This is the first camera (above) I ever owned, a Kodak Pony 135 which came on the market in 1955. My father, who was interested in photography himself, bought me one as a birthday gift a few years later when I was a senior at Harvey (N.D.) High School.

In those days, digital photography was still a distant dream.

I shot mostly Tri-X film, most spectacularly on my first visit to New York City.

I was then a student at the University North Dakota. A classmate and I had planned a trip to Paris (he had heard the women there were “easy”), but his parents vetoed the idea.

So, using money from my college loan and a summer job at my hometown newspaper, I hopped a bus and traveled alone to New York City.

I lived in a cheap flop house hotel on Times Square and spent 10 days wandering the city. It turned out to be one of the most transforming experiences of my life.

In my next blog, I’ll post one of the pictures I took in NYC with the “Pony.”