The Fotomat Store

2011-04-18T20:08:00.000-07:00

Gen X is the last generation to be raised without instant gratification. No digital music or downloads meant we had to wait for trips downtown or to the mall to buy music. Some rich kids had BetaMax recorders, but most of us had to wait for the allotted time to watch a specific television show. Without the internet and Wikipedia, the most instant gratification we could hope for in our quest for knowledge was a set of encyclopedias.

The exception was Poloroid cameras. They were the most amazing and innovative form of instant gratification we had. But the film was expensive and cost prohibitive for everything except the most special occasions.

For photos other than Poloroid, we had to wait 7 – 10 days to see photos taken on rolls of film. Photos that may or may not be “good ones” because our instamatic cameras didn’t have preview screens. (I once used my mother’s instamatic camera and an entire 24 exposure roll of film on photos of my Barbies. Which could be kind of cute, except in the photos all their heads were cut off or they were so close-up they were blurred beyond recognition (instamatic cameras didn’t have macro function lenses).)

It was a week-to-ten days of crescendoing excitement and suspense over the anticipation of the developed photos. Would they be “good?” Would the photos bear any likeness to the actual subjects of the photo? Would they be in focus? Would all heads be present and accounted for?

If all the shots “turned out” there was always a palpable sense of relief, and not just because the photos were good. All good photos meant you didn't waste money on the processing. Because at most photo developing services, if your photos didn’t “turn out” you still had to pay for the developing. It was a crushing blow, insult to injury, to have to pay for photos that were blurry, missing heads, too dark, too light or otherwise not “keepers.”

Fotomat understood our pain. They sympathized. So they guaranteed film processing in 24 hours. No more 7 - 10 day wait for photos!

And as if that wasn’t enough enticement, they had the “Fotomat No Fault Foto Guarantee.” If your photos sucked you didn’t have to pay for the processing.

Given that this was the Instamatic hey-day, I’m guessing Fotomat lost a lot of money with this policy. Instamatics were not known for quality optics. The viewfinders were small and often difficult to see through. And they used flash cubes which produced a blinding flash of light so bright you saw giant green blobs for several days after being photographed…and not surprisingly the photos often turned out to show blank white face shaped blobs with no discernable features. Sometimes the flash cube didn’t “turn” all the way, resulting in a photo that half super white, half pitch dark. Ahhhh, good times. That precious memory might not have been captured in instamatic glory, but if you used Fotomat at least you didn’t have to pay for the processing of that failed foto op.

I was fascinated with photography, even, especially, when the results were bad.

“What went wrong?” my curious nature mused.

Could a different development technique be discovered to rid the world of bad photos? I vowed to grow up, work at Fotomat and solve this riddle. I was pretty sure I could win a Noble Prize for that invention.

You might think digital cameras were the death knell for Fotomat, but I think a combination of the “Fotomat No Fault Foto Guarantee” and competition from the then-new one-hour-photo services were the culprits.

When I was a kid I wanted to work at a Fotomat. I thought their little glass buildings with yellow roofs were adorable. I used to imagine myself sitting inside the Fotomat booth serving the drive-up customers and developing film in the basement darkroom.

Yes. I thought Fotomats had basements under them. I imagined them to be photographic Batcaves featuring the latest photo developing equipment and some sort of alert system that informed the erstwhile Fotomat worker that a customer was upstairs at the drive-thru window.

So dedicated to this careerpath was I that my Barbies worked at a Fotomat I made out of a shoebox. My Barbies' friends drove up in the Barbie car to pick up their film.

I even played pretend Fotomat in my parents’ driveway. When my parents bought a new oven I was given the highly coveted box. I cut out windows and made a door, then I drew the Fotomat logo on it and colored it with crayons and chalk to resemble a Fotomat kiosk with a fluorescent yellow roof. I even made sale signs to hang on it.

