Benny, aka Banjo Amberg, with Chall Gray and Catfish, McDowell County, NC 1986.
When I picked up Ben at the airport last week, he asked if we could visit Chall Gray at his bar in Asheville, Little Jumbo. We did. Nice place. We had a drink, a snack, more than a pleasant visit with Chall who I hadn’t seen in a few years. Chall and Ben are both thriving in the cocktail business.
Seeing the two of them together reminded me of this photograph of their first meeting - Ben, fish in hand caught in Chall’s father’s pond, and Chall, a toddler in swaddling clothes, mesmerized by the flopping catfish.
One of the beauties of photographs is their ability to help us remember. They inform us of long ago - a gesture, a look, the way we were back then. For me, looking at this image, I see two young boys, each expressing his feelings about a long-dead fish, and I recognize my own amazement that after 34 years the two boys still have things in common.