max s. gerber(the latest shot)

when kenny maestas was in his early twenties he was riding shotgun in a truck driven by a buddy of his. this buddy was agitated. he had just had a fight with his girlfriend. kenny was only trying to get a ride to work, but his buddy was driving erratically. the truck crashed. the friend walked away, mostly uninjured. kenny wasn’t so lucky. he was paralyzed, a quadriplegic. he can move his arms somewhat, enough to grip a pencil, and drive his (highly modified) van, where he controls the gas and brake with levers coming off the steering wheel.

now kenny manages the walmart in the small town of la junta, colorado. he works sixteen, seventeen hour days sometimes. he’s married and supports his wife and kid. he takes tremendous pride in being able to manage the store, and it’s a big operation, with several hundred people to oversee. wheeling around his house he points out things, saying “that’s from walmart.” and “that too, got that at walmart”. he remains remarkably calm when talking to his hyperactive two year old son, kristopher. kristopher begrudgingly sits for a couple pictures, mostly making silly faces and sticking his tongue out at his mom. like most shoots involving kids, kristopher’s parents obtain his minimal cooperation by promising to get him a toy at walmart when we’re done. “he’s a walmart baby”, says kenny.

when kristopher gets too rowdy cpl. bennett attempts to calm him down by playing with giant squirt guns. when paul sits kristopher down and starts teaching him how to disassemble an automatic weapon i have to stop and ask kenny “is this okay?” kristopher seems riveted. at least he stays quiet for a few minutes. thanks paul, for corrupting one more kid.

maggie produced the shoot, and she’s worth her weight in just about anything in the world. she also provided me with an opportunity to watch someone actually get out of getting a speeding ticket. i’m still not sure how she did it. it didn’t even seem like she was trying. i’m pretty sure hypnosis was involved.

everything was smooth except for the fact that we had the misfortune of being on US airways. never again. just before we left i noticed US airways was #1 on some list of the worst airlines to fly. they’ve started charging for everything. no beverage service. no free checked bags. paul and i spent a lot of time juggling things around to get all our bags under the 50 lb weight limit. we bought a 5-pack of t-shirts at kenny’s walmart and wrapped lenses in them. i had to trick them into checking a bag at the gate (which was free). i did this three times.

we raced to make the last flight out of colorado springs after the shoot, but our plane was coming from denver and apparently US airways can’t fly in the rain at all. things were delayed. then delayed further. it got to a point where we had no chance of making our connecting flight, but we opted anyway to go to phoenix for the night, just to get a little closer to home. however once in flight it seems there were thunderstorms in phoenix and we were rerouted to flagstaff. i mean, really, since when does it rain in phoenix in august? in flagstaff we sat on the tarmac for two and a half hours.

the flagstaff airport had already closed for the night and since there were no TSA agents there they couldn’t let anyone off the plane. this became problematic when people in the back of the plane started having trouble with the bathroom. there was no water in it, no soap, and the flush wasn’t working. the poor harried flight attendant tried to help a little bit by putting his own personal travel size bottle of purell in the bathroom, but it was an uphill battle. a girl sitting in the back of the plane threw up from the smell of the bathroom, and they let her sit on the steps of the plane. they wouldn’t let her down to the tarmac or let her use a bathroom inside the terminal. she was on her way to vegas to get married.

at one point the flight attendant was actually reading the employee manual to figure out what to do, and i even saw the pilots looking at a map trying to figure out where to go. luckily we were in the front of the plane so we got some air from the open door and the bathroom didn’t affect us.

the flight attendant kept getting on the PA and half-heartedly saying “we apologize for the inconvenience.”

as pissed as we were at the airline, i couldn’t help but think of kenny. i couldn’t help but think of kenny lying in the hospital after being in a car crash he had no responsibility for, and probably felt he shouldn’t even have been anywhere near. i thought of his buddy just walking away. i thought of how kenny told me that the first few years after the accident “drinking helped”. i wondered if anyone had apologized to kenny for the inconvenience he has to live with every single day of his life, just because of circumstance. just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

i guess the moral of the story, like most morals, is to try your damnedest not to take little things for granted. that, and don’t fly US airways.