I desperately hoped neighbors driving by our house would mistake my Fotomat box for a real Fotomat and pull up to my box to drop off and pick up photos. I didn’t have many real photos, so I improvised by cutting paper to photograph size and drawing “photos.” I made 12 or 24 sets of “photos” and put them in envelopes I foraged from my parents’ desk. Of course I drew up some art on the envelopes so they resembled Fotomat photo envelopes. (My career in design and art direction was clearly blooming.) I never duped any of the neighbors into believing I was a real Fotomat, but some of my friends rode up on their bikes and picked up their "photos."

My hometown is really small. It’s labeled a suburb but that’s putting on airs. It’s too rural to qualify as a suburb, but since the county’s consolidated high school resides there (as well as not one, not two, but three car dealerships) it’s considered quite the swingin’ metropolis among the even more rural residents in neighboring towns. Not only did we have the Big High School, we also had a Fotomat. I kid you not, people drove from miles around just to have a look at the Fotomat kiosk when it sprang up in the parking lot between the roller rink and bowling alley.

I clung to my belief of the imagined basement darkroom below the Fotomat far longer than I care to admit. Long after reason and logic (and my older brother) quelled my belief in Santa Claus...the Easter Bunny...the Tooth Fairy...I chose to believe there was a sophisticated darkroom under Fotomats. I thought some were even connected by a long and elaborate labyrinth of tunnels and vacuum-driven delivery tubes like at the bank.

Reality came crashing down on me one Spring evening. A small tornado swept through the North end of town. No one was hurt and the damage was mainly shingles off roofs, branches ripped from trees and some hail damage to cars parked outside.

But the Fotomat was pulled up and thrown back down about 20’ from its original location in the parking lot. Speculation remains if it was the initial uplifting or the slamming back down to the pavement that caused the Fotomat’s glass walls and yellow roof to twist and explode.

Whenever (and however) it happened, the Fotomat laid spent in shattered glass and large hunks of roof in the parking lot. Photos (Fotos) were strewn and splattered all over the parking lot of the roller rink and bowling alley.

After the storm died down word of the Fotomat demolition spread quickly. Most of the townsfolk made their way to the site of the massacre. At first people were thanking God and Jesus that no one was hurt, that Judy, the Fotomat lady, got out safely and took shelter in the bowling alley when the storm hit.

My little basement darkroom fantasy was crushed when my parents pulled into the parking lot and there, where the Fotomat used to perch, was nothing but a slab of concrete. No basement. No Batcave darkroom.

But my social awareness was about to blossom in a way that could only happen in a small town.

As is the case in small towns, when tragedy strikes people come out to help. Ladies bring sandwiches, casseroles and blankets. Men bring tool boxes and walkie talkies.

85% of these people are there with genuine compassion and community spirit. The other 15% of these people are there to get the inside scoop so they can boast about how they saw it with their own eyes…and in hopes of getting some juicy gossip. That 15% was not disappointed the day the tornado ripped apart the Fotomat.

Oh, at first it was innocent enough. Judy, the Fotomat lady, was at first flushed with relief, happy to be alive, happy the good Lord spared her of a Death-by-Fotomat. But then, as she calmed down and looked at photos strewn all over the parking lot, her new reality set in.

Relief gave way to, “Oh crap. Now what?”

You might think she was worried about her livelihood. Her place of employment was lying in broken glass and shredded sections in the parking lot. No Fotomat, no job.

But no. So dedicated and loyal was she that her first concern was not for her employment, but for the community. She started fussing, “What am I going to do? Look at all these photos! These are peoples’ cherished memories!”

The townsfolk rushed to her assistance. This was a small town. You might not have known everyone, but you knew almost everyone. And you were only one or two degrees of separation from knowing everyone. If you didn’t recognize someone in the photo, chances were good the person next to you would know someone in the photo.

The photos would have to be collected and that was a huge undertaking. But because this was such a small, community oriented town finding their owners wouldn’t be that difficult. Yes. Those photos would find their way to their owners.

