Fr’aturday

10:58 pm, Friday –  Crap! I’ve just awakened to the Charlie Rose show theme song on WSEC, and that means I’ve missed another show.  I’m amazed I even fell asleep after dinner tonight because the news at the airport had not been good. I didn’t have to be at work until 2 Friday afternoon, and I stayed close to the office all day, ready to help the pilot group set up tables for tomorrow’s big scholarship breakfast, and the gang had just begun to dribble in when I had to depart at 1:50 to make it to work, Had a fine three hours there. Spent as much time with AeroKnow projects as I did with showroom responsibilities, When I returned to the airport, intending to arrange models on four display tables I believed (from past experience over the years) would be waiting for me by the hangar door, I found NONE. The rest of the tables and chairs for the anticipated diners were in place, the grill, the coolers with creamers, syrup, margarine and juice, all perfectly placed. I could not even get into the hangar — even though I’m a member of Illinois Pilots Association — because I’m not a pilot! It’s a security law. I allowed this woeful tableau to shoot me totally down. I had intended to take at least two hours to arrange the AKM display, but suddenly I felt like I was driving on four blown tires. I could have worked upstairs — there are a plethora of tasks awaiting my deft (some might suggest “daft”) touch in those six rooms — but suddenly I didn’t give a flying fig about the bleeping model display in the bleeping hangar!

5:45 pm Friday –I drove home, talking to the chapter president on cell as I rolled. He said they had set aside TWO tables for me. There was no point in pointless jabber and dismay; I would return at 5 am Saturday and set things up then on the two tables he had set aside.

7 pm Friday –After an peevish dinner washed down by generous quaffs of Carlo Rossi Burgundy, I fell asleep in my living room chair and continue, estranged from the world for four hours until awaking to the Charlie Rose theme song.

What the heck to do? Try to get some more sleep, I suppose. I’ll need more than four to fortify moi for the waiting scenario. It will be aviation all day followed by a classical  guitar concert after that. I drink some wine. It doesn’t phase me. I read a magazine. No drowse. I watch late night TV. Not even a frigging yawn for two hours. I submit as conscious as a patient getting a tooth filled, to the TV series “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,” “Mission Impossible,” “The Untouchables” and “Peter Gunn.” These were TV blockbusters in the 60s, but I was a fan of none of them. I did not watch one whole episode of any of them. They didn’t appeal to me. Between 12:30 and 4 am I watch them all as though hypnotized. My mind will not let me sleep as I approach\\ed 2 am, and after 2, I am determined NOT to fall asleep because I cannot allow myself to sleep past 4am!  I must be awake at 4 so I can shower, drink some coffee, wash some dishes and check email before leaving for the airport at 4:50. The thought of drifting off to sleep and awakening at say, 8 or 9 scared the beJEEBERS of me. I will not let that happen!

The last half of “Voyage” has all the dated sophistication of “Hee Haw” or a B movie that was fit only for drive-ins in the 50s. Peter Graves in “Mission” is familiar to me. In all of his TV and movie fame, I’ve never heard mention of his first TV show: “Fury.” It was a Saturday morning half hour show on NBC at 10 am CST. It was about a kid (character name Joey Newton) who was adopted by a rancher, Peter Graves, who owned a black horse named Fury. I watched it religiously, and I hadn’t paid attention to Graves since, although he was terrific in “Fury.” I had never watched “Gunn” through the opening theme song, one of the first TV theses by Henry Mancini. Wonderful theme! “Untouchables” was also enjoyable to a guy fighting off sleep. I’ll probably never watch another episode of any of them.

4:08 Saturday morning — I am out of the shower with clean hair and a more optimistic outlook, feeling good that I’m in motion again. While the hair dries, I wash a week’s worth of dirty dishes (fewer than you might think) and then get dressed.

5:16 am — The plastic-wrapped three issues of Wall Street Journal that are delivered every day but Sunday to the business that also houses AKM are still in the floodlighted  parking lot as I walk from truck to office, so I pick them up and deposit them on the counter. The line service man — who directs airplanes to parking and refuels them on the nearby tarmac will open them and arrange them on the lobby counter when he returns from fueling an airliner over at the terminal.

