“Chris Buck” Tampa Videographer
In 2003 I was sent to make portraits at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, UT. I checked into the hotel okay but upon arriving at my room there was a man already there. We were both startled for a moment, but after talking for a minute we discovered the reason for the mix up - we were both named “Chris Buck.”
Chris is a videographer from Tampa, FL and was in town, just like me, to cover the festival. We exchanged information, and four years later I met him at home to make his portrait. Below is the story that he wrote to accompany this picture.
My folks moved us down to Florida when my brother and I were small but most of my extended family still lived in Wisconsin. In the summer we’d all fly back “home” to Wisconsin for our vacation.
When I was six, my Mom couldn’t swing a two-week break from work so she decided to buy me a ticket and put me on the plane by myself to fly up north. You could do those sorts of things back then; direct flights to and from most cities, stewardesses that looked after children, and friendlier co-travelers made it possible.
I really thought I was big stuff. Traveling to visit my Grandma & Grandpa in my favorite place in the world, without my little brother in tow - life was good.
My Mom boarded me onto the flight, and the stewardess sat me down in a window seat. After my Mom kissed me good-bye I started looking around. I found myself sitting next to a lady and her teenage daughter, but more importantly, they had given me the window seat. “Yes!”
As the plane took off I was glued to the window, watching the world fall away. I still love this feeling. Being up so high, watching the tiny cars and houses and lakes and buildings that seem so unreal below me. Then I noticed the sky, then the clouds and how bright and clear everything was.
About an hour into the flight, I smelled that very particular odor of pre-processed, pre-packaged food being heated rapidly. Then the anticipation of eating a real dinner while flying miles above the ground. “Hey, how high was I anyway?” I asked the teenage girl next to me. She checked with her mom, “About seven miles up,” she said with a smile.
“Wow,” I thought, “Not only do I get to eat. I get to eat seven miles up in the air. How cool was this?”
Right about then, the stewardess came and asked me if I needed to use the bathroom. “Bathroom? You could go pee seven miles up? Where would it land?” I thought to myself.
“Come with me” she said holding her hand out to me. We came to a little door in the front of the plane. “Okay, honey, go on in,” the stewardess said.
I walked though the little folding door and was amazed. There, right in front of me was a little, tiny toilet! And a little, tiny sink too. After a little help closing the door, I did my business, and then had a bit of trouble washing my hands. With slightly damp hands, I was led back to my seat and my wonderful view of the heavens.
The girl next to me did something pretty cool: she made a little table out of the seat in front of her and put a drink on it. I figured out how to undo mine just in time for the stewardess to bring me my little plate of dinner from her cart. The smell was exotic and wonderful. Eating way up in the sky!
Suddenly, I was very hungry. Taking my lead from the girl next to me, I dug in to my meal. It tasted…wonderful. The meat, the gravy, the sweet corn – excellent. “Do you like your Salisbury steak?” the stewardess asked me. “What’s Salisbury steak?” My mind couldn’t fasten on what she was asking me. I relied, “Yeah, its good.” Good? It was incredible!
At the end of the trip, when we reached Milwaukee the stewardess took me off the plane herself and sure enough, there was of my Granny waiting for me. The summer could officially begin.
Ever since then, I can’t eat, or even smell a Salisbury steak TV dinner cooking without the myriad feelings of that day rushing back to me. Swanson, Entrée, Hungry-Man; they all trigger the same emotions: elation, expectancy, joy, wonder, and sadness, all mixed together, seven miles up in the sky.