Gone

I spent twenty six years of my life behind the counter at Triangle Camera at the corner of Broadway and Stratford on Chicago's north side.  I started out helping my future mother-in-law do typesetting for Chicago's Japanese newspaper, The Chicago Shimpo, graduated to counter sales and eventually became the store manager.  In between, I got married to Mike, had four children and lived in three of the apartments upstairs from the store.

We worked together, Mike and I, along with my mother-in-law, Jennie and my sister-in-law, Evie.  Though our staff changed frequently (as retail staff is prone to do),  the people that worked for us were like extended family.  They were there at our wedding, celebrated the birth of our children and mourned the passing of one of our co-workers and my mother-in-law.  Like many large, dysfunctional families, we had our disagreements and tiffs but they usually passed and we forgave each other.

When I met Mike, long before we were married, Triangle looked like the first picture.  The shelves were crammed with photo chemicals, paper and darkroom supplies.  Beautiful, intricate cameras stood proudly on stands that said Nikon or Canon or Leica.  There were several "groupies" who used to hang out there on Monday and Thursday nights when we were open until 9 pm, just to talk photo, peppered with stories of my late father-in-law and the days of Triangle's infancy.  I didn't know a thing about photography, I used to joke, I only married into it, but it became an integral part of my life.

How privileged I was to become friends with so many of our loyal customers, who chose  to have us develop their precious film  rather than  at the local drugstore.  We were there to see the pictures that created snapshots of their lives.  I still get Christmas cards and Facebook messages from a few of them - a sort of thread that connects my old life and new life together.

Our photo lab, a converted first floor apartment on the Stratford side, had pencil marks along side one door frame:  Brett and Ryan 6 years or Amy and Lauren 9 years -  moments in time preserved in pencil lead.  My children had the run of the store since we lived upstairs.  They knew all of our staff and many of our customers.  They would walk there after school and lay sprawled on the floor of the office in their Mt. Carmel Academy uniforms, diagramming sentences or writing reports.  Our dog, Pepper, was there too, standing perpetual guard at the top of the stairs, mostly sleeping, but rousing every so often to take himself out for a walk to the fire hydrant on Stratford.

Well, the whole photo industry changed, as you all know.  Digital photography replaced film and people weren't printing out their pictures.  Cameras were hard to sell when we had to compete with internet merchants who didn't have the overhead of a brick and mortar store to cut into their margins. There was a lot of drama as we coped to adjust.  Then, in late 2003, my mother-in-law passed away and the last true connection to the Triangle Camera of 1953 was gone.

We made a valiant effort to keep it going, but I think we knew, in our heart of hearts even then, that the time had come to say our good-byes and move on.  And so, the building was sold and Triangle Camera closed it's doors on December 31, 2005.

For many years, the new owner left the Triangle space as it was - a sort of hollow and ghostly monument to what used to be.  We moved to Florida and started new lives, but friends from the neighborhood or vendor representatives from our Triangle days would email us updates.  "Still empty", they'd report.  "Just like you left it."  Until now.

Someone emailed me a link to the photo gallery of the restaurant that finally opened in the old Triangle space.  It had been magnificently remodeled and bore little resemblance to the space that had begun as a modest camera store nearly sixty years ago.  I was impressed and very happy to see new life breathed into the building and the retail space that had lain empty for so long.  I showed the pictures to Mike and emailed the link to my children and my niece.  "Look," I said - "see how fabulous the old Triangle space looks!"  Everyone agreed it looked wonderful and oohed and aahed over the exposed brick and gleaming floors.

Later that night, as we were on our nightly walk, Mike said that seeing the pictures made him kind of sad.  He said that he had the fleeting thought that he wished it was still empty - with all of our lives memories preserved inside - rather than look beautiful and shiny-new, but as foreign as a place we'd never seen.  And then my daughter said the exact same thing and I started to think.  I thought about the pencil marks showing my children's height at various stages of their lives; the Christmas parties over the years; the typesetting room from my days as a young bride that morphed into part of our photo studio -  all of the reminders of not only my work life, but my whole life - suddenly gone as if they'd never been there at all.  Part of me was within those walls that had seen so much, heard so much, felt so much.

Just as I sent my children off to college and into the world, filled with excitement and hope for whatever the future held, so I knew the chapters of my life that had played out within those walls
had ended.  I hope that those beautifully remodeled walls will remember us and that whatever bright things the future holds for those that now work and live there, the laughter, tears and lessons learned by those of us that came before will become entwined with the joy of tomorrow's possibilities.