5:28 am Saturday: I begin setting up the models on the two tables I moved from where they had been MIS-placed Saturday afternoon. It requires many trips, walking with two or three large models at a time and occasional storage box lid “trays” of smaller ones about 250 feet out to spacious interior of Hangar 1. Since I have half as many tables as usual, I’m done reasonably soon, and I spend a few minutes in my office on Facebook inviting all locals to come to the breakfast starting in an hour. Later into the morning, airline pilot/friend Chuck Buescher tells me how that Faacebook post brought him out for the big feed.

The morning goes nicely. I eat breakfast about 8 — delicious as always, and this time I do not go back for seconds because I haved no help at the model display, and I’d rather talk to visitors than eat any day. Sometimes I leave the tables to walk around, to take pictures of activities. I will share them later this week.

Noon Saturday — Just a few diners remain and the volunteers are starting to break down (fold up) tables and chairs, returning them to the trailer and transport back to the storage room across the airport. My friend Warren Stiska helps me haul models back to the AKM office while his wife holds the door open for us. It’s easy work with help; a happy, chatty breeze. I return to fold my tables and return them with chairs to the staging area halfway into the big hangar, and by 12:45 I’m back in the AKM office.

The room is cluttered with hastily deposited models that I will gradually return to the shelves. The only casualty was the loss of a canopy that fell off a 1/72 model of a Bell P-59 Airacomet. If I eventually find it; great, and if I don’t I will buy a better 1/72 scale kit of the P-59 and build a better model of it when I can. No rush.

I spend the rest of the afternoon processing pictures and showing the museum to visitors. Easy, fun, but I am “feeling the clock” on my eyelids. It will get worse. I will NOT go home because if I do, I will sit down, and when I do that at home, I will go to sleep. A friend at work said shemightattend the concert, I committed to attending, escorting my camera, so the concert is not an option. Besides it’s the last classical guitar concert of the season, I consider the organizers valued acquaintances, and I am a long-time supporter of their enterprise.

6:58 pm: I splash on an exceedingly copious quantity of Mennen Skin Bracer aftershave (passes for cologne in my life) from the office desk drawer and leave the office for the concert venue, Faith Lutheran Church, in my childhood neighborhood.

By 7:30 I have purchased my ticket, purchased featured performer Jeff Rogers’ CD and taken informal pictures of him warming up before the early concert arrivers are admitted to the sanctuary where the concert will begin at 8 or so.

Rogers plays the notes as I fend off sleep; a real challenge during some of the selections. With his permission, I take pictures between the music, using available light, with flash disengaged to avoid distracting performer and audience as he talks to the packed house and introduces what’s coming next. I have not come to review the performance beyond saying I am glad I attended. Thanks in part to the fact I carry a camera, I have the best seat in the place, and want to capture some images with sharing at my Flickr photo pages. Because I am shooting available light and the performer performs literally in shadow . . . .

. . . . .How many theatrical and performance productions have you ever witnessed where those you came to see share in freaking SHADOW?  I digress . . . . .

After a fine reception that included lots of fine conversation with many good people, including a classical guitar student from Iran, and acquaintances involved with producing these concerts four times a season, I return to the sanctuary to retrieve my leather jacket. I glance at the clock in the lobby. It’s 12 minutes after 11 pm.

I return to the late stayers, explain I am going home after a productive 24 hours of continuing consciousness  every minute of it gladly spent. They seem impressed, wish me well, and in the cool air, I’m feeling the approach of a second wind. Why bother with bed? Why not work in my home office until I’m sleepy?

11:30 pm  and I’m walking through the front door at home. I check the e-mail and Facebook. Very deliberately, like an old man, I return to the easy chair where I spent the early morning 24-plus hours ago and read the Saturday State Journal-Register. I know I MUST get to sleep to be on my game Sunday morning at the museum. After making a deposit in the room with the porcelain bowl, I’m walking down the hall to the bedroom, and I’m thinking, “Do I WANT to take a few hits from Carlo Rossi in the living room? I drank all the wine I wanted at the reception. I’m not feeling loopy, and I know I won’t have trouble getting to sleep once I am prone in bed, so I don’t need wine.

