The economic recession of the early 1980s was tough on every business. Mortgage interest rates exceeded twenty percent. Once-thriving enterprises found themselves struggling to survive.
My audio/record store was hard hit. January days were always slow for business but one day only a single customer came in – to return a $7.00 blank cassette he had purchased the previous day. His business manager (yes, his wife) had asked him a question. Was he an audiophile, or an audiofool? So that was a red-letter day of sorts for the store – a sales total of less than zero.
Even more memorable was the very next morning when I received the news that my strongest competitor’s store had burned down overnight. I grabbed my camera and headed down Rosser Avenue to where the site of Krazy Kelly’s Audio Emporium was now a frozen spectacle of ruin.
This image shows evidence of the Brandon fire department’s efforts to contain the blaze in minus 30-degree temperatures.
I felt no sense of schadenfreude, only relief that it hadn’t happened to me. There is, indeed, something worse than an empty cash register.
“Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.” ~ Robert Frost
Location: Rosser Avenue, Brandon, Manitoba
Date: Winter 1981
Source: Pentax ME Super with Fuji Black and White Film
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