkenness — thought it was great fun to speed while jostling troop members in the back of his pickup truck, especially when rounding sharp corners. Boswell felt that a lack of concern for the troop also extended to Clem, the scoutmaster, whom he disliked for his authoritarian manner. While it was not known if Clem had been in the military, he treated the scout troop as if it was a military unit under his command.

On one weekend Clem took the troop for an outing at a campsite near Butt Crack. Seeking to avoid Clem, Boswell and another scout named Lenny set up their small tent away from him as far as they could where they carried on chattering somewhat loudly into the night, as did some of the other scouts. Clem’s warnings to quiet down went heeded by all the campers except for Lenny, a very funny guy, and Boswell who nonetheless failed to keep their banter to a whisper. However it was to everyone’s surprise when Clem suddenly bolted out of his tent, ordering the troop to immediately pack up and get into his truck. They were going home, all except for Lenny and Boswell who were left behind in the dark.

Lenny and Boswell made the three-mile trek home alone in darkness carrying all their camping gear. But the repercussions from the incident didn’t end there. Soon the two were brought before Clem, Grover, and representatives of the district Boy Scouts Council for a disciplinary hearing, which Boswell more accurately characterized as a kangaroo court. The scouts were accused of loud miscreant behavior in their tent because it was alleged that they had been drinking beer. Based on Clem’s accusation alone, without any evidence, the boys were purged from the scouts. Soon everyone else in the troop quit in protest. It’s not surprising to Boswell that over the years the BSA has covered up thousands of cases of abuse by scout leaders, including many cases of sexual abuse.

Chapter Two

Escaping Butt Crack

Not much else was a mystery growing up in Butt Crack. Boswell wondered why anyone would stay there.

Boswell convinced Mom that he and his younger brother would be better prepared for college if they transferred to better schools in a larger town. The original plan was to move to a small college town nearby, Khaki Town, but Mom suggested a move to a comparably sized town in another state where her mother and one of her brothers lived.

As it happened, it took just one hour at the new school for Boswell to clash again with what he considered classroom authoritarianism. On day one in a first hour history class, Boswell was singled out as the new student to answer the teacher’s first question. Startled and a bit terrified by his new surroundings, introverted Boswell stammered to give a definition of history. His answer was immediately belittled and shamed.

When Mom was told of the experience, she called her brother, a prominent business owner in town. Uncle Boyd informed her and Boswell that the elderly teacher had a very negative reputation as a bully and there had been attempts for years to get her to retire. Now there was a reason to fire her and she was gone. Boswell was assured that with the abusive teacher gone he could return to the school. But he was soured by the experience and his loss of face. He argued for his original plan to move to Khaki Town.

* * *

Enrolling in Khaki Town High meant Boswell was going from being a big fish in a small pond to being a small fish in big pond with over one hundred students in his new class compared to a dozen at Butt Crack. Unlike Butt Crack High, his new school offered an extensive choice of classes including an academic track designed to meet the standards of parents associated with the small private college in town. Approximately seventy-five per cent of the school’s graduates went on to college. Boswell stuck to the academic program but deviated by taking geography, a class primarily reserved for the non-academic track students, condescendingly known as the greasers. Not surprisingly, given Boswell’s fourth grade inclination for the subject, it was his favorite class.

Boswell hung with a group of friends at KTHS who were academically inclined, in other words the smart kids. His senior year he was one of the sixteen in his class receiving an ill-fitting, drab gray blazer as an award for academic achievement at a dinner sponsored by the local Junior Chamber of Commerce. Notwithstanding — and despite having grades that qualified — his teachers failed to nominate him and one other qualified classmate for membership in the National Honor Society. A slight he attributed to being timid and the low profile he kept in the school.

Not many other details of his high school life are memorable, but Boswell recalls vividly the day he was in Mr. Benjamin’s civics class when the assassination of JFK was reported over the school intercom. At the time he had a Goldwater 64 bumper sticker on his mother’s old Chevy, a hand-me-down from his oldest brother that Boswell drove after school to a job washing windows and mirrors at a downtown women’s clothing store. Boswell had gotten conned by reading The Conscience of a Conservative, a book ghost written by the public relations-hack brother-in-law of William F. Buckley Jr. Thanks to a classmate, Carl, he began expanding his political consciousness, as the terminology was used at the time. In any case, his views on politics began to evolve based on diversifying his readings, critical thinking, and an expanded awareness and skepticism of the motives of politicians.

