Yellowstone, Cameras and a 3 Year Old

Remember Instamatic cameras?  With little flashcubes that twirled around? Groundbreaking at the time, with film cassettes that dropped into the back of the camera.  Snap it shut, and zip-a-dee-do-dah, you were ready to shoot.  Older camera required strips of film to be pulled out from a canister and aligned on sprockets.  Fooey.  Who wanted to mess with that? When our younger daughter was three years old, she had a Fischer-Price toy Instamatic camera with a flashcube on top.  It had some photos inside that rotated, as did the flashcube.  When we loaded the kids in our new Ford van and took off on a cross country camping trip to Yellowstone that year, we made sure to take it along.  Pretty cute to see her snapping photos as we made our journey.

We all slept in the van.  Daddy and Mommy in the back on a fold out bed, older girl on the bench seat and  Little Sissy on the floor with beloved Blanky and Panda.  We merrily sang Disney tunes, bought a flat of cherries, and ate plenty of road snacks.  Off to where the buffalo roam. 

Upon entering Yellowstone, we were given a warning flyer.  “STAY AWAY FROM ANIMALS!”  “DO NOT FEED THE BEARS!”  “STAY AWAY FROM GEYSERS!”  “STAY ON BOARDWALKS, HOT CRUST MAY COLLAPSE INTO THERMAL POOLS!”  This all made perfect sense, and we are the obedient sort of tourist. 

No sooner than we were out of sight of the entrance and on some back road, the van broke down.  

Handyman Daddy jumped out.  “Gas pedal linkage,” he announced, as he struggled to reaffix it.

Always marry a handyman, if you ask me.

“Dear, what’s that in the bushes?” I asked.

“Looks like a moose.  No worries, he’s napping.” 

“Where?” shouted the children.  “I wanna see!”

“Shh!” I didn’t want him to wake up.  Amazingly, car after car passed us with no offers to help.  Even a ranger went by and didn’t stop.  I kept my eye on the moose, ready to holler warnings should he stand and shake his antlers in our direction.  I kept glancing at the warning flyer, which showed a man being flung into the air by a bison. 

Thankfully Handyman Hubby hopped back in, started ‘er up and off we went. 

We had a great time seeing the sights.  At each stop, we piled out.  Little Sissy dutifully “took pictures” with her toy camera, as did we.  I did not have an Instamatic, so I struggled with film canisters, aligning the film on sprockets.  I learned that it was better to get 24 shots per roll rather than 36, because the greater amount of film resulted in the sprockets struggling to crank it all out, and sometimes the holes down the side of the film tore.  Not being able to crank the film forward to the next shot meant waste, and film was expensive.  Getting the smaller rolls of film meant changing them more often.  My camera had an automatic winding function, so when it sensed the roll was done, it started (noisily!) cranking the film back into the camera.  Handy function.  Except once, several years previously, when I attempted to quietly take a photo of our nephew’s bride approaching him at the alter and the camera started braying: “EEEE-YAW, EEE-YAW!”   Wrapped the darn thing up in a sweater.  Hubby and nephew cracked up.  Mother of the bride didn’t.

Little Sissy asked when did we have to change her film?  Pretty soon, we told her.

Going to Old Faithful was obligatory, of course.  The signs promised that it erupted every 90 minutes or so.  

We waited.  And waited.  And w-a-i-t-e-d.  The bleachers surrounding the geyser were getting pretty hard and ice cream was sounding more and more appealing.

“I don’t think this is an old geyser,” mused Hubby.  “I think it’s an Old Geezer instead.” 

The people in front of us cracked up and turned around.

 “Yeah,” continues Hubby. “An Old Geezer who says ‘I’ll blow any ol’ time I feel like it!  I”ll blow when I’m darn good and ready!’”

Eventually, of course, Old Geezer blew. Latecomers did not understand why our section of bleachers laughed uproariously when it did. 

Nearby, there were boardwalks to other spectacular geysers.  We dutifully heeded the warning flyer and stayed on them, and Little Sissy took pictures of them with her toy camera.  As did I.  Plenty, in case she asked for some.

Coming back, we ran into trouble.  Not fifteen feet from the boardwalk stood an enormous mature bison.  Is that redundant?  Even calves seem enormous when fifteen feet away.  Many families waited with us for the buffalo to nibble grass and move away.  It did not.  A backlog of tourists piled up behind us.  No one could leave the boardwalk and venture out on the crust to get around the beast.  Who knew if you would be swallowed up into a boiling thermal pool?  He got closer to the boardwalk.

The sun was getting mighty hot.  I thought if we very carefully and slowly walked past, we could get by.  Silently, slowly, we approached.  Lots of tourists behind us followed our cue and quietly, with heads down and watching out of the corner of their eyes, crept towards him.

But I couldn’t resist taking a picture when we were right next to him.

“EEEE-YAW!  EEE-YAW!” brayed my camera, rewinding.

The buffalo jerked up his head and his eyes flew open, rather like Scooby-Doo when he sees a ghost.  

“Huh?” he snorted.

“Run for your lives!” shouted Hubby.  “It’s the buffalo mating call.”

I could not run anywhere then as I was doubled over laughing, trying to stuff the camera in my pocket to muffle the noise.

“No, no!  Don’t put the camera there,” laughed Hubby.

We hustled the children past the buffalo, who didn’t move.  Safely back at the lodge, we rewarded our escapades with ice cream.  If you’re going to marry a handyman, add to that a sense of humor.  Of course you may die laughing.

Yellowstone was having record tourists that year.  You’d never know it, for not only is it as big as Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, and the employees were outstandingly friendly.  It was like we were the only tourists that were there.  As I paid for our family’s dinner, the cashier asked to see the pictures of the girls when photos fell out of my purse.  No one was behind me and she cooed over them.  Who takes time to do that?  When we rented a rowboat, a family of river otters followed us along the lakeshore.  But when we accidently left Little Sissy’s beloved Blanky in a cabin in the Roosevelt area, we found out what great service really was.

We were halfway up Montana before we discovered that it was missing.  This was unthinkable.  How could we have missed it?  We always check the room carefully before leaving.  Since these were the days before cellphones and Internet, we had to find a pay phone and a phone directory that might have the number of Yellowstone Park.  We drove for miles before happening upon a little town.

We got a number and called it from a pay phone, connecting to kindly young operator at Yellowstone Information.  I explained that we had stayed in a cabin in the far northeast of the Park.  He knew which ones.  He told me he would stay on the line with me, and got me connected to the cabin check-in desk, then got me connected to housekeeping.  They sent a maid over to that cabin and she thoroughly searched the place.

She found it!  It had gotten pushed down between the bed and the wall, and the maid actually thought to look there.  No wonder we hadn’t spotted it when we looked under the beds, something we always do in case a stray shoe gets under there.  She brought it back to the desk, and the operator took my name.  I pleaded for him to send it C.O. D. or whatever they had to do, I’d pay for postage.  We simply had to have Blanky back.  He told me he understood completely, took my address and promised to send it.

When we got home, there it was, postage paid.  There was, however, an envelope inside should I wish to donate to the park.  You bet I did.

Little Sissy immediately took a picture of Blanky with her toy camera.

Just in case you were wondering, the picture of the buffalo came out pretty well, too.