These old memories are record-setting

Granddaughter Emma received a record player for Christmas from one of her aunts. I wasn’t aware that records were making a comeback. I sorted through our collection and picked out a couple of them to send to her. We haven’t played them for more than 30 years. I doubt if we will miss them.

The first problem I ran into was that I couldn’t find a box to put them in. I was at the local big box store, wandering the aisles when I saw someone I used to know.

We chatted a bit and I told him I was looking for a box to hold records to send south. He spied a pile of boxes that one of the employees was emptying. He offered to distract her while I grabbed a box. 

I turned him down. 

I never did find a suitable box so I slipped the records into a large plastic envelope. I put a couple magazines on either side to act as a buffer. Then I scribbled a plea to the mail carrier. I asked that the package not be bent. Only time will tell if the vinyl arrives in one piece.

I wonder if Emma has ever heard about the way records used to be sold. I went to a school in Eaton, Ohio for a couple of years. We took the second bus home so we had a little time to kill after school. Usually we went to the small eatery called Norma’s on the same block as the school. 

Most of the time we got a drink and crammed into a booth to chat. The usual order was a Coke, but not just any Coke. We had our choice of plain, vanilla, cherry and a couple more flavors I can’t remember. This was in the time when the flavorings were added separately from the cola. We could get a little extra flavor or a lot. 

Next door to Norma’s was a record shop. The procedure was to flip through the record displays until we found a song we liked. We could buy either a single, which had one song on each side, or an album containing multiple songs. 

Vinyl records have a bad habit of getting scratched. To avoid taking home a scratched record, we took our choice to the counter where we would be directed to a booth. There we would put the record on the turntable and listen to the whole thing. If there were no problems, we paid for the record and went on about the business of not missing our bus. We usually chose singles as there wasn’t enough time to listen to an entire album.

When I was a kid, we had a Victrola. It was a beautiful piece of oak. To play a record, one opened the lid, plugged the crank into the side and wound it up. Then we chose a record that was stored under the turntable and placed it on the surface. We swung the needle around, made sure it was in one of the grooves and flipped a lever to turn it on.

The records that we could play  on the Victrola were much thicker than the ones sold today. We had a newer record player downstairs that could play the thinner albums.

The way most people listen to today’s music is as foreign to me as that old Victrola is to Emma. I have no idea where that antique ended up. Wherever it is, I hope somebody appreciates it just like I hope Emma likes the records I mailed to her.