I turn right at the living room, take three small swallows of burgundy. It’s a celebration.

12:10 am Sunday morning: I lie down in bed. I am asleep almost as soon as my head touches the pillow.

Live long . . . . . . . . . . . . . and proper.

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A Poem in Celebration of Poem In Your Pocket Day

I didn’t realize it was Poem In Your Pocket Day (Don’t laugh; I understand there is a week for recovering Republicans) until my friend Dick Henthorn reminded me this morning. Earlier in the day I had posted three lines that an exceedingly charitable friends might consider a “poem” on my Facebook status report — first “poem” I’ve written this year. During PIYPD, we poets and friends of poets are MANDATED  to put a poem into a pocket and share it with friends and associates.

I walked next door to my friends at Parkway Printers, 3755 N. Dirksen Parkway, Springfield, Illinois on the edge of the world, and recited a poem written by internationally renowned Springfield poet Vachel Lindsay because I wanted to share a poem I KNOW is good instead of one of mine, some of which I SUSPECT are good. I carry a lot of poems by Lindsay and me in my brain, which too often seems to be in my pocket, so it was no trouble to explain to Chuck and Joel why I was there, that I would generate MAXIMUM PUBLICITY FOR THEIR EXCELLENT PRINT SHOP in Honey & Quinine, and they would become rich men from my initiative.  This is a poem I sense that Vachel wrote about me, though he likely did not know it at the time.  I forgot the title of the poem, but you could look it up. It does not go “like this” because it’s not a freaking simile like “a moon is like a star, only with fewer consonants.”  The poem’s words are as follows . . . .

by Vachel Lindsay

The moon is a monk, un-mated,
Who walks his cell, the sky.
His strengths are those of heaven-vowed men
Whom all life’s flames defy.

The turn to stars or shadows.
The go like snow or dew,
Leaving behind no sorrow;
Only the arching blue.

==============

Happy Poem In Your Pocket Day, readers!

Live long . . . . . . . . . and proper.

The moon

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An Interesting Encounter with the Vachel Lindsay Association

Soon after I became a member of the Vachel Lindsay Repertory Group, I discovered a poem Vachel had written that delighted me with its humor and outlook. It was called “A Curse for the Saxophone.’ I shared the poem with Group leader Lee Nicholson (nice fellow!) who explained we could not read the poem for audiences  because the Vachel Lindsay Association (VLA), which supported the Repertory Group  (did at the time; status unknown now) did not approve of it. He didn’t say why, and I could not imagine why . . . and I have a pretty good imagination. Not long after that, for a reason that has nothing to do with the Group or VLA, I began reciting “A Curse ‘ ” as a solo reciter instead of a reader in a group of readers, and audiences responded enthusiastically to that poem and the almost 50 more I’ve memorized and continued to recite “at the drop of a hint,” since. Two or three times a year, I also recite Vachel’s “The Congo,” the only Vachel poem I know that is not permitted to be recited in his beautifully restored home. I have maintained my membership in the Association gladly. Early into my reciting around Springfield and surrounding area, as I attended VLA’s annual meeting held that year at the new Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library,  I congratulated my friend Lee Gurga, a world-famous haiku writer and expert whom had seen me recite Vachel’s poetry.  I congratulated him for his new service as an Association board member and said someday, I would like to be so lucky. I’ve not forgotten the four words he said, smiling, when he replied.

“You’d be a natural.”

