Kodak Brownie Starmite Camera - 1959
I get my first camera. I'm nine years old.
I didn't know nuthin' 'bout nuthin' 'bout taking pictures.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWFJLUBwpSY - Sam Cooke, "Summertime"
But I started taking them.
Load the film.
Turn the knob.
Click the shutter.
Turn the knob.
Click the shutter.
You get twelve shots.
Wind the film up.
Take it out.
Send it off.
Wait.
I loved it. Ate up all of my allowance getting things processed at Walgreens Drugstores. I'd have to "pull groceries" - with my red Radio Flyer wagon - on Saturday mornings for older men and women in the neighborhood who didn't have a car, to earn extra money to buy film. Everyone didn't have a car back then. Didn't really need to. Every neighborhood had everything you pretty much needed within walking distance.
"Pictures back!" I'd hear as the front door opened. My feet would barely touch carpet as I rushed to the door to get the envelope. "Rrrriiiiip." I loved the smell of fresh negs and prints when you opened the package they came in; that sweet-acrid chemical smell. I still do. I'd sniff them purposefully when Dad brought home my order. I sniffed a lot of things back then. I still do that too.
That something actually came out on the print was nothing short of miraculous to me. And I did it! Wow. Recognizable stuff!
I remember I didn't like color because most of the movies I liked at that time - those 1940's and 50's film noir-ish stuff - were in black and white. Then again, maybe it was just our big-assed Motorola, black and white TV I'm remembering. Plus, color film cost more.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3HXy9mGPpI&feature=related - The Drifters, "There Goes My Baby" (a cross-over hit, Summer, 1959).
I still have two little marks on the tips of my thumb and first finger from trying to remove hot, semi-molten bulbs that didn't eject all the way after they went off. I learned to keep a little hankie or a napkin or two around.
Sometimes those bulbs didn't just flash, they would explode on you. I think we viewed that as more of an adventure than the health hazard - with the attendant massive product recall - that they'd call it today. Mom wondered why I didn't wait until they cooled. Dad just thought, "if you keep this up, they'll just have to call you, `Ol eight-finger Bob'." I figured it out: got all ten.
Standing left to right: Earis Alto, Eddie Jones (he was a bully and used to torture Earis. To this day we've never known why). We were all nine, but Eddie was a massive hunk of a 12-year-old with a great big, square-block of a head and dark, mean-looking eyes. We were all afraid of him. But, better Earis than us, we thought.
To this day (52 years later), 61-year-old Earis Alto hates to hear the name; "Ed-deeee Joooonessssss" (que psycho music). www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuIQJ-l16b4
Kneeling, left to right: Darryl Brown, my baby sister, Renee (aka Putz, about age four), and Reggie Suggs.
Taken in our backyard. Summertime, 1959.
Secret fantasy of mine? To have Morgan Freeman narrate my stories.
Texture by: not sure. I'm looking it up. But it's called "Kodak Brownie TTV. "
and one by cat hair studio: www.flickr.com/photos/cathairstudios/
Kodak Brownie Starmite Camera - 1959
I get my first camera. I'm nine years old.
I didn't know nuthin' 'bout nuthin' 'bout taking pictures.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWFJLUBwpSY - Sam Cooke, "Summertime"
But I started taking them.
Load the film.
Turn the knob.
Click the shutter.
Turn the knob.
Click the shutter.
You get twelve shots.
Wind the film up.
Take it out.
Send it off.
Wait.
I loved it. Ate up all of my allowance getting things processed at Walgreens Drugstores. I'd have to "pull groceries" - with my red Radio Flyer wagon - on Saturday mornings for older men and women in the neighborhood who didn't have a car, to earn extra money to buy film. Everyone didn't have a car back then. Didn't really need to. Every neighborhood had everything you pretty much needed within walking distance.
"Pictures back!" I'd hear as the front door opened. My feet would barely touch carpet as I rushed to the door to get the envelope. "Rrrriiiiip." I loved the smell of fresh negs and prints when you opened the package they came in; that sweet-acrid chemical smell. I still do. I'd sniff them purposefully when Dad brought home my order. I sniffed a lot of things back then. I still do that too.
That something actually came out on the print was nothing short of miraculous to me. And I did it! Wow. Recognizable stuff!
I remember I didn't like color because most of the movies I liked at that time - those 1940's and 50's film noir-ish stuff - were in black and white. Then again, maybe it was just our big-assed Motorola, black and white TV I'm remembering. Plus, color film cost more.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3HXy9mGPpI&feature=related - The Drifters, "There Goes My Baby" (a cross-over hit, Summer, 1959).
I still have two little marks on the tips of my thumb and first finger from trying to remove hot, semi-molten bulbs that didn't eject all the way after they went off. I learned to keep a little hankie or a napkin or two around.
Sometimes those bulbs didn't just flash, they would explode on you. I think we viewed that as more of an adventure than the health hazard - with the attendant massive product recall - that they'd call it today. Mom wondered why I didn't wait until they cooled. Dad just thought, "if you keep this up, they'll just have to call you, `Ol eight-finger Bob'." I figured it out: got all ten.
Standing left to right: Earis Alto, Eddie Jones (he was a bully and used to torture Earis. To this day we've never known why). We were all nine, but Eddie was a massive hunk of a 12-year-old with a great big, square-block of a head and dark, mean-looking eyes. We were all afraid of him. But, better Earis than us, we thought.
To this day (52 years later), 61-year-old Earis Alto hates to hear the name; "Ed-deeee Joooonessssss" (que psycho music). www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuIQJ-l16b4
Kneeling, left to right: Darryl Brown, my baby sister, Renee (aka Putz, about age four), and Reggie Suggs.
Taken in our backyard. Summertime, 1959.
Secret fantasy of mine? To have Morgan Freeman narrate my stories.
Texture by: not sure. I'm looking it up. But it's called "Kodak Brownie TTV. "
and one by cat hair studio: www.flickr.com/photos/cathairstudios/