This is what absolutely authentic photography looks like. To digital content, I can apply film or vintage filters using any of several editing apps to make a photo look like the Featured Image. But this is the real deal, as captured by someone using my father’s film camera—likely in June or July 1972 or ’73. That’s a pure guesstimate.
Likely location: The lumberjack camp the Wilcox brothers called “Dodge City“. During the early 1970s, a group of hunters would spend as much as three weeks in the Allagash Wilderness, which is along the St. John Valley in an area also called the Maine North Woods. My Uncle Glenn had jacket patches made identifying the group as the Falls Brook Rangers, Yankeetuladi.
My father holds a traditional, Maine red-skin hotdog that cooked in a cast-iron pot of bean-hole beans, buried overnight in hot coals. The man to my father’s right may be his friend Steve. I can’t identify the fellow wearing the hat. And the kid? Yes, that’s me—and apparently acutely aware of the photographer. What’s up with the pointed finger? I don’t recall.