TAKE A PICTURE! It’s easy!

My first camera was a Brownie, you opened the top, and looked down to line up and take your shot. The one I had didn’t have a lot of fancy settings, and while I did get a few good shots, I wasted a lot of film on shadows, glare, and yes, even my thumb.

It’s not just the film, I had to take the whole roll of 20 or 24 images to a little kiosk in the Valu-Mart parking lot, where a crabby teenage girl would collect my film and often sell me a fresh roll or two, depending on how much money I could hustle up. (Being in the fifth grade and having a girlfriend of sorts already, made it tough to rub two coins together.)

Then I had to pay for processing on the whole roll, it would be nice if they could just toss the obvious failures and only charge for the good pictures. But that’s not how the fotomat business worked.

I wonder what happened to those little parking lot structures. I could use one to store my rakes and shovels.