The last video shop in Calhan
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CALHAN, Colo. –– Kerri, Kay and Norm Ullom, the family behind one of the few remaining video shops in the state, do not miss VHS tapes.
“We couldn’t get people to rewind them, so we’re running them through the rewinder every time they get back,” Kerri Ullom said, sighing.
“Then we started charging them $1 for the rewind, and they were like, ‘Oh, yeah, I can rewind that!’”
The Ulloms own and operate Norm’s Video, a single-room video store located in the eastern plains town of Calhan (population 762 as of the 2020 US Census). The store has served the surrounding public VHS tapes, and more recently DVDs, for decades thanks to a small-town sustainability model: community support.
Norm’s Video began about 40 years ago in December 1983. The eponymous Norm Ullom, and his wife Kay Ullom, owned a “half city block-long, quarter city block-wide” repair and wrecker garage in Elizabeth, where Norm Ullom worked as the head mechanic and Kay Ullom as the bookkeeper.
Elizabeth, which only had a population of around 800 at the time, lacked most amenities enjoyed by larger towns, much less a video store.
The Ulloms had a few movies of their own, which Kay Ullom would lend to neighbors and folks around town. As demand grew, Kay Ullom began to realize a new business venture to fill spare space in the garage.
“We had some extra room up in the front,” said Kay Ullom, “and people were asking about movies, and we had a few, but we started getting into it more and more.”
Kay Ullom sourced VHS tapes from a connection in Parker, about a half-hour drive northwest from Elizabeth. She ordered about 50–75 movies a week to rent out of the front of the garage, and sent back a cut of their revenue to Parker.
Word spread quickly. Within three months, the burgeoning shop began turning a profit, according to Kerri Ullom.
“It just went nuts,” Kerri Ullom said. “[My parents] knew that they needed a bigger space, so Dad moved his tire machine back farther to give Mom some more room… and it just grew and grew and grew.”
What would become Norm’s Video was open six to seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., though they often continued renting movies past 9 p.m.
Videos were about $1 to rent, and customers could keep them for a few days. However, the Ullom’s were pretty flexible with return dates, as they still are today, because their customer base has always been good about returning videos on time, according to Kerri Ullom.
Kerri Ullom grew up working in her father’s shop, pumping gas and assisting with car repairs. As the video pop-up grew, she, her siblings and sometimes even friends began helping her mother, who was almost single-handedly running the video shop while Norm Ullom managed the garage.
“People would have to go all the way to Castle Rock or Parker to purchase movies, and most of them had to buy, they couldn’t rent,” said Kay Ullom.
“I was about the first one to start renting movies [in the area]. [Locals] never had that before. No one had it.”
Kerri Ullom eventually married her “hometown sweetheart” Roger Lemesany (the mayor of Calhan), and moved to Calhan to start a family.
She regularly traveled between Calhan and Elizabeth to work in the garage, eventually with her newborn Chance (named after Chance Buckman in Kerri Ullom’s favorite film, “Hellfighters”) until Kay Ullom and Norm Ullom forbid it, worried over Chance’s safety.
They were near retirement anyway, and in March of 1987 the Ulloms relocated Norm’s Video to Calhan.
Norm’s continues to rent videos to the surrounding community in much the same way it did about three decades ago, with some changes.
The shop now occupies an historic Calhan building: the old Thompson Pharmacy, one of the town’s earliest structures that still includes the working original sink as well as a basement full of embers remaining from when much of the building burned years ago.
The video shop’s inventory has expanded greatly. A few A-frame shelves are lined with over 1,500 movies, including some of Hollywood’s most recent releases. Kerri Ullom buys and receives films directly from a distributor now, which often costs upwards of $20 each. She rents them for $3.
Norm’s Video’s shelves used to be stacked instead of lined, crowded with the bulky VHS tapes that predated their DVD-only collection today. There is still a “Tape Slot” carved into the front door of the shop.
