VCR, Mimeography and Golden Rule

I don’t know where this was taken, by whom, or why.  It predates digital stuff, though.

March 31, 2016 addendum

I had an epiphany on Montana Avenue.  Not the gentrified, area of Montana Avenue, but the neighborhood of the LP Anderson store.  I saw two yellowed signs that read, “Big Sky VCR.”  I felt like I had stepped into a time warp.  Well, the VCR business continues to operate, just not the way I imagined.  Digital video cameras now need service, just as the older analog videotape cameras did.

I sought more.  I checked an old Polk Directory.  Here’s a bit of what I found:

D & D Mimeograph Service, 213 W. 11th Street.  The stencil duplicator or mimeograph machine (often abbreviated to mimeo) was a low-cost duplicating machine that worked by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper, according to Wikipedia.  In the mid-1960s, my friends and I drew comics and made a magazine using this technology.  Okay, we didn’t actually get the comic drawn, but we started out drawing one.

Peterson Typewriter Exchange was always near the YMCA on North 32nd.  You could get Dictaphones and Ditto Machines.

Then there was the Golden Rule at 24th Street and Central Ave.  I thought it was probably a religious store, but no.  J.C. Penney built general merchandise stores by that name in Billings and all across Montana:  Laurel, Kalispell, Harlem, Lewistown, Missoula, Anaconda, Philipsburg, Butte, Bozeman, Dillon, and on and on.  The Golden Rule in Billings suffered a fire, was sold, and ultimately a grocery supermarket ended up there.