William Metcalfe, 10/15/2018

Current Occupation: Having retired from profitable work, I am playing about with either writing or photography.
Former Occupation: There were 40 years of picture framing. My company was one of the first in Washington, DC, to push for preservation as a very important aspect of a framing job. 
Contact Information: After 30 years of aimless travel, I settled down in Washington, DC. after I found I enjoyed working as a picture framer. In the years of travel and of working with customers, I have accumulated a large collection of stories, which exist as short notes. For a period, I was also, by acclamation, a interesting photographer, but a move to a near suburb, a wonderful wife and our 3 children took more and more time. I had to curtail my pursuits. Now that I am retired and my children are adults, I have returned to earlier interests. The iMac which sits on my desk offers itself as a means of rendering a legible copy of a story from the dusty corridors of my mind. It also offers itself as a instructor in converting digital snapshots into something much more meaningful, might I say art. One can only hope

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THE HAUNTED POSTER

    Decades ago, one of our shop’s customers brought in a framed poster which, jokingly, she claimed was haunted. It had been framed at another frame shop closer to where she now lived. After she took it home and hung it, the poster would softly moan at intervals (This older lady was not the type to moan over). She found this disturbing. Yours truly solved her problem.
    The shop that did the work had scrimped on material. When I turned the frame around, I saw a box without a lid. The poster now became its back. There was about one and a half inches between the rear of the box and the back of the poster. The poster had been glued onto a thin plywood or a thick paper board and then glued onto the walls of the box. These walls were quarter of an inch plywood. At the very bottom of the frame there was nothing that would provide a bit of space between the frame and the wall. This prevents dust from piling up behind the frame. The shop had attached the wire so tightly that the back of the frame pressed firmly against the wall. The lady lived near a very busy, urban street in an apartment house. Her apartment was near the top of the building. The poster was hung on an interior wall. Whenever large trucks or buses traveled on this very busy street, their masses caused vibrations that were transferred to her apartment, where they were amplified by the boxed poster. To exorcise this ghostly, monotone emanation, I gave the wire some slack and added two small, plastic bumpers to the bottom corners. Instead of one hanger for the poster, I used two for stability. Problem solved, I thought.
    Unfortunately, I can’t brag that my work was a success for we never heard from the woman again.