Within and hour and a half of the Fotomat’s demise a search and recovery plan was in place and being executed. The janitor from the bowling alley supplied rolls of paper towel and toilet paper to blot the rain water off the photographs.

The woman who worked in the snack counter at the roller rink came out with a stack of paper, a box of paper clips and a bunch of pens. As people in the photos were identified their name would be written on a slip of paper and clipped to the photo. Eventually all the photos with subject's names clipped would be collected and sorted and voila! photos would find their way to their owners.

It became like an Easter Egg hunt. “I found one of Dr. Parker!” “Here’s one of the Carson kids on a boat!” “Hmmmmn, that’s not a very good shot of Doris Hollander, that’s her sister, remember she was visiting from Florida?” “Here’s one of Niagara Falls! The McCalisters just went there! Bobby fed their cat while they were away!”

In spite of the demolished Fotomat building, Judy the Fotomat lady was safe, no one was hurt, a photo recovery plan was implemented, and the atmosphere turned from local natural disaster to jovial and friendly cherished memory photo recovery.

At first.

But then…then things took a turn for the scandalous.

Mrs. Frasier found a photo of Tex Larson and a woman whose head was cut off the upper edge of the photo. (That “Fotomat No Fault Foto Guarantee” would be nice for that failed shot.) Tex Larson was not from anywhere near Texas. He owned the local Texaco station. Tex was married to Ginny, who taught home ec at the junior high school and collected old clothing donations to make quilts for the needy in her spare time.

Mrs. Frasier’s husband and Gladys Jackson, the town’s Yahtzee tournament champion three years running, looked at the photo and questioned the ID of the woman whose head was cut off in the photo of Tex. Gladys didn't think it was Tex's wife Ginny in the photo. She thought the bosom in question belonged to a younger, more pert woman than Ginny.

The discovery of the Tex Larson Photo (as it became known) was made next to where my parents and I were collecting photos. My mother was called over as the judge of the identity of the woman in the photo with Tex. My mother helped Tex's wife Ginny with the holiday charity drive, so apparently that made her an authority on all things Ginny.

My mother refused to look at the photo. Gladys and Mrs. Frasier were notorious gossips. My mother kept her distance from them. She and my dad continued picking up photos.

My mother moved to a clump of photos stuck to a parking spot concrete barrier. She picked them up and started thumbing through them. She made a short gasp and my dad looked over at what she was viewing. They exchanged a quick surreptitious look. My dad quietly slid the photos into his jacket pocket and called Judy the Fotomat lady over to have a look.

My dad tried to be discreet, saying he had some private photos that should be kept confidential. Of course the words "private" and "confidential" made Mrs. Frasier and Gladys Jackson move in as close as possible. Gladys was short and was able to get a glimpse at the photos as my dad handed them to Judy.

Within 10 minutes everyone in town heard a version of what Judy saw in those photos: Tex Larson and Susan Morris in a very compromising pose.

Susan Morris was the new elementary school counselor. This was the early ‘70s. School counselors were a relatively new concept for younger kids. They weren’t taken very seriously by parents or teachers. “Johnny’s seven years old. He doesn’t need therapy,” was the prevailing attitude. But a new breed of modern early childhood development specialists were being churned out as a “solution” to the problem of an overabundance of teachers in the ‘70s. “Can’t find a teaching job? Be a school counselor!”

Susan Morris blew into town, newly minted from college and a child development seminar, wearing a mini-skirt, crocheted poncho with tassels, false eyelashes, frosted lipstick and go-go boots or platform sandals depending on the weather. And she had pierced ears! None of the adults in town took her seriously. But us young girls who longed to grow up and live like That Girl! took her very seriously. Miss Morris was the closest thing we’d ever seen to That Girl. We studied her with rapt awe and fascination. And I’m pretty sure many boys owe their sexual awakening to Miss Morris’ mini-skirts.

