This is not the way I wanted this to be done.
I’ve talked here before about my years at a place called Shaw Camera Shop—4468 Shaw Ave, in St. Louis, Missouri. I worked there for 20 years. I did black & white processing, printing, waited counter, swept up, stocked shelves, eventually hired (and fired) people and ran the lab, finally, toward the end, ran practically all of it because the then owner more or less walked away from it and let it die. I ended my tenure there with mixed feelings.
But the first 11 years were the years in which I grew up.…