Before we started doing the North Rim Grand Canyon Star Parties we went to the South Rim version for 2 years. The first year we started with 2 nights at a star party at Red Rock State Park outside Sedona. In Sedona was a store called something like Sedona Telescopes and Vacuum Cleaners. They had been running ads in the astro mags. I had to go see for myself. I expected to see a shop with lots of vacuum cleaners and 4 or 5 telescopes. I was surprised to find the opposite. They did repairs on vacuums which helped them compete with Walmart in Cottonwood 10 miles away, They had both Meade and Celestron telescopes, In a glass display case with very bright lights to show off the highly polished brass tube was a 5 inch Alvin Clarke refractor. It had hung in a canvas bag from the rafters of an old barn for as long as anyone could remember. Nobody knew what was in it until the barn was being torn down. A poster sized cartoon was in the front window of a man running a vacuum cleaner across the 30 foot objective of a refractor which was pointed straight up. The caption was "We vacuum the universe". The store doesn't seem to be around anymore. I'm glad I visited it . Deloy
Sounds like it was a fun place! ________________________________ From: D P Pierce <starsbirdsglyphs@gmail.com> To: utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com Sent: Sunday, July 21, 2013 5:15 PM Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Retail Telescope Stores Before we started doing the North Rim Grand Canyon Star Parties we went to the South Rim version for 2 years. The first year we started with 2 nights at a star party at Red Rock State Park outside Sedona. In Sedona was a store called something like Sedona Telescopes and Vacuum Cleaners. They had been running ads in the astro mags. I had to go see for myself. I expected to see a shop with lots of vacuum cleaners and 4 or 5 telescopes. I was surprised to find the opposite. They did repairs on vacuums which helped them compete with Walmart in Cottonwood 10 miles away, They had both Meade and Celestron telescopes, In a glass display case with very bright lights to show off the highly polished brass tube was a 5 inch Alvin Clarke refractor. It had hung in a canvas bag from the rafters of an old barn for as long as anyone could remember. Nobody knew what was in it until the barn was being torn down. A poster sized cartoon was in the front window of a man running a vacuum cleaner across the 30 foot objective of a refractor which was pointed straight up. The caption was "We vacuum the universe". The store doesn't seem to be around anymore. I'm glad I visited it . Deloy _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Send messages to the list to Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com The Utah-Astronomy mailing list is not affiliated with any astronomy club. To unsubscribe go to: http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Then enter your email address in the space provided and click on "Unsubscribe or edit options".
participants (2)
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D P Pierce -
Joe Bauman