The furniture of M. Parnes
Last week, in dire need of a new dresser, I went over to the Mission’s fabulous Salvation Army and found a gem.
It was tall, with a million drawers, it was on sale, and I had to have it. To make it easier to move, my roommate and I removed all of the drawers, which later left me with the fun task of trying to finesse all million drawers back into the right notches. As I was doing this, I uncovered a pack of old snapshots that had likely spent years stuffed back behind the dresser drawers. According to the envelope, the photos had been developed at Fabulous Stationers in New York City for a customer with an Upper West Side address; the name listed was M. Parnes.
The photos are mostly generic vacation snapshots of public parks with views of blooming cherry blossom trees, but at the end of the role there were 2 photos of an older man sitting around an eighties era New York apartment. In each shot he’s either ignoring the camera, or indifferent to it.
M. Parnes?
Yes, he’s doing the NY Times crossword puzzle.
I must confess that I’m morbidly curious about the lives of strangers, so I’ve spent a lot of time looking at these wondering about who this man is. When I was showing these photos to a friend, he casually mentioned that given the gentleman’s age when the pictures were developed in 1985 (the envelope is dated April 22nd, 1985), he’s most likely dead by now. As obvious a fact as it is, it still made me sad. And of course, I wonder how this piece of furniture ended up at the Salvation Army in San Francisco 25 years later. Pretty much all of the furniture I own has been rescued from thrift stores, but I’d never had any reason about the history of the objects themselves until now. While I’m strangely attached to these photos now, I don’t quite know what to do with them. I feel like I should get them back to a relative or something, and given that I do have an address, I guess that’s what I’ll try to do.
