1. The Kid on the Sidewalk
We were on our way to Waffle House for breakfast. (We always have breakfast there when we’re in Cocoa Beach. It’s a kind of addiction.) So we were driving north, and we passed a kid on the sidewalk.
He was holding a plain white sign that said, “Launch Photos” in bold, black letters and had an arrow pointing into the strip mall nearby. The boy held the sign over his head and waved it around, shouting something that we couldn’t hear.
2. The Man at the Counter
At the counter in the restaurant, an old man sat next to Trudy. He was treating his grand daughter to breakfast. He’d left her brothers at home playing computer games, he said.
He had lived in Cocoa Beach for years and talked about seeing rocket launches and about the Space Coast economy now that there are no more Shuttle flights. He talked about how folks in the space business have such specialized jobs that they don’t know what real work is, how it’ll do them some good to have to find real jobs.
At that point, I tuned their conversation out, not particularly caring about the philosophy of a haggard geezer who leaves his sons at home playing on computers while he goes out for something to eat.
It wouldn’t have surprised me if he lit up a cigarette right there at the counter and coughed a wheezy cough as he blew smoke over the rest of us, except that they evidently don’t allow smoking in Florida restaurants, anymore.
He and Trudy continued talking. I ate my cheesy eggs and hashbrowns, lost in my non-charitable reverie.
3. Searching for Souvenirs
The man at the counter did tell Trudy about a different man who sells space memorabilia in a little strip mall store on Highway 3. It was just the kind of place we were looking for. When we got up to leave, we looked over to thank him, but he was gone.
So we drove over to Highway 3 to buy some souvenirs. But when we got there, we couldn’t find the place. We drove up and down the highway looking for a stripmall with a souvenir shop nestled next to a diner.
We found lots of strip malls. We saw lots of little shops. We even saw some diners. But we couldn’t find anything that fit the description the man at the Waffle House gave us.
Eventually we gave up and headed back to the motel.
4. Finding Launch Photos
On the way back, that kid was still out by the street waving the “Launch Photos” sign over his head. I turned into the parking lot, but there was no obvious place selling photos.
So I walked over to the kid and asked about his sign.
“Are you selling Shuttle pictures?” I asked.
“Yes!” he said and turned back to the oncoming traffic, shouting “Launch Photos!”
“Where do we get them?” I asked.
He turned back to me, as if I had asked the strangest question. “Right over there,” he said, pointing to the strip mall on the far side of the parkling lot.
“One Hour Photo.”
“Thanks,” I said and turned back to the car.
“One Hour Photo,” he said again. “One Hour Photo!”
I laughed and thanked him again. Trudy and I got back into the car and drove to the other end of the parking lot.
5. One Hour Photo
There was nothing special to see at first inside One Hour Photo. There were portraits of families and kids on the walls behind the counter. But if you turned around, there were big space pictures, many addressed “To Karl” and autographed with big swirly signatures.
There were a handful of Space Shuttle prints sitting on the top of a glass counter, but they were classic photographs from over the years that anyone would recognize.
My heart dropped. Clearly this was a bit of a bait-and-switch, I thought. He wasn’t selling photos of yesterday’s launch but just selling photos of previous launches. I was not too surprised. What did I expect in less than 24 hours. And after all, this was just a little photo shop in the back of a strip mall on the far side of an empty parking lot.
6. The Photographers
“Do you have pictures of yesterday’s launch?” I asked the man who greeted us as we looked around the store.
“Of course,” Karl said, “right there.”
He pointed to a counter where we saw half a dozen pictures. “Just printed them,” he said, and he explained the various options. Which photos. What sizes. How many. The prices.
We chose one, a close-up photograph of Atlantis climbing out of the billowing steam and smoke, and he helped us crop it before he sent it to his $250,000 photographic printer.
“Been here for 23 years,” Karl said. “Taken photos of lots of Shuttle launches.”
When I told him I’d been at the first one, his face lit up.
“I was there, too,” he said. “I was sixteen.”
I was ashamed of my thoughts of bait-and-switch and looked again at the personally autographed photos on the walls. Pictures signed by Gemini, Apollo and Shuttle astronauts. Autographs written out to him by name. This guy was for real.
As our picture came out of the printer, a guy came in the back door and walked up to Karl and showed him a picture on his iPhone. Karl was visibly impressed.
“It was the only one I got,” the guy said.
Karl introduced us. This was Larry Tanner. Google his name online, they said. You’ll find the image of a nighttime Shuttle roll-out that he took from the roof of the Kennedy Space Center firing room. It became an instant hit online.
Larry showed us the Atlantis launch picture that he had just shown Karl.
I asked if we could buy the photo that Karl had just printed and also one of Larry’s.
“It’s fine with me if it’s ok with him,” Karl said.
“Is it ok with you?” I asked Larry.
“Sure.”
7. The Photographs
So we bought two 8×12 color photographs.
Karl signed and dated the one he took. Larry signed and dated his. Mind you that the two of them weren’t standing by their cameras when the pictures were taken. As Larry said, if you can read the writing on the side of the Orbiter, then the camera was triggered remotely. Can’t have anyone that close to a launching rocket.
So we left with our two pictures slipped inside a cardboard sleeve, happy that we had really good souvenirs from our trip.
As we drove back to the motel, we talked about sitting on the beach and wading in the water. And I took out the pictures and marveled at them but then noticed that both had a thin vertical line running down the middle, the kind of digital flaw that old 17″ Sony Triniton monitors used to have (back when 17″ was really big).
My heart sank as I looked at the pictures. Good souvenirs but not perfect. I tried to convince myself that they were good enough.
But they were not good enough, and so we called One Hour Photo from the motel room. Karl answered, and I explained. He said he’d have to look at the photos to see if he could fix them. And he said he’d be there until 2:00. It was 12:30.
So we got back in the car right away, drove back thru Cocoa Beach, passed a different kid waving a sign at oncoming traffic (another of Karl’s four sons, as it turns out) and walked back into One Hour Photo.
He didn’t have his glasses on before, he said. He was glad we’d called, because he found dust on the mirror in his $250,000 photographic printer. He was able to clean it off, and would print the photos again. He ripped up the flawed ones that were still sitting on the counter.
As it turned out, he had worked a bit on Larry’s picture and managed to squeezebetter contrast out of it. The sky was darker and the booster flames were more orange.
We sat down to wait for the new prints to come out. When they did, Karl signed his. Larry was gone, but we’ve still got the first one that he signed.
And we do have two souvenirs of our trip. Two really good ones.