Today marks the third anniversary of dad’s passing. I still think of him almost daily. He was interested in almost everything, which is why it was so easy to talk with him. One of his hobbies was photography. Something we had in common.
I know he would have enjoyed my recent work, and would have gotten a kick out of some the images I’ve rescued from obscurity. I’ve been filing all the negatives I have and some of the negatives I know off that dad had. I’ve had a difficult time scanning larger negatives such as the 120-size. Recently I bought an adapter, which lets me use my old bellows with my Sony a200 DSLR. I can get some nice scans using this set up.
Here’s one that was sitting at the end of the roll. Ray Maas brings in his Yashica D to K-mart to develop a roll of 120 film. There is one photo left on the roll, so the Photo Department Manager takes Ray’s picture. I’m guessing it is around 1972.
Why K-Mart?
In the early 1970s, Epko was the premiere photo store in Fargo. It was downtown and not far from Adams, Inc. where dad worked. But it catered to the Photo Professional and was a little off putting. I believe K-mart was the only department store in Fargo that had a photo department. In the 1970s few stores offered photo processing and none of it was done onsite. You would drop your film off, fill in a form, and it would get mailed off. Hopefully in a week you would get your prints back. At the time photo finishing wasn’t as prevalent as it became in the 1980s- when every drug store, grocery store, and convenient store offered processing.
Even though K-mart was clear on the other end of town, Dad and I would head over there in the evening and look at cameras and get our photos developed. The guys and ladies who worked in the photo department were knowledgeable about cameras and photography unlike store employees now. We enjoyed talking with the staff about photography and I bought my first 35mm camera there- a cheap Hanimex. Even later I bought a lot of camera accessories at K-Mart.
Once West Acres opened in 1972, Dad and I found ourselves visiting Pako Photography where dad bought himself a Olympus SP35 in 1973; and Daytons where I bought a Minolta SRT-102 in 1975. We brought our film to be processed at Pako. Bob got a job at Brown Photo in the mall, so I brought my film there for a couple years. Once Osco Drug opened down the street from our new home in south Fargo, I took my film there. Osco ran photo processing specials every week. In my last years, shooting 35mm film, I would bring my film to Walgreens.