* * *

His first summer in Khaki Town, 15-year-old Boswell played center field for the American Legion baseball team in a four-team Babe Ruth League. A great admirer of Roberto Clemente of the Pittsburgh Pirates, he copied Clemente’s batting stance and hit for a .419 average, which was second highest in the league. Apparently his dozen singles and one triple, mostly to the opposite field, didn’t convince the city team’s baseball coach to put Boswell on the roster for intercity play. The coach, also the KTHS basketball coach, chose instead to place one of his basketball players on the team as his center fielder. Highly disappointed, Boswell subsequently cringed whenever he heard John Fogerty’s song lyrics Put me in, coach, I’m ready to play… today-ay. Look at me…I can be…centerfield.

There were no major league cities close to Khaki Town, so Boswell picked his favorite teams because of players he liked. While Clemente was having his best season out of his first five in the major leagues, he was a fan of all the first-string players on the 1960 team with shortstop Dick Groat another favorite. Boswell followed the Pirates closely that season listening at night to Bob Prince on KDKA, the only radio station east of the Mississippi with call letters beginning with K. Fortuitously, when the greatest baseball game of all time was played, it was on TV. The Pirates unbelievably stunned the accursed Yankees of Mantle, Maris, and Berra in the seventh game of the World Series, thanks to a timely infield single legged-out by Clemente and subsequent homers by Hal Smith and Bill Mazeroski.

For his first live major league baseball game, a neighbor took Boswell and his younger brother to see the Atlanta Braves play the Cardinals in St. Louis during the final season of the old Busch Memorial Stadium. During the game, Hank Aaron hit one of his major league best 755 home runs, a shot that easily cleared the center field fence 402 feet from home plate. But that isn’t the highlight Boswell most vividly remembers. Seated two rows behind four Catholic nuns on the first base side, Boswell was in motion ducking a screaming line-drive foul ball when one of the nuns reached up to snag it bare handed.

While baseball was his game, Boswell felt he couldn’t pass up the opportunity in the spring to play golf at the private Rolling Hills Country Club for free every day after school. Rather than try out for the high school baseball team, he bought a used bag containing four mismatched clubs and opted to join the golf team. Boswell enjoyed learning golf, despite a wicked slice that frequently landed his ball on an adjoining fairway, once nearly hitting the golf coach. As misfortune would have it, even adding three more clubs to his bag failed to accomplish his goal of moving up from being the player ranked number nine on an eight-man team.

* * *

Neither Boswell’s parents nor grandparents had attended college. He never knew his paternal grandparents, a railway worker with Welsh ancestors and a Swedish immigrant housewife, nor his maternal grandfather, an oil refinery worker with a Scots-Irish background. Paternal grandfather Paris worked for the Illinois Central Railroad, a fact that might account for feeling nostalgic whenever he hears the song City of New Orleans. Boswell did know Mom’s mother well, a dainty elderly woman content to sit continuously thumbing through her Bible. Many of Boswell’s aunts, uncles, and cousins, on the other hand were college educated and included business owners, teachers, engineers, a pharmacist and a university psychology professor. Although his three older brothers were only high school graduates, from about the fourth grade on, Boswell knew he would go to college (followed by his younger brother who became a veterinarian).

During his junior year in high school, Boswell researched over a dozen colleges in the Midwest and East eventually deciding to apply to four, two large private and two state universities. Since he felt he was not good at foreign languages – or was too shy to try to speak them, he applied to the three colleges with business schools that didn’t require studying a language. Although he was accepted and offered financial aid at all four, unfortunately the most expensive — the private schools — offered the least aid, while an out-of-state mid-major university, Middle America State, offered the most assistance. Not only was MASU more affordable, Boswell could also pursue the liberal arts curriculum that he preferred without a foreign language being required.

Chapter Three

The Prolonged College Years

After four and a half years of worry, Boswell learned that he would not be sacrificed to save the world from communism. Next stop is not