RE: [Leica] SS reels and tanks - question on JOBO processor

["B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>]

OFF TOPIC- BUT WTH! (It's as related as a lot of what passes for related
around here :-))

TheTime - Summer, 1965.
The Place - The Weekly Packet, Blue Hill, ME.
The Background - Yr Trly had a summer job as "the" - as in, the only,
reporter/photographer for this wonderful, tiny, weekly, in a corner of
Heaven called Blue Hill, ME.

The Assignment - Drive about 5 hours north west into paper company
territory - pine woods - to shoot a raging forest fire that had been out of
control for weeks - this was the driest summer in something like 50 years -
and was attracting fire fighters from as far away as Jersey.

The Camera - A Honeywell Pentax - no meter - w/ 50 1.8 and a Schneider
135/3.5.

So I hop in my battered VW Beatle, drive up to the area of the fire, shoot a
zillion rolls of Tri-X (what else), get what I thought was great stuff, turn
around and head back.

When I got back to Blue Hill my editor tells me that the Boston Globe has
said, send along anything good you get. Pressure!

I go into the darkroom with my film, and with my sweaty hands, tried to load
six rolls onto Nikor reels. I know, the stainless rolls are easier to use.
Well, they can also kill you. And they did. Kill me.

When I finished souping the film and looked at what I had, what I had was a
Godawful mess, with film that had stuck together and neither developed nor
fixed properly. Oh, I got a few decent shots for the Weekly Packet - but
there went the "Big Time."

P.S. There was one up side to all this. While driving up I had stopped at a
little "Antique"/junk store along the side of a road in the middle of
nowhere. On tables inside were boxes marked $.10, $.15., $.25....And in the
$.15 box was a brass-over-lead U.S. plate from a Civil War era cartridge
box...Yes, I have since had it examined and it was real. Yes, it was $.15.
Yes, I still own it, in fact it is attached to my brief case - for years I
had worn it as a belt buckle but I finally outgrew the belt.....So the trip
wasn't for naught....

But watch those stainless steel reels and trying to load too many rolls at
once!