Other than the fact that the camera was made in 1963, I couldn't understand the connection with the photos it made. And I certainly couldn't figure out how or why it made them. It didn't seem possible, let alone real. It seemed as if it were something in a dream. Only the dreams were merely black and white images on small sheets of paper.

Although it made no sense to me, I decided to take advantage of this strange phenomenon while it lasted, or at least until I ran out of instant film in case the magic was in the film packs alone. I made a brief journey of some of the places I remembered seeing when I was nine years old.

I took a ride to my old neighborhood. Just up the street where a few houses stand now, once was a farm with a hayfield. I remember visiting an elegant-looking horse there. He would eat straw from my hand as I petted him. I distinctly recalled the specific location where the barn used to be and pointed the camera in its direction as I gently pressed the shutter. I kept my fingers crossed while I waited for the tiny photo to develop. I anxiously but carefully pulled the backing from the picture. An image of a barn was barely within the left side of the frame. I moved in closer and a bit farther to the left as I tried to imagine the barn in the viewfinder instead of someone's yard. Not only did I get a better shot of the barn this time, but the horse was also in the picture.

I drove to a nearby busy street filled with fast-food restaurants, big box stores, and strip malls. I took several pictures at various locations along the highway. One of the photos revealed the old ice cream stand where my dad used to take us. Another was a picture of the miniature golf course that was once there.

I always wondered what the little market down the street from our house had looked like, and I often wished I could find a picture of it. I distinctly remember it being next to the Mobil gas station where a brick apartment building stands today. It may seem like an insignificant and trivial thing to want to see compared to so many other old places and things that I could revisit, but I just had to see it again. I don't know why. So, of course, I took a picture of it, or more correctly, a picture of the apartment building magically and mysteriously transformed into the small store, but not at all as I remembered it. I guess our memory often paints a better picture than what was there.

Then I had a crazy idea. Why not photograph the old schoolyard? The school hadn't changed since I was in the third grade except that it had been converted to senior housing. The parking lot was once the playground.

Story and Cover Illustration Copyright © 2021 by Michael DeFrancesco