Transitioning a VHS-loyal customer-base to DVDs was a long and difficult process, said Kerri Ullom, and it was years before they were completely independent of tapes.
“Dad and Mom came up with the idea that if we sold DVD machines for cheap, people would buy them and transition over, so that’s what we started doing, but it took us a while,” Kerri Ullom said.
That was over 15 years ago, and today Kerri Ullom and Kay Ullom are happy to have moved on from VHS tapes. They took up significantly more storage than DVD discs, they required constant rewinding and renters frequently removed tapes from their VCRs too quickly, snapping the tape.
“Dad got really good at repairing them,” said Kerri Ullom. “He bought a whole repair thing, and he would repair them in no time. You wouldn’t even get a glitch… but it was a lot.”
Despite the difficulty, Kerri Ullom and Kay Ullom acknowledged the nostalgia and lasting purpose behind some VHS tapes.
The last time the Ullom’s were able to get a couple of VHS players, they sold within three days of one another, which Kerri Ullom believes will most likely be used to play home movies.
She still treasures VHS tapes of her son’s basketball games.
Looking back, Kay Ullom said she never expected her garage-front video service to “grow into a booming business,” but she is proud to see what Norm’s Video has become and that it continues to serve her community.
“A lot of businesses out here have a short life-span, but we’re here, and we’re offering a service, and [people] seem to like it,” said Kay Ullom.
Video rental stores date back to 1977, only two years after the first VCRs went on sale in the United States. The industry expanded rapidly from there, and by the time that the Ulloms were starting their video store in the front of their garage, there were an estimated 15,000 video rental stores in the United States.
The market reached its peak around the early 2000s when leaders like Blockbuster were operating around 10,000 stores nationwide at a valuation of $5 billion in 2002. The decline in business was about as fast as the rise.
As of 2023, there are only around 550 DVD, game and video rental businesses in the United States, and there is only one operating Blockbuster.
Many tie the fall of video stores to digital innovations like Internet and streaming competition, as well as a decline in the perceived value of video. Mail-order and online video-on-demand businesses, like Netflix, quickly eclipsed brick-and-mortar rental shops.
Today, there are only a small handful of video rental stores in Colorado, including Video Video in Aurora and EntertainMart in Colorado Springs. DVDs can still be purchased in many WalMart and Dollar General locations.
The best chance most Coloradans have at finding DVDs in person are at Redbox locations, but earlier this year Redbox announced that it will be closing all of their locations in the state.
Kerri Ullom credits Norm’s Video’s success to the close-knit Calhan community, one which she said is constantly looking out for the individuals and businesses within its 530 acre boundary.
The video shop barely makes enough to keep the lights on, much less support her and her family, so Kerri Ullom works day shifts at the nearby Subway.
Norm’s is now only open from Wednesday to Sunday. Business was too slow to open on Mondays and Tuesdays. Over the years, the store has begun stocking an eclectic array of goods, ranging from cookware to school supplies to jewelry, to supplement the rentals.
Kay Ullom, now in her 90s, runs the shop during the day, and Kerri Ullom joins in the evenings around 3 p.m.
Kerri Ullom installed a small motion-detector in the shop that connects to her phone and lets her know that her mother is still moving around the shop.
Regardless of her aging parents or the aging video store industry, Kerri Ullom remains faithful in the support of Calhan. Norm’s Video shares a wall with Woolsey’s Food Center, the town’s only proper grocery store, with which it occasionally runs partner deals.
Dollar General is one of the only other locations where locals can find DVDs (or groceries). Calhan once had a Redbox machine where people could rent DVDs, but it closed.
Yet Kerri Ullom said that locals still prefer coming to Norm’s Video, where they can not only see the DVDs they’re renting, but also chat with Kerri, Kay, Norm (who occasionally helps in the shop) and Memphis, Kerri Ullom’s brindled guard pug.
“Everyone helps everyone here,” Kerri Ullom said.
“I love Calhan. It’s a great little community, and that’s what keeps us going. It really is.”
