The Last Roll

It's been over 20 years since I took my last photo with a film camera. Once affordable digital cameras came on the market, there was no turning back. I was hooked. But you can imagine my surprise when I discovered my dusty, old Canon T50 in a box with a completed 35 mm roll still inside.

What could be on it?

That was the question I'd been asking myself for the past week. I uncovered the camera while doing a little house cleaning after the New Year. It was resting comfortably in a box half filled with picture frames in a lower kitchen cupboard. I was trying to make room for all the craft materials I'd accumulated while writing the Dollar Store Crafts & Recipes book.

But then I got sidetracked. Why would I shoot an entire roll of film and never have it developed? At first I had to ask myself if it was an unused roll—I had forgotten how to tell—until I remembered that a new roll would have a pull tab to load across. This one had been completely wound inside. Wound...such a funny word when you think about digital cameras. There is no more winding.

The roll also lacked an expiration date, which I thought was odd. But it looked to be in good condition. And for the past twenty years or more, it had remained in complete darkness.

So today I made the calls to find a store that still developed film. I discovered that one of the four Walgreens in the area had a one-hour photo lab inside. All the others would have to send it out. Waiting 7-10 business days longer was out of the question. My curiosity was piqued.

When I arrived, I told the Walgreens attendant my story, and how I could only guess what must be on that roll. He gave me a pickup stub and I spent the following hour perusing the store aisles. Waiting.

Maybe the undeveloped roll contained pictures of my mother. She passed away in 2008, and I only have about a dozen digital photos of her over the past two decades. Or maybe it was shots from the cottage I lived in while I filmed Beyond the Garden Gate. Could they be of a trip I took somewhere? Perhaps candid shots of myself in my thirties. Or friends that are no longer living in the area?

While waiting I discovered, to my great joy, that Walgreens was selling the exact model of humidifier that I had scooped up at a flea market last week. I paid $4; they wanted $39.99. I felt as though I had won the lotto. 

Several aisles were lined with Valentine's Day chocolate boxes and gift sets...a month early. And then there were those neat items—toys and gadgets and such—that fill shelves not devoted to cosmetics, drugs, and skincare lotions. I wrote a piece in Musings of a Dysfunctional Life about my attraction and almost comatose fascination with gadgets sold in pharmacy stores. All those As Seen on TV items and nifty appliances intrigue me. I called the piece "My Swivel Sweeper Moment."

About 45 minutes later I noticed a second co-worker observing a screen of photo thumbnails along with the original clerk. Her brow furrowed. Oh, crap! I thought. I hope I didn't goof around and take nudies back then! Boy, that would certainly be an embarrassment!

But, alas, they weren't pictures of me overexposed. They weren't pictures of much at all.

"Sir, are you Victor?" the woman asked.

"Yes," I eagerly replied.

"I'm sorry, but this roll is empty." She stretched the entire 24-exposure negative above our heads so I could see within the light that all the frames were blank. There would be no charge.

I can only imagine, in my way of thinking, that instead of wasting another dollar on film developing, I spent the last roll just to remove it from the camera. But, apparently, I forgot to eject it. I was digital bound and never looking back.

You can view a few of my many post-film photos in the hardbound book Photopourri, in the nature DVD Calmness of Woods, and in this little winter gallery.

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