My Fascination With Photos Started Early

I guess my earliest recognition with photos I was about eleven. It did not start with having a camera, or holding one. It came about through photo booth pictures. You know the kind that you slip into the booth, insert money and wait for it to take your picture.

To me this was a small addiction. Practically every weekend, if not more, my friends and I would walk (yes I said walk) to the shopping center about a mile away from the house. We would usually do our browsing in several stores that we liked. But the last store we would stop at was Newberrys. This store was like a five and dime store carrying a little of everything, including a counter were you could eat a grilled sandwich or drink a coke. It was here people knew us, knew what we were up to. We would walk hurridly in to the store heading straight for the booth, picture booth that is. Squeeze in to the 3' x 3' space (sometimes it was a little cramped depending how many there was of us).  We would  close the half-high curtain to cut down on the glare from the outside world. You almost always had to adjust the seat. Twirling it left or right just so to get the perfect height. Once you were settled, one of you (usually the one closest to the money slot had to put the money in. One quarter then the other. We would scramble to get situated and wait. Wait for the infamous flash to come, four consecutive flashes to be exact. They were coming whether you were ready or not.

With the process of taking the pictures done, we would hurridly push the curtain back, scramble out of the booth, and wait, and wait, waiting for a full three minutes anticipating for the machine to process and drop your prize down into the slot. The second we would see the black and white photo drop into the slot, we would go about to snatch the pictures from the machine. There was an art to getting these pictures from the slot. They were always damp from the process of developing them. Using a index finger and a thumb working carefully to not smudge the images extract it from the machines grasp. Depending on who was the one doing the extraction they would either gentle blow on the paper to get it to dry faster or frantically wave it in the air for a fast dry. When at last it was tack dry we would settle down, taking turns to analyze the poses we had created, laughing at the faces staring back at us. Almost always satisfied with the results.

After pouring over the pictures for several minutes, we would order up an ice cream from the lunch counter at Newberrys to be enjoyed on the long trek home with our prized pictures in our possesion. All the while planning our next trip back to the photo booth to do it all over again. Good times.