What’s in Your Pocket?

I’ll bet I’m not the only one. I bet it BIG!

I can’t remember what started it, or stopped it, as the case may be, but it happened, and not only t o me.

For years and years and years I was exposing film and getting it processed. For several years I had my own darkroom but my best friend’s father had a much better one. That didn’t matter much to me because dark was dark – if you could achieve it. I did pretty well. Years went by with the shutter clicking away and the piles of envelopes containing prints piling up faster and thicker that dust.

It was genetic. My mother was always wielding a camera, except for that short time when the KGB seized it and pulled the film out before her very eyes – in an interrogation room in the early 1970’s. We had slides shows that could tax Job. And don’t forget the movies from the wind-up 8mm camera with the four flood lights on a bar. There were the obligatory shots of my then ten year-old sister scraping the dog-doo off her shoe with stick then cleaning the stick with her fingers, and the one of eight year-old me, my robe falling open as I decorated the Christmas tree while standing on a ladder immortalizing my tighty-whiteys. Yes, there was always a camera and there was always film.

The Ansco-matic was the coolest thing I had ever held and it was mine. Press a switch and the front folded out exposing a bellows and lens. It took paper backed 120 size roll film that provided sharp, large images in black and white, color, and even slides! I couldn’t imagine why people wanted little 35mm or huge 4x5 cameras when they could have had one of these. About five years later there was the twin lens reflex Yashica-D. My friends were way jealous of the images and negatives from this 120 film camera, but at least one mentioned how less expensive his 35mm film was and how many more shots per dollar he could make.

As I got older, I took fewer photos. Never having been convicted for the indecent exposure caught on film, I was allowed to attend an auction of seized and recovered goods where the police sold me a 35mm camera and lens. It was made in Dresden after the war and didn’t always wind straight, but I was back into photography and shooting my son’s image like crazy. Next was an affordable Nikon that I later used to take the photo that won a contest sponsored by Pentax to promote their flagship entry into the 35mm, SLR, Auto-focus market, the SR-1. I took thousands of photographs on thousands of rolls of film. There are sixteen albums holding 200 plus prints each and six liquor boxes full of envelopes of prints and negatives. The camera, bag and tripods went everywhere with me and were on my motorcycle when it fell down in the Great Smokey Mountains, twelve hours from home, in 1997. Now they collect dust.

How did the disposable camera displace the good ones? Of course, as the boys got older and began to drive, we picked up a four pack of the pocket shooters and stuck one in each vehicle. Somehow I had stopped carrying my gear. Oh, it went to the track meets, but it didn’t go anywhere else. At Christmas we grabbed the disposable and pulled off a couple of quick shots. Ten years before, there were multiple rolls recording the Season: now there are a couple of frames. And there were disposable cameras everywhere in the house, each with from two to six frames remaining, or is that little number telling how many have been exposed? I can’t be sure.

It all came home to roost last week as we were running out the door to the wedding of the oldest of the five boys who grew up mostly together in three close families. Four disposable cameras attempted to deceive me about their remaining capacities for photographs. Not born yesterday, or last week in this case, I went to the well. I grabbed the water resistant, 35mm film, Point & Shoot Olympus, camera purchased for our youngest when he was on his Eagle Trail and wanting to become a photographer. There was a roll of film in it, but I had no idea how many exposures were available. I found two rolls of 400DX-24 film in a drawer in his room but no battery to replace the dead one in the camera.

Off to the wedding we rushed. Arriving not more than five minutes after the appointed hour, my bride tried to break-in to the bathroom occupied by the priest, but that is another story for another time. We sat behind the groom’s parents. The Father of the Groom, a talented and committed photographer, was armed with a digital Point & Shoot and was using it! My wife asked me about a camera and I smugly told her I had it covered. After the service, as we stood in the church parking lot, she asked me to prove myself, photographically. I explained that we did not have a “disposable” camera, but a real one that used roll film and a battery. In response to her next question, I explained that I couldn’t take pictures of all the beautiful people because I didn’t have a “living” battery. So, off to find a drug store we went. No luck. We went to K-Mart (never again!) and after another story for another time, secured two batteries and arrived at the reception just as we had the wedding, after everyone else and just as the procession was starting. But the wedding, too, has stories for another time. But I must note that she was the second most beautiful bride I have ever seen. Photographs can’t do her justice. But that's not what this story is about.

On the Friday after the wedding, I gathered up the four, partially used, disposable cameras, the exposed roll of film that was in the Olympus when it was resuscitated, and the Olympus itself with a partially exposed roll of film and strong battery. We have been experiencing a drought in these parts. We normally cut the lawn twice each week from April through October. This year we have cut it six times. Early on, we took the mower to the shop because it wouldn’t start. Both times the culprit was spoiled gas that had sat for too long. In 2004 and 2005, I would fish a local river, wading, at least two days per week, damn near every week. The cool water gave my knees relief in the summer, and my hip waders kept me comfortable when the water was too cool for a bathing suit and sandals. I took my collection of cameras to one of my favorite fishing holes, ten minutes from home, which coincidentally has some picturesque qualities. (The normal water level is represnted by the stain on the underside fio the bridge.) One exposure of the cat, Nike (he replaced Sneakers after the leukemia worked its course), and twenty-three exposures of the Gunpowder River spread over three disposables and two rolls from the one “real” camera.

How did it happen? How did these disposables take over our lives? How do they manage to stay around for so long? What evil plan is working to deprive us of our memories in pictures?

Let me share the contents of the cameras:

One - 2005 Spring Play, The Wizard of Oz; October trip to Lake New Germany (in two weeks, we’re going back for the second time since that trip); November neighbor’s tree knocked down by a storm; 2006 Spring photos of cars involved in a crash; August 2006 photos of our son’s Eagle Scout ceremony.

Two – 2005 Christmas; September 2007 wedding.

Three – 2006 – September St. Mary’s College of Maryland Cardboard Boat Races; Christmas; 2007 - September at the Gunpowder River.

Four - 2006 – December car crash; 2007 – September at the Gunpowder River.

Five – 2007 June Hereford Optimist Club Fishing Derby.

Six – 2007 September wedding (this is the same wedding on roll two); the Gunpowder River.

For as long as two years, one of these cameras was able to keep me from getting the film processed. And they were blatant about it. Four of them (not the wedding rolls) sat in the kitchen the whole time. In the kitchen! That’s where we live at my house. It’s our great room. And the cameras, the disposable cameras, just collected and then sat there. Nary a word from any of them. Each time they were touched, each time we needed a camera, they sat mum, no explanation of what the number they displayed meant. They were mutes, unable, or unwilling, to help us. But those days are over – for me. But I’ll bet there are more of them out there. Probably in your house. What secrets do they hold? I wonder?

How about you? How long will you take the silent taunting before you break?

I’ll be right back. I want to check my fishing vest for one of those holders of good memories.

They’re sneaky, those disposables are. And insidious, to boot!