The weekend before Easter is typically a time for egg hunts and photos with the Easter Bunny.
I love those photos and honestly, the more awkward the better. Recently some folks in the office and I were talking about those awkward family photos. I found one of my sister and I with the Easter Bunny.
I was also reminded of a photo that is near legend in my family.
As a matter of full disclosure, I was too young to remember the story, but the tale was told so many times, and sworn to by those who do remember.
Today, social media is littered with independent photographers offering “mini sessions” and other special family packages. Back in the day, however, you had to go to a department store that had a photo studio if you could find one. Otherwise, families had to wait until a department store in town had a traveling studio set up. The store would announce that the studio would be in store weeks ahead and families would dress up, then stand in line to have their photo taken.
When I was an infant, my father worked third shift as a welder for Grove Manufacturing.
On this particular day, he had worked all night and returned home to my mother telling him we were going to K-Mart for pictures. Apparently, my father loved my mother very much because he stripped from his sweat soaked work uniform, showered and changed into what appears to be a costume from the show “What’s Happening” and went to stand in line.
Apparently, either appointments were not an option or my mother had failed to make one. Either way, my father talks about standing in line for hours at the front of the store. He said sporadically a family would walk by and the woman, visibly upset, would be holding a screaming child.
My father said that at some point the photographer and staff took a lunch break and it was well after noon before it was my family’s turn in front of the camera.
Apparently, everyone was on edge — my father from a lack of sleep and desire to be there; my sister, Staci, because she had no nap; I because I was an infant being passed from one parent to the other; and my mother from the stress of watching my father grow more and more agitated.
The photographer went to reposition my sister and she gave a whimper. My father told the photographer not to touch her. My dad said that if he wanted Staci in a different spot, to tell him and he would reposition her.
The photographer, ignoring my dad, took Staci from my mother’s arms and tossed her high into the air. When he caught her, she began to cry. The photographer said he did not take pictures of crying babies and began to toss her again.
This is where my mother would take over the story. She said it was a bit of a blur but in one continuous motion my father put me from his lap to hers, caught my sister and gave her to my mother, then latched ahold of the photographer lifting him off the ground and to his eye level before hitting him.
At this point, accounts vary as to whether the police did or did not arrive, but everyone agrees that the only reason my father did not go to jail is because so many of the upset mothers complained to store management that everyone agreed the photographer had finally provoked the wrong customer.
The photo that was eventually taken that day, apparently by an assistant, looks about right for my family except that my father has a look I can’t totally describe (I have included the photo as reference).
It’s clear my father is still angry, but trying to hold it together. While it is clear this is his best effort, he fails miserably.
He kind of puts on a smile, but his eyes tell the story. They offer a picture far better than anything the photographer ever could have.
-Mac Cordell is a reporter for the Journal-Tribune.