The Yankee Clipper II
A couple weeks ago I wrote about my Petri 2.8 and the memories behind it. As I have begun using it to fill rolls of B&W film, thoughts have turned to the logistics of developing them. Locating and rummaging through the boxes of this and that from when I had my own darkroom uncovered some items useful to the task. One of the items in particular brought back memories, memories of another uncle who encouraged me along the way.
Mom and I rarely went places on vacation. As a kid there was only her to do the driving and during the summers she kept me supplied with puzzles, model kits and games enough to keep me sufficiently occupied to keep me out of trouble while she was at work and not notice that we didn’t have the money for much else. But there was one regular trip for us. Every summer we spent a week in LaGrange, Indiana.
LaGrange was where mom’s sister, Aunt Joanne and her family lived. She and her husband, Jack, owned a small candy factory. It was a perfect plan, drive north for a week dump the kid off at the candy factory with his uncle and cousins. While he helped his older cousins make summer hard candy, mom and Joanne got some time away. Needless to say…a candy factory…I was game. My primary responsibility was to do what little Jack and Mike didn’t like to do. Weigh out portions for the next batch of hard candy. 50 pounds of sugar, 25 pounds of corn syrup crystals and 2.5 gallons of water. At the end of the week, big Jack would give me $10 and I had it made.
As I got older, it became less about the candy and more about hanging out with the older cousins…until after my Junior Year. By that time, I had my driver’s license and more importantly, the Petri. I had pictures to go take. I didn’t know what of, but I knew they were out there. That spring, as I had been taking my photography class in High School, mom had been telling Joanne. Presumably she told Jack and like any respectable man of the late 70’s and early 80’s, he was a camera guy. Mom told me to bring what I had worked on in class so that he could see, he was interested.
I credit my Uncle Tom for my patience, sense of humor and ability to forgive. It pains me to admit this now, but Uncle Jack scared the hell out of me when I was young. He always seemed stern and demanding around his boys at the plant and at home. He pushed them always. I always wondered what he thought of me. But that summer, he wanted to see my pictures from class and the evening we arrived, I showed them to him. He seemed to stubbornly approve. He asked if I had film, yes I did. The next two days I spent wandering around LaGrange County. I made it over to the antique flea market in Shipshewana. I drove through Amish country along the way. I made my way down to the old earthen dam and lakes down in Rome City. Found the deserted old high school, took night pictures of the courthouse.
After we both got back to the house on Wednesday, he from the plant and I from my wandering, he asked me to get in the car with him. We were going someplace. We drove the 6 blocks through town to Stopher Photography store and studio. Once we were inside he talked to the owner (everyone knew Jack) introduced me and said we needed to get some supplies so I could develop some film. We walked out with a couple ready mix started kits of developing chemicals and a Yankee Clipper II developing tank. We got back to the house and I got to work. I was elated because I had shot some rolls since school had been out but hadn’t planned out how to get them developed. This was better than the $10 working in the factory, and I didn’t have to grunt around 100 pound bags of corn syrup crystals. It was late that evening but the negatives were processed and hanging with laundry pins in the new bathroom.
I recall that the next day somehow required my presence for whatever mom and Joanne were doing. I suspect it was a big lunch at the Amish restaurant. When we got home for the day, Jack was home. He had something he wanted to show me. He handed me my negatives in sleeves of waxed paper and then game me four contact sheets of the negatives. He had gone back to Stopher’s that day and had his friend run the contact sheets. He had a magnifying glass handy and I took it all to the dining room table and started studying them with purpose. I heard my mother and Jack talking. Jack told my mother “He has an eye for this”
I had received good feedback from my teacher in high school and received an A for the course. But those six words meant and still mean the world to me. What I didn’t understand at the time, Jack was hard on his boys because he loved them and wanted them to succeed. It was the way he himself was raised and understood how the process worked. The twins that followed me in my lineage of cousins were twin girls, I think that threw him a curve, it took his edge off. It became obvious how heartfelt and unconditional his love and support for Sandy and Susie was in the things they chose to pursue in life. Looking back, through a filter, it was there for the boys. It was there for me as well.
I think something that every child should have growing up is an adult who believes and supports an interest that that child has developed for themselves, not something heaped on them by parents who missed out on something when they were young. When I took an interest in photography, I had that support in spades from my two uncles.
For the next several years after that summer vacation, the tank saw plenty of action, only diminishing in importance when I started shooting a lot of Kodachrome. As I am starting to process film now, I decided to get a new dual roll tank to economize on the chemicals. I also bought a small mid priced scanner – no contact sheets are needed. But I will always have the Yankee Clipper II developing tank, it’s an important memory.
After I got the scanner, I dug up those 4 sets of negatives, rolls #10 – 13 of my catalog. A few of those images play in the slide show below.