It’s been at least 10 years since that conversation, and time has demonstrated that I am far less a “natural” than Lee thought. But the fact that someone I respected (and others whom I’ve respected over the years) thought me worthy, gave me confidence I had not had before, an affirmation that I had more to offer to those who love the man, the legend and the family. In the meantime, I’ve maintained my membership in the Association, attended the annual meetings, photographed them, continued to recite Vachel’s poems and the story of his life. In 2011, I shared Vachel at Urbana University at Urbana, Ohio. This year I have been invited to share Vachel at the College of Complexes (a lecture series) in Chicago,  the Knosh & Knowledge Club in Springfield and the P.E.O. Chapter E O, also in “Springpatch.” In Chicago, I was asked to speak for 45 minutes, and they didn’t ask me to cease for an hour and a half. They kept waving me on, but it was getting late, and  the owner wanted to close the restaurant, and let his people go . . . . home.  Every time I recite my poems at an open mic or party, I recite one or two of Vachel’s as well.

The P.E.O. Chapter meeting was an excellent example. A woman who had been in earshot when I recited at the Knosh club asked me to share “15 minutes” at her other club’s luncheon gathering in a private home on Springfield’s posh west side. At first, I agreed to arrive in time to recite and talk for 15 minutes, because I didn’t know I’d have a lot in common with the organization’s members as described to me by their contact liaison who had called and invited me. As the date drew closer I changed my mind and asked if I could enjoy the lunch as well. I was told “of course. We’d love to have you.”

I changed my mind because I realized I could talk a lot more about Vachel if I came for lunch, and it would give the ladies more time to get to know me, and I, them.

So I arrived on time: at noon sharp on a sunny April 12. Tables were set in two rooms, and at my table, I was asked to recite something light by Vachel, and I gladly did. The lunch was delicious and the ladies were attentive, smiling and gracious! The best thing I did that Thursday was enjoy lunch with them. My reciting was gravy, or icing on the cake; just as sweet.

They introduced me early, and as I jabbered  past 25 minutes, not paying much attention to the time, they asked me to continue, and I  did. Instead of presenting for 15 minutes, I presented (including question and answer time) for 45 minutes.  We shared warm thoughts as I prepared to return to my employer, and as I began to pull away from the curb, a club member waved me down.

“We didn’t want you go get away without a check,” she said, smiling, and put the folded document into my hand.

“You don’t have to do that,” I said. “I had a fine time without it.”

“We insist,” she said as I put it into my shirt pocket, and shared a few departing “THANKS.”

I didn’t even look at the check until this morning. Things are ragged at my employer as they are half the time (I’m observing; not complaining. I know I’m lucky that anyone wants to employ me) and after an unexpected minor truck repair (putting new light bulbs into most of the rear lights and one in front) earlier this morning,  I really needed some bucks for groceries. So I picked the check up from my dresser and looked at it. Here is what I saw . . .

Surprise!

Obviously, I can’t cash the check. I’m going to try to borrow some dollars from my employer, though I’d rather be paid.  (It’s been two weeks. It’s TIME!) and even if he doesn’t there is enough soup and half a loaf of bread in the kitchen to carry me until Tuesday.

The check tells me something about how part of the innocently unknowing public at large perceive me as a part of the Vachel Lindsay legacy to our community. When I offered to share pictures I had taken over the years with the Association when I’m elected to serve on their board, the president accused me to trying to sell my cooperation.  Pretty sad, really.I’ve shared pictures and more with them for more than 10 years, and they never had to ask. I wanted to make a point with the VLA president, and I did.

So the next time I visit the Vachel Lindsay Home State Historic Site at 603 S. Fifth Street, I will give site administrator the check and ask her to pass it onto the Association.

The affirmation, innocent though it was, by the public who knows nothing of the story “behind the seen” is worth the loss of a week’s worth of grocery money. There is another net gain . . .

I can recite “A Curse for the Saxophone” and “The Congo” any time anyone asks me to share them. Perhaps that is the greater gift from this interesting encounter.

Live long . . . . . . . . . . and proper.

