A Moment in Time

This summer I found a roll (really a disc) of film in a camera from my teen years. To have it developed would mean sending it away to a photo lab in Pennsylvania and paying way too much money for it. But after speculating as to what was on this camera (circa 1987) and pressure and support from various people I decided to pay the money and find out. In the process I began looking through my collection of old cameras, which now totals nine, and found two rolls of film from my grandparents Platt 1963 Kodak Instamatic, one still inside. Then to my surprise I discovered a roll of film that was still in their 1933 Kodak Brownie. I carefully rewound the film in the Brownie and taped it closed. I found a pretty and strudy box to mail these mysteries in and soon they were off to Pennsylvania.
The package arrived this week and just like opening a time capsule, I quickly yet carefully opened it not knowing what I would find. I was disappointed to see my own camera disc was blank, as well as a few of the other rolls, but I then pulled out the prints. They were able to retrieve photographs from two rolls of film from two different cameras. When I pulled the first picture out I exclaimed to my five-year old son, who was in the room with me, “That’s me!” Indeed it was a photograph of me on my Granddaddy’s lap doing one of my favorite things, riding the tractor. The rest of the 19 images were of that day at his little farm with my brother and Granddaddy’s dog Panda or of my brother’s trip with the grandparents to the Midwest to see Herbert Hoover’s Presidential Library. They were all grainy black and white images printed in the square format popular in the 1960s. And one photo in particular, of Hoover’s birthplace was especially pictorial, with the quaint picket fence surround the small white clapboard house.
The roll of film retrieved from the 1933 Brownie contained only two photos most likely taken in the 1960s. They were taken almost as a test or a simple documentation of a mundane task. Maybe my grandparents were debating whether to continue to use the camera. They never threw things away. The photos show my grandfather washing his car, with the neighbor’s house in the background. My grandfather is dressed in a button down short sleeve shirt and long pants; casual wear for that time period.
I can only assume my grandmother was the photographer of all these photos, since she does not appear in any of the pictures, yet was most certainly by my grandfather’s side. This is unusual, as I remember my grandfather being the photographer, not her. My grandparents are gone now, so I can’t ask them about the photos or the cameras. I only wish I had developed these pictures several years ago before Grandmama passed away. She would have enjoyed them.

So no, I didn’t find anything outrageous or dramatic on these rolls. But sometimes the most important times in a person’s life are not the fancy parties or expensive vacations, but the simple days of sitting on a grandparents lap and learning to drive a tractor, petting the family dog, or simply washing the car.