In hindsight, the only one who didn't seem surprised at the rumor of illicit photos of Tex Larson with Susan Morris was Judy the Fotomat lady. Which adds credence to the rumor that she looked at everyone’s photos and kept the saucier ones. (A rumor which I didn’t quite understand because until that day I thought she was developing the photos in a basement under the Fotomat, so of course she saw everyone’s photos.) Judy must have seen a lot of "interesting" stories played out in the photos that came through her Fotomat booth. This was years before the movie One Hour Photo called attention to the creepy possibilities of what happens to your photos when you drop film off for processing.

My interest in a career at Fotomat dwindled after I learned there was no basement darkroom lair.

Tex and Ginny got a divorce. Pictures don't lie.

Susan Morris, the perkier, younger bosomed Susan Morris, finished out the school year as the counselor but didn't return in the fall.

The Fotomat was rebuilt (replaced) within a few weeks of the tornado but sometime in the mid-'80s Judy the Fotomat Lady handed the last processed photos to her last drive-up customer. The Fotomat booth was empty for a year, then an enterprising local bought or rented the Fotomat booth and started a drive-up cigarette business. Which never really took off and went out of business a year later. Then it became a drive-up key cutting/knife sharpening/battery kiosk. Which never really took off. And it sat empty for a few years. Kids from the roller rink - hormones in a rage from moonlight couples skate - broke into it and made out in it which led to its nick-name the Grope-o-Mat. A few years later there was a rumor that a crazy vagrant was living in it and it became known as the HoboMat.

And then one day it disappeared.

I found this in a 1983 holiday department store gift catalog. Disc cameras. Ugh. A hybrid cross between a camera and a ViewMaster. It was a short-lived and much maligned photography fad in the early '80s. Not many photo processing outlets handled the discs. And those who did charged a premium price for the service.

Smooth and Light and Unusually Appealing

2011-03-25T18:44:00.000-07:00

You make sherry. It's called Dry Sack. It's 1974/'75. The jokes write themselves. Do you cower demurely, hiding behind "classic" booze ad imagery of the day? (sexily colorful shot of the bottle and a glass of the booze set against a black background hoping to trigger and tantalize thirst sensors) Or do you go the celebrity endorsement route?

Interestingly (and somewhat confusingly), the same copy was used in both the Cheryl Tiegs and Frank Gifford ads.

Dry Sack on-the-rocks is a great drink. Its smooth and light and unusually appealing. It has the body and full rich nutty taste to stand up to ice. Dry Sack on-the-rocks...perfect before lunch or dinner.

You read that correctly. Perfect before lunch or dinner.

Oh, for those halcyon days of yore, days when "perfect before lunch" was a socially accepted selling feature for booze.

Welcome to the bawdy and often confusing world of the Gen X child, where thinly veiled slang references to male genitalia mingle freely with Frank Gifford and Cheryl Tiegs while hawking the perfect booze to drink before lunch.

My dad was a football fan and liked Frank Gifford. And my dad was known to imbibe in a glass of sherry (though not before lunch, at least not that I know of). My dad was therefore the target audience for these ads. But my dad never bought or drank Dry Sack. I have difficulty imagining my father ordering a Dry Sack on-the-rocks, even if it was macho enough for pre-emasculation-by-Kathy Frank Gifford*. (Dry Sack? At least he had a sack back then.) My mother was more of a sherry drinker than my dad. And when I imagine her asking the waiter if he has Dry Sack, and if so, her then telling the waiter, "I'll have a Dry Sack on-the-rocks," I feel simultaneous urges to giggle and throw-up. Perfect before lunch.

And yet people wonder why Gen Xers needed programs like DARE and the Just Say No campaign in elementary schools in the '80s.

Uh, maybe because the magazines in our homes were filled with ads featuring our sports and fashion icons drinking Dry Sack before lunch?

*Frank Gifford was an early adopter of the sports personality endorsement deal. Along with Dry Sack he sold his persona to hawk: Cigarettes, swimsuits, and hair gunk.

Buy One in Every Color

The Fotomat Store

Smooth and Light and Unusually Appealing