Camera Catastrophies

My last blog presented the succession of our family cameras. It occurred to me that not all the cameras we’d owned wound up at the garage sale because their lives had been cut short by accidents, and they’d ended up in a different sort of box.

            My memory doesn’t serve me well enough to create a list of childhood camera catastrophies, but one type of accident happened several times; the tiny clip on the top of my Ansco came unfastened, the back flopped open, and my film was exposed, rendering it useless. So sad when my last $1.00 had been spent on film.

            Several of our camera mishaps have taken place on vacations when every dime counts and repair or buying a new camera stretch the wallet thin. The one which stands out in my mind so clearly was during our trip to Washington D.C. during the Clintons’ first term in the White House. We came upon a photographer who had a life-sized cutout poster of Bill and Hillary, and he was charging a small fee to take a picture of people with the Clintons, using a person’s own camera.  It seemed like a good idea, but when the entrepreneur tried to snap it, the camera became rigid as stone. No way was it going to have the Clintons in its memory stick! It never took another picture and repair was more than a new one.

            The next scene opens in Hawaii where we are already inside a camera shop, hoping the guy can unstick Don’s 35 mm shutter release. After a few irrelevant questions about the camera, the proprietor began to punch at the button with a pen! We didn’t stay to see any more of this guy’s unconventional methods of fixing cameras, rented one for the rest of our stay, and took Don’s camera to Ritz when we got home.

            Two cameras have suffered being dropped. One, in the parking lot of Yellowstone Lodge got a shattered lens, and the other one…I have to tell the story! We were in New York City’s Grand Central Station with a friend who knew about the acoustics in the high-ceilinged building, and the tricks they played on ears. She wanted to take our picture in a corner outside a very famous bar to prove we’d been there, and impulsively grabbed for my camera. In “slow motion” I watched my almost new Sony Digital make a high arch in the air as it slipped from her hand, and land with a terrible sound on the marble floor. Honestly, a crowd gathered to see what would happen next. Nothing did. My little camera was dead, my friend devastated, and I, speechless. Not another vacation broken camera, my mind screamed. On the outside front corner, there was a little dent, and as I was examining it, the camera gave a whirr, came back to life, and served me well for several more years until I gave it to a young friend.

            And finally, this last weekend while on a VACATION to Anza Borrego, my last in a long line of cameras began to shake inside, leaving me with the feeling that I’d better save up for a new Sony because my next favorite activity to writing is taking pictures!