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new poem (?) — Because

from the microphone

Yesterday I posted what I call “a BLURT” which I define as an outburst in so many words, phrases that come with little thinking onto a printed page. At the moment I posted I was also hoping to write a new poem for the open mic, the local Springfield Poets and Writers group hosts at Robbie’s, a restaurant in lyrical downtown Springfield, Illinois. When I arrived at my employer, I decided that since the most  dominant thought in my head continued to be the blurt I entitled “Because,” I should craft the blurt into a poem. I don’t know that I succeeded in crafting a poem from the blurt, but I know I succeeded in crafting the words in a way that was better organized, more creatively phrased, and more likely to suggest that greater effort was involved in the process of the new “creation.” Maybe it’s a poem. Maybe it’s just crafted words. YOU TELL ME if you’ve a mind to.

Because
by Job Conger
written 11:30 am, Wednesday, April 18, 2012

I do not own motored transportation.
I do not earn enough to buy a dependable older car.
The truck I drive belongs to my employer, thus, so do I.

I am tired of treading water and not swimming.

The socializing at my AeroKnow Museum
at the local airport is less than I anticipated.

Over almost two years, I have been able to convince
no one to volunteer to help at the museum.

My obsession at the airport has taken priority over
creating and sharing new poetry and song.

Too many people have walked away and not come back
and I understand
because I have done the same with the very same people.

Nothing compels me to engage opportunities
that might make life easier
because I believe they will not transform my life.

I am starting to believe what Fate seems to say
about my sub-par personality.

I have absented myself from the creative writing community,
and I miss it.

I seems clear that I will never succeed as a writer
in my home town or anywhere else.

I see no escape from the whirlpool that is my employer.
Friends I have cherished over the years have given up
trying at all
and never given a clue to why they gave up.

I believe is important for me to give the world a clue
wrapped in an enigma
couched in a poem
sitting on a revelation,
even though I am not giving up;
I am complaining.

Job Conger,Springfield, Illinois blogger, poet and writher

==============
This was the last poem I shared last night at Robbie’s. The night had flowed cordially, even friendly here and there, and I was having fun. Before I read this poem, I read a poem about an Illinois Times personal advertisement (lyrics to a song I sing), recited two Vachel Lindsay poems, and then read “Because.” The audience was with me, paying attention, right through the last word of this poem. When they heard the last word, they laughed, and that is exactly what I had hoped they would do. The last word was to release, relieve the tension created in the rest of the production. It was like ending a sad story with “but I was okay. It had all been a dream.” WHEW   I intend to back off the obsession with the museum, still devoting most of my time to it, but spending time, relieving the tension of the rest of my life. As my dream babe Martha Stewart might say: Poetry. It’s a good thing.

Live long . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and proper

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Because

The social aspect of AeroKnow Museum is far less than I expected.

I have been unable in almost two years to convince anyone to help at the museum.

Friends I thought would be regulars at the airport have not visited at all.

I see no way to resolve my employment situation.

I do not own a car. The truck I drive belongs to my employer and what I earn every month is not enough to allow me to purchase a dependable old car.

My obsession with the museum has taken priority over creating and sharing new poetry and songs.

Too many people have walked away and not come back, and I understand because I have done the same with the very same people.

It’s clear I will never succeed as a writer in my home town or anywhere else.

I am no longer a part of the writing community that seems to be thriving.

Nothing compels me to engage opportunities that might make life easier because nothing on my horizon is likely to affect life over the long tern.

I am tired of treading water and not swimming.

I am beginning to believe what Fate seems to say about my sub-par personality.

Friends I have cherished have given up trying and never given a clue to those left behind why they gave up.

I think it’s important for the world to have a clue regarding my life, even though I am not giving up; I’m just complaining.

Live long . . . . . . . . . and proper.

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The Treasure at the Top of the Chest of Drawers

Mom and Dad’s  tall, natural wood  chest of drawers in their bedroom across a short hall from mine at 2016 S. Whittier in Springfield held significant allure for me as I was passing through  young childhood, say seven or so. Dad’s clothes occupied the top three and Mom’s the three below. It was where I had my first encounter, though not the last, with women’s undergarments. Perhaps surprisingly, more memorable than those first encounters with silk was what I encountered with silver on top of the dresser as soon as I grew tall enough to reach it.

