Professional photographer, Vincent Pugliese, explains how a car accident, an all-day Greyhound bus ride, and the kindness of strangers proves a photographer’s life is never dull.
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Editor’s Note: Vincent Pugliese has spent the past 20 years traveling the country taking sports photographs for a living. Each picture tells a story. Each picture stores a memory. Each a window into sport, and how we connect to it. In ‘Beyond the Lens,’ Good Men Project Sports selects one photograph and tells the story behind the shot.
Today…misadventures abroad that began with Vincent’s final visit to the Maple Leaf Gardens
Maple Leaf Gardens, TORONTO, ONTARIO (Nov. 1999)
Throughout my childhood watching fuzzy telecasts of New York Rangers games on WOR-9 in New York, their games against the Maple Leafs in Toronto always were memorable to me. The timeworn building always stood out to me, particularly the box seats behind the nets that seemingly hung just above the ice. The intimacy of the building, as well as it being in a different country, always held my attention as a nine or ten year old.
Twenty years later, the old barn was in its final year before the Maple Leafs moved into their fancy new arena across town. My first semester at Ohio University was about to conclude and I prepared for my drive back to Long Island to spend the holidays with my family. Looking through the schedule, I noticed that the Leafs would be playing at the Gardens the day after my semester ended, two days before Thanksgiving.
After calling a New York sports magazine that I shot for, I managed to have them credential me for the game. Just like that, I was making an eight hour detour through Toronto to shoot the game before they shut the doors on the classic building months later. Informing my mother that I would be a few days late, she worried like only a mother can do, but she was pleased that I would still be home for Thanksgiving.
Having never been to Toronto, traveling into the city went smoothly and with relative ease. I parked, picked up my credential and entered the arena. I spent more time than usual looking around once I was inside. I marveled at the tiny concourses, the lack of room taken for granted inside of any semi-modern arena and the charm of this historic building. Walking near the locker rooms, it was impossible not to think about the decades of moments that occurred in that venue.
The game itself was uneventful, a loss to the Buffalo Sabres. Having parked right next to the arena, I gave myself a virtual pat on the back for a seamless check off of my arena list, one that was important to achieve before it was no longer an option. Pulling out of the garage and heading onto the QEW expressway, I was on my way home for family time, turkey and football.
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Eight hours away, I planned on stopping at a cheap motel for a some sleep once I had a few hours of driving in. That was until the driver of the car in front of me slammed his breaks a few minutes into the drive. The red brake lights too close for comfort screamed at me to stop and my foot instinctually pummeled my brake peddle.
Just feet away from their car, my brake was pushed as far to the floor as possible. It seemed like I had reacted quick enough to avoid the accident but in the second that I had to assess the situation, I realized that I did not. My car had not touched their bumper, but I remember saying to myself, in a resigned tone, “This suuuuuucks.”
As I completed my astute assessment of the situation, my car proceeded to clobber the back end of this man’s car. Smoke shot vertically from my car as green fluid I used to own covered the QEW.
I slumped back in my car, wishing that I was given the opportunity to go back in time thirty seconds. I really thought that to myself. I opened the door to assess the damage when a flustered Asian gentleman exited his car. He didn’t say a word, but I raised my voice and asked him why he stopped like that. He apologized, saying something about a construction sign, but none of it mattered now.
His car was still workable, but he waited with me until the police arrived to take the report.
Within minutes, we were surrounded by tow truck drivers fighting for my business. It really was funny, there must have been eight tow trucks within thirty yards of me. Apparently, that’s the way it works in Canada.
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My car, conversely, was not operable. It hit me that I was essentially stranded. Stranded eight hours from home. Stranded, eight hours from home, in a DIFFERENT COUNTRY! I hadn’t even made it to the border yet. In the instruction manual of life that we should be given, nobody would have even thought to make this a chapter. Adding to the humor of the situation, my car was packed with all of my belongings that I had packed for the six week winter break. This included all of my photography equipment, among other things. All stuff that I couldn’t leave in Toronto.
Within minutes, we were surrounded by tow truck drivers fighting for my business. It really was funny, there must have been eight tow trucks within thirty yards of me. Apparently, that’s the way it works in Canada. One driver told me he would take my car to the shop and then drive me home. I explained to him that I lived in New York. He was so non chalant about it, telling me not to worry. When I said New York, he was obviously thinking Buffalo, and hour away. No, New York, I said. like, the city. His eyes widened and I remember vividly his words. “Oh… where the big buildings are!”
I liked him from that point, and he towed my car, with me in the cab, to their garage. My options for price shopping were extremely limited, obviously. With all five bags of all of my crap from my car, he dropped me off near the greyhound station back in Toronto. Hello again, you wonderful city. I never planned on seeing you so soon. I checked the schedule, and the first bus leaving for New York was at 6 a.m.. It was now 1:15 a.m. All I needed to do was kill five hours before the 14 hour bus ride that would get my into New York’s Penn Station around 8p.m. on Thanksgiving Eve.
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Walking throughout the concourse with a ton of stuff that was never meant to be carried by anything but a car, I must have looked wonderful. A young couple, out on the town, must have felt sorry for me. Nursing a much needed jelly doughnut, they sat down at the grimy table I was at and introduced themselves. They were an extremely attractive and friendly couple, they looked like they should have been on a billboard outside. After talking for twenty minutes, I told them that they had to have something better to do than sit in a greyhound coffee shop with me. They laughed and told me they were having a great time. They told me about themselves, I told them about this silly story that I was living that night, and they stayed with me until 5:30 a.m. when I went to get on my bus. I never wrote down their names, but they will never know how thankful I was to for their company for those five hours.
When you crash your car in another country more than 500 miles away, you get to have one heck of a story to tell.
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The greyhound wound through upstate New York and long after the sun had set, nestled into the bowels of Penn Station. After a 45 minute ride on the Long Island Rail Road, i met my concerned parents at the train station.
Thanksgiving dinner awaited the next day and the memory of that trip began to fade.
But it faded, only because I forced myself to not think about what was ahead. You see, when you crash your car in your city, you get a ride to the shop when it’s ready. When you crash your car in another country more than five hundred miles away, you get to embark on another day long Greyhound trip just to pick up your car. Oh, and then drive it eight hours back home for Christmas. And a few days later, when you get in the car and drive another eight hours to get back to school, you get to have one heck of a story to tell.
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Originally published at Into the Uncommon. Reprinted with permission.
Photo: Courtesy of author
That’s just funny, especially the tow truck guys. Thanks for sharing your story. I wonder if that good-looking couple are GMP readers. That would be awesome!