Fading photographs

Back in the 60's, I had four little kids and a full-time job at night in a factory. My husband worked hard delivering freight during the day. We didn't have a lot of spending money, and pictures (to us) were a luxury. It was expensive to mail off the finished roll of film and wait for the photos to come back. They didn't always turn out and your money may have been wasted on disappointing or useless stuff.

As a result, we didn't take pictures on a whim. It was only for a picture-taking occasion that the camera was brought out. Usually, one picture was snapped, maybe two. The roll of film might be in the camera for a year before it was sent off to be developed.

Then a company started selling low-cost photo film with the price of developing included. This seemed like a good deal to me and I took pictures of my four without a thought about the quality of the film.

Sadly, it wasn't until years later that I found out what a scam it was. It turned out that the company was cutting up old movie film stock and selling it for photos. They were aware that the pictures would fade just as old movies do. The ruse to provide the free developing was because the film couldn't be processed by regular developers.

So, here is a picture I took in 1964 of my sweet little kids. I have so few photos of them during those years that I feel guilty and sad. I wish I could tell off those sneaky people who cheated thousands of families out of their memories! Shame on them!