That was where Dad deposited the contents of his pant pockets when he had returned from his job as head clothing buyer at Roberts Bros. men’s clothiers on the north side of the square downtown. During the years from say, seven to 17,  I occasionally visited the top of the chest of drawers  when parents were eating breakfast downstairs before Dad prepared it for my brother Bill and me, or on a lazy Sunday when I was up late and parents were occupied in the back yard or garage or elsewhere. Dad did not own a wallet. He kept his currency in a simple leather money clip that had a single, clear plastic pocket for his driver’s license. His change was deposited on the dresser top along with a strange, silvery, coin-like thing with a raised rim around the edge. I had never seen anything like it. I still haven’t seen anything like it.

On a particular day into the maturing process — my memory is good, but it’s not that good — I asked him about the silver thingee that looked like the big silver dollars I had encountered and spent (along with half dollar coins) from early youth through about third grade. He explained that when he was a boy growing up in Columbia, North Carolina, there was a time when he “thumped” (my term; the more appropriate term is “peened” – thankyou Hawkeye) the edge of a silver dollar against a hard steel railroad rail near his home. He had kept it ever since as a good luck charm. He must have been 40-something when I was growing up on Whittier. The image of Dad as a kid, eight, nine or 10, sitting close to a railroad track in the country on a sunny summer day, peening away, fascinated me; still does.  It’s something I would have enjoyed doing if I’d ever spent any time outside the city.

While growing up at 2016 I held Dad’s good luck charm in my hands maybe 30 times over the years; gazed at it on the top of the chest of drawers more than that as I grew tall enough to see the top, to look down on it from eyes’ height of just under six feet.  There were times I wished I owned it; considered swiping it, though I knew Dad would know where to look for it.  When Dad moved to Rockford, Illinois in 1967, leaving Mom and me on Whittier, just before I started attending  Mac Murray  College in Jacksonville, Illinois, Dad took his good luck charm with him. When he returned to Springfield in 1990 to purchase a duplex with me, he still had it.

When he departed this life December 12, 1994, he left it behind. I kept it in my desk drawer until earlier this week.  I had looked at it occasionally  since, but didn’t feel much magic about it until last week when doing darn near anything to better my circumstance began to seem GLARINGLY WORTH DOING.  It has been in my pants pocket every day since.

Dad's good luck charm

tails

When I arrive home from work and change pants,  it resides on the top of my chest of drawers.

 Live long . . . . . . . and proper.

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Sign A Petition to Sustain a Dying Trade

A good man who deserve better than he's getting from NIKON.

READERS: If you want to “cut to the chase” and learn about a petition drive that will encourage Nikon USA to sell parts to independent camera repair business people like Irv Hill, skip the next FOUR paragraphs of background information intended to share my appreciation of Irv Hill.  Better you should read less and act fast than read more and not act at all. . . . . . . .

I met Irv Hill in 1980 when I was assistant manager at Fox Photo in Capital City Shopping Center on the southeast side of Springfield, Illinois. Jane Dobson was manager there. When a camera came to us for repair, we called Irv who frequently sent his wife Diane to pick it up and take it back to Hill Camera Repair, then a large, –, well-lit and air-conditioned shed, the size of a travel trailer behind their house on  north Amos, just a few hundred feet north of Jefferson. Irv was a veteran of the US Air Force. He had maintained radars on F-101s based in Maine. He loaned me pictures and unit uniform patches to copy. I still have them . We became friends to the extent that he and Diane invited me over fir dinner, and we had a terrific evening. When I parted company with “Fox Photo Finishing Featuring Famed Fabulous Flub-proof Foxprints” (that was emblazoned on a big button we all wore on our counter garb at the time; I still have the button; never forgot the phrase) I lost touch with the Hills. Decades later, ruminating for a story idea for Springfield Business Journal,  I suggested a story about Irv. Story approved and written. The Hills’ son was learning the camera repair trade, and both were included in the story.  Diane came out and said “hello” during my visit.  Theirs was a storybook marriage.

A decade or so after that, when I needed a lens for a new camera, I dropped in on him. He was repairing cameras in the house. Diane had passed away the year before. I know he took it pretty hard. His son was not around. I didn’t mention him.

Just more than a year ago I visited him again because there was a piece of trash that had found its way into my camera, and I needed it removed ASAP so I could take it to Urbana, Ohio in a few weeks where I was going to read a Vachel Lindsay poem on the occasion of the Johnny Appleseed Museum’s re-dedication. Irv told me there was significant dust in the camera, and I should bring it back to him when I returned.

A few days ago I did. Since my large Sony Mavica with its mini CD storage broke after more than 10 years of exceptionally wonderful service, I was a “one camera man” and with all the opportunities at AeroKnow Museum, I could not afford to be without a camera, so I had to purchase one before I could take the Canon to Irv. I did something I’ve never done: purchased a new camera sight unseen: a Sony Cyber-shot with 16.8 megapixel resolution and 16x optical zoom. I purchased it from Amazon because I have a credit there. I could pay for it over time. I can’t do that at Best Buy. ALSO because I don’t know anybody in camera retail anymore.  I am very enthusiastic about BUY LOCAL, but I was in a tight spot, Amazon has been great to me, and as I learn how to operate the thing, I am absolutely DELIGHTED with the Sony Cyber-shot model DSC-HX9V.

As we chatted, catching up with lives, Irv explained a problem that is looming large in his life. There are about 100 INDEPENDENT camera repair people in the USA today. One of them is Irv with his shop on Amos. Petition organizers have distributed a letter describing their effort to convince Nikon NOT to stop selling parts to independent repair people. It says as follows.

“Nikon . . . will not sell repair parts to any independent repair shop, retail dealer or consumer after July 2012, except for 24 select Nikon Authorized Repair Stations (NARS) located across the US.

“Nikon says ‘the technology underlying today’s cameras is more complex than it has ever been, and in view of th e specialization of technology as well as the specialized tools that are now necessary to perform repairs on this complex equipment, we will no longer make repair parts available for purchase’

“The problem with Nikon’s new policy is that few repairs require the ‘specialized tools’ they say are needed for repair. Most all repairs on cameras, lenses and flashes can be completed without the need for specialized tools. If what Nikon is saying was true, why restrict the availability of every screw, spring and rubber grip in the parts inventory? Why not only restrict those parts that actually do require specialized tools to install?

“We believe that Nikon’s new policy is a restriction of trade. We believe that the customer should ultimately have the choice of who repairs their cameras, not Nikon.

“Please sign our petition asking Nikon, Inc. to keep selling repair parts in the USA.”

Irv exxplained to me that recently a municipal agency brought a Nikon camera to his shop and asked for it back  ASAP. If he had been forced to send it to an authorized repair station, the agency would have had a six- to eight-week delay. Instead, Irv called them to pick up their repaired Nikon the next day!

SIGN THE PETITION BY CLICKING ONTO

www.Change.org

and search “Nikon”

Write to the following:

President of Nikon, Inc.
Mr. Ysuyuki Okamoto
1300 Walt Whitman Blvd.
Melvill, NY 11747

Sr. National Service Manager
Mr. Cory A. Devereaux
1300 Walt Whitman Road
Melville, NY 11747
631-547-4351

Nikon, Inc.
ATTN: Arnold H. Kame, VP Operations and Customer Service
1300 Walt Whitman Road
Mellville, NY  11747-3064
FAX  631-547-0299

Irv Hill is afraid that if Nikon succeeds in this unfair antic, other camera manufacturers will do the same: restrict distribution of parts and service to “their own.” How’d YOU like it if you could take your Toyota ONLY to Toyota “authorized” dealers for an oil change? I am rather peeved at Nikon. As an owner of several Nikon cameras over the years, I am disappointed with the strangle tactic.

Please act on this. I’ve signed the petition, and today I’m writing to  Mr. Okamoto to express my hope that Nikon will change their minds. I hope you will too.

Live long . . . . . . . and proper.

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