This past Monday, 6/22/09, Eastman Kodak announced it is discontinuing Kodachrome, the film it has manufactured since 1935. Kodachrome is now yet another relic of the past, like VHS tapes, 8-track tapes, cassette tapes, GM, analog TV and unsliced bread. But the film certainly has its place in history, including its use in this well known 1985 Steve McCurry photo of a young Afghan girl.

While Kodachrome will soon be gone, it will forever be memorialized by Paul Simon's 1973 song named after the 35mm film that peaked at #2 on the Billboard charts.

When I think back

On all the crap I learned in high school

It's a wonder

I can think at all

And though my lack of education

Hasn't hurt me none

I can read the writing on the wall

Kodachrome

They give us those nice bright colors

They give us the greens of summers

Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, Oh yeah

I got a Nikon camera

I love to take a photograph

So mama don't take my Kodachrome away

If you took all the girls I knew

When I was single

And brought them all together for one night

I know they'd never match

my sweet imagination

everything looks worse in black and white

Kodachrome

They give us those nice bright colors

They give us the greens of summers

Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, Oh yeah

I got a Nikon camera

I love to take a photograph

So mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Mama don't take my Kodachrome

Mama don't take my Kodachrome

Mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Mama don't take my Kodachrome

Leave your boy so far from home

Mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Mama don't take my Kodachrome

Mama don't